On Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:54:13 -0400, gregjohn wrote:

> Many distros will not play MP3's immediately upon install, even if they
> "come with" music playing software.   I understood this to be due to two
> reasons: i) legal issues related to the IP around these codecs, and ii)
> philosophy of open source  thing.   

Yes to both of those.  MP3 is covered by licensed technology from 
Frauenhoffer; they typically only expect royalties for encoding 
technologies (like lame or sox), IIRC, unless it's an embedded device 
like an iPod.  IAANAL, but ISTR that it's unclear enough that most won't 
take the risk.

Similarly, binary drivers with the kernel - apart from tainting the 
kernel (and making crash diagnosis more difficult as a result), it's not 
clear about the legality of including them, so the approach openSUSE has 
taken has been to not include them on the disc but with 11.0 during the 
installation you are given the choice of adding the ATI or nVidia driver 
repos to the installation.  The 11.0 install is *very* slick.

> I imagine that paying for these
> would allay fears (IANAL).  

It does - there are some customers who look at it that way.  That's also 
the reason for indemnification being included with the license - it's not 
that anyone's likely to be sued by anyone other than SCO (and they don't 
have a lot of money left for that any more), but that it gives the 
customer an "out" in case someone does start asserting patent violations.

> I would have paid $40 just for convenience's
> sake when I started tinkering with Linux.

Some people are willing to do that - and of course that's their call to 
make.  Me, I like tinkering with stuff like that.

> Telling folks just to do without Flash ("crippled codecs"?) is the "live
> in a mud hut" approach to computing.

Huh, Flash works fine here, and was a snap to install.  Come to think, it 
was included on the OpenSUSE 11.0 DVD, I believe.

Jim

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