[Mageia-dev] [RFC] Moving various packages/codecs to tainted

Tue Jan 10 00:30:18 CET 2012

Anssi Hannula wrote:
+> Hi all!
+> 
+> As I've noted in some previous emails, our core/tainted media codec
+> split-up is currently arbitrary without any specific logic.
+> 
+> As far as I remember, the tainted policy is that codecs for formats that
+> are claimed to be covered by patents should be there.
+> 
+> Per that policy, at least the AC-3/DTS/MP3/MPEG-2/MPEG-4/H.264/VC-1
+> decoders and AC-3/MPEG-2/MPEG-4 encoders we have in core should be moved
+> to tainted section. Note that this will make most current
+> .mkv/.avi/.mp4/.mov/.wmv/.mp3 files unplayable without packages from
+> tainted section.
+
+That's the absolute last thing I want to see happen.  It's one of the reasons Fedora and others that do that are not viable options for a lot 
+of non-technical users, and it just makes it so you have to jump through a lot of extra hoops just to have a reasonably working system 
+(whether it's your own or for family members that you might be maintaining).  Obvouisly just about every codec in use has patents relevant to 
+it, but I think we're OK to stick with the ones Mandriva shipped for years in core (like mp3 decoding) and things that were in PLF in tainted 
+(like mp3 encoding) even if it seems arbitrary.  If anything, it'd be nice if more not-likely-to-be-problematic codecs could be moved to 
+core.
+
+