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

Tue Jan 10 05:22:31 CET 2012

Anssi Hannula a écrit :
+> 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
+>    
+
+This is the type of patent policy we should have.
+It requires the registered patent holder to inform Ubuntu of the patent 
+claims and the specific package(s) involved before a patent claim is 
+considered by Ubuntu.
+With this policy, probably most of the packages now in "tainted" could 
+be transfered to core.
+
+> 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).
+>    
+
+That sounds nice.  The package that automatically found codecs in 
+Mandriva would give a lot of false positives, and would always go to a 
+paid site.  I removed the package, and most (but not all) of the media 
+concerned worked without additional codecs.
+
+> 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).
+>    
+
+We should look into doing something along these lines.
+It would be advantageous however to have codec packages, for 
+installation before hand, as many users won't necessarily always an 
+Internet connexion available.
+
+-- 
+André
+
+