Ubuntu Linux: Legal Codecs and DVD Playback For All Users
In the United States and many other countries, companies or developers or manufacturers must pay patent royalties to use an MP3 player or MP3 Encoder or Windows movie decoders. There is also conflicts between patent licenses and the licenses of application source code, so mp3 support is not provided out of box. This has been done for legal reasons. Now, Canonical (parent company for Ubuntu) offering proprietary Codecs for Ubuntu Linux. From the blog:
For the first time we are making codecs for media playback and a DVD player, from our partners at Fluendo and Cyberlink, available through the Ubuntu store. We have had relationships with these companies for a while and to date we have offered their products to our hardware partners as pre-install options.
Now though, we are making them available to all users. It is important to us that no matter how you choose to access Ubuntu, pre-installed or as a free download, that you can have a similarly rich experience. The vast majority of our current users will have installed Ubuntu themselves. These users should also be allowed legal DVD and media playback and so we have built a way of letting them do this.
This is available for both supported and freely downloaded version.
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Tags: codecs, dvd player, Linux, media playback, mp3 encoder, mp3 player, patent licenses, patent royalties
…Which is just great
Yes, this *is* great. I can see a lot of newbie users breathing a great sigh of relief over this, as to newcomers to Linux often there is a notion that Linux is ‘inferior’ because ‘it doesn’t support MP3/DVD out of the box’. Great to dispel this untruth.
However, this article doesn’t state how Canonical/Fluendo/Cyberlink got round this issue. Does this mean that Canonical are now paying the royalties for the necessary codecs? If so, that’s generous, but how long can they manage to finance such a deal?
-Al
$40 USD seems like a lot of money to license a few codecs. I think it’s a good idea to give people he option, but the price is far too high.
Ali Ross,
If you click through the link,you will see that these codecs are being sold through Ubuntu’s store for £ 12.28 (MP3/Windows Media) or £ 19.66 for “Complete Playback” (same as the other one plus other codecs and DVD playback.
Legal issues aside though, I would still prefer to use Ubuntu’s existing “restricted” multimedia codecs. Ubuntu covers itself legally by not including them with the distro, forcing end users enable the repositories where they exist.
Ahh, this article did not make that major rather fact apparent.
In this case, I don’t see this as a major advance by Canonical at all, in fact almost the opposite. It’s just another way to generate revenue. The fact that you still have to download it post-install is no better either. The article made it sound like the next version of Ubuntu was coming with DVD and MP3 support, and Canonical were footing the bill somehow. If you have to use your brain, go to the ubuntu shop and buy it, then download and install it, then I can’t see how that’s going to bring new users to Linux. It’s still an un-necessary un-user friendly hassle. The more experienced Linux users won’t care about this, but for the new users which Ubuntu caters for so well, this is not good.
I do hope that they will continue to provide DVD/MP3 support via their restricted repositories also, as I certainly won’t be paying this amount of cash for something I can get for free in Windows - even although I’m kinda paying for it with Microsoft’s EULA.