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

Tue Jan 10 04:20:47 CET 2012

On 10.01.2012 04:08, David Walser wrote:
+> Anssi Hannula wrote:
+>> On 10.01.2012 01:30, David Walser wrote:
+>>> 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.
+>>
+>> I'm absolutely fine with either moving codecs to core or tainted, as
+>> long as we are at least somewhat consistent in what is in core and what
+>> is in tainted. However, I do not really like the reasoning "we do it
+>> like mandriva did no matter if it is sensible or not".
+>>
+>> I'd possibly understand "we do it like mandriva did because they didn't
+>> apparently have problems with these pkgs", but it IMHO wouldn't really
+>> fly as we could just s/mandriva/ubuntu/ in that statement (and Ubuntu is
+>> much more prominent than mdv IMO) and then everything would be in core...
+> 
+> Sure, I but I think Mandriva achieved a good balance between respecting patents and not being overly paranoid.
+
+The problem is that that "balance" was achieved by sticking packages in
+PLF/main/contrib semi-randomly. For example, H.264 decoders and MPEG-4
+video encoders are in main/core, while e.g. AAC audio decoders are in
+PLF/tainted. If one'd put them into an order, IMO H.264 and MPEG-4 would
+be much more prominent and tainted candidates instead of AAC decoding...
+Also, in e.g. MPEG-4 case we have encoders both in core and in tainted,
+e.g. we have ffmpeg in core, but xvid in tainted.
+
+> I suppose you can't blame a 
+> US company like RedHat for being overly paranoid, but as you said, Mandriva hasn't had any problems.  Are there any there examples out of 
+> there of distros trying to achieve this balance?  Obviously we don't want to follow Ubuntu or ROSA in pretending patents don't exist.
+
+Linux Mint provides a "No codecs" CD:
+http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
+
+Ubuntu has a patent policy (which basically IIRC says "rights owner or
+packager, please contact us if you think there is an infringement, we
+will investgate"):
+https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PatentPolicy
+
+Note also that the Ubuntu Live CD and therefore the default Ubuntu
+installation do not contain any codecs. By default Totem is installed,
+however, and gstreamer is plugged into "gnome-codec-install" (which
+seems really nice, do we use it?), so that wen you try to play an
+unsupported video the first time, it will prompt to install the codecs
+(it will also show a warning dialog about patents etc, but AFAICS this
+comes from gnome-codec-install itself, not Ubuntu).
+
+If the user installs a video player depending on ffmpeg, e.g. VLC via
+the software center, the codecs in ffmpeg will be pulled "normally",
+i.e. silently.
+
+Linux Mint had also gstreamer plugged to gnome-codec-install, so the
+codecs will be installed if the user tries to play such a video with
+totem (again with warnings).
+
+-- 
+Anssi Hannula
+