[arch-dev-public] Killing the 'codecs' package

[Dan McGee]

On Dec 17, 2007 7:44 PM, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 17, 2007 7:27 PM, Jason Chu <jason at archlinux.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 18, 2007 at 06:42:41AM +0530, Varun Acharya wrote:
> > > On 12/18/07, eliott <eliott at cactuswax.net> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I think putting it in unsupported would be fine. If some people (end
> > > > users) decide they really must have it, then more power to them to
> > > > maintain it in the aur (with a note to not have it taken into
> > > > community).
> > > > At that point it would just be a pkgbuild anyway.
> > > >
> > > Somehow, this doesn't seem  very future proof. When a new codec arrives,
> > > it will take some time for VLC/ffmpeg/xine guys to come out with the open
> > > source equivalent (for example, the amount of time it took to get .rmvb
> > > support) after all the reverse engineering and voodoo magic they do. What if
> > > this new codec becomes really popular, really fast? Somehow, it doesn't seem
> > >  practical to direct users to AUR to get the  codecs. I propose instead
> > > renaming 'codecs' to 'codecs-nonfree' or something similar, and  shipped
> > > along with the post_install or post_upgrade message we had discussed
> > > earlier.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Varun
> >
> > (Please don't make your first line part of the last response)
> >
> > I disagree that this is a problem.  When we hit this situation, we can talk
> > about changing it.
>
> I have to side with Jason here. The "look how long it took last time"
> defense is a bit silly to me. It's a crappy package which isn't even
> JUST licensed non-free, some of it is questionably LEGAL at all.
>
> For instance, the wm*.dll codecs in there have odd redistribution
> rules, and IIRC correctly, you need to fill out one of these:
> http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/licensing/agreements.aspx
> to redistribute these in binary format.
>
> It'd also be worthwhile to take a peek at the quicktime redistribution rules.
>
> If you ask me, the hoops we'd have to jump through here to be
> technically legal are far worse than Ion3, and there seemed to be no
> contest to killing that off

+1

-Dan