Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta@xxxxxxxxx>: > Once ESR recognized that the patent situation was more complicated > than he had assumed this conversation should have been tabled until he > made a personal effort to become more informed as to the patent issue. > Instead he's chosen to continue in a discussion predicated on > misinformation which he himself brought to this discussion. You are misreading what I have been writing. The general issue I'm trying to raise here cannot be answered by saying "but getting legal access to format X is hard" or "harder than you think". What we'd have to pay to get legal access to any given format is not the point. The point is this: 1. We are not addressing what desktop users actually want and expect from their machines in the way of support for multimedia. 2. As long as we continue to fail to address that, our chances of achieving significant desktop market share are nil. 3. Actually addressing it requires support for proprietary codecs so that Linux users can listen to podcasts, watch QuickTime trailers, et cetera. Therefore: 4. If we want significant desktop market share, we must find a way to support proprietary codecs. Which implies: 5. World domination or 100% doctrinal purity. *Choose any one.* I choose world domination, because I think that's the only way we'll get enough politico-economic leverage to *wreck the software-patent system and the MPAA and DVDCCA and monopolists and Microsoft for good and all*. Make no mistake -- my dreams are as radical as those of anyone here, it's just that I am ruthlessly pragmatic about the path by which we get there. I don't care how we implement the codec support; whether it's through shipping proprietary code until the patents run out, or pointing users at third-party repositories that have made deals with the likes of the Fraunhofer Institute...whatever. That's a *detail*. The question I'm raising is more basic: are we willing to try? Do we want the desktop enough to raise money, mobilize lawyers, and do all the non-politically-correct things we'll have to? Some DFedor people have said no. Some have said "whoa -- the naysayers don't have the right to speak for me". I haven't heard an answer from Red Hat. What's it going to be? -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a> -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
