Fluendo offering legal codecs for Linux & Solaris

Post by **Patrick** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 7:59 am

Thanks to Troels for the heads up on this.

Fluendo is now offering legal codecs for Linux and Solaris:
http://www.fluendo.com/press/releases/PR-2007-01.html

You can purchase the codecs individually or get a bundle for $36.29 (28 Euros). The following are included in the bundle:
Windows Media Audio Decoder
Windows Media Video Decoder
Windows Media ASF Demuxer
Windows Media MMS Networking

MPEG2 Video Decoder
MPEG4 Video Decoder
MPEG2 Program Stream and Transport Stream demuxer
MPEG4 ISO Demuxer
MP3 Audio Decoder
AC3 Audio Decoder

No quicktime support at this time. AAC and x264 will offered in the future.

Some Q&A from Christian Schaller's blog:
http://blogs.gnome.org/view/uraeus/2007/01/15/0

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 10:35 am

I thought there were Free open implementations of AAC, MPEG2/4, MP3, and H.264 on Linux?

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/faad
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/ffmpeg
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/mpg321
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X264

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 10:55 am

Wally Balljacker wrote:I thought there were Free open implementations of AAC, MPEG2/4, MP3, and H.264 on Linux?

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/faad
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/ffmpeg
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/mpg321
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X264

That is a correct observation, but all of them violate the ridiculous patent laws of the United States of America.

Which is why all the CVS repos for those projects are hosted here in Europe.

Pretty much NONE of the big distros include any of those codecs.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:11 am

Tsuroerusu wrote:
Wally Balljacker wrote:I thought there were Free open implementations of AAC, MPEG2/4, MP3, and H.264 on Linux?

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/faad
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/ffmpeg
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/mpg321
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X264
That is a correct observation, but all of them violate the ridiculous patent laws of the United States of America.

Which is why all the CVS repos for those projects are hosted here in Europe.

Pretty much NONE of the big distros include any of those codecs.

Slackware has included the xine engine for several years, which supports all of those codecs. I don't think Pat has ever had any legal problems that I know of.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:20 am

Wally Balljacker wrote:
Tsuroerusu wrote:
Wally Balljacker wrote:I thought there were Free open implementations of AAC, MPEG2/4, MP3, and H.264 on Linux?

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/faad
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/ffmpeg
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/mpg321
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X264
That is a correct observation, but all of them violate the ridiculous patent laws of the United States of America.

Which is why all the CVS repos for those projects are hosted here in Europe.

Pretty much NONE of the big distros include any of those codecs.
Slackware has included the xine engine for several years, which supports all of those codecs. I don't think Pat has ever had any legal problems that I know of.

Well, I know for a fact that MPEG-2, MPEG-4 etc. etc. are HEAVILY patented, and then I do not care whether or not Pat has had any cease and decist letters over it, because I know it's patented. Remember, MPEG-2 is what DVDs use, and MPEG-4 is used on HD DVD and BluRay.
Remember, Slackware is no where near as well known as Red Hat (Fedora) or SUSE or Ubuntu, so it's a matter of prioritization on the part of the patent holders. Are they gonna spend thousands of dollars on lawyers to sue the crap outta Patrick Volkerding when they won't really gain much? I don't think so. Would they sue Red Hat or Novell? Multi-million dollar companies? Absolutely!

By the way, MPEG stands for: Motion Picture Experts Group.

Post by **dann** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:44 am

Wally Balljacker wrote:Slackware has included the xine engine for several years, which supports all of those codecs. I don't think Pat has ever had any legal problems that I know of.

Slackware might include the engine (xine) that can use these codecs, but the codecs are not included. You have to get those extra.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 12:04 pm

dann wrote:
Wally Balljacker wrote:Slackware has included the xine engine for several years, which supports all of those codecs. I don't think Pat has ever had any legal problems that I know of.
Slackware might include the engine (xine) that can use these codecs, but the codecs are not included. You have to get those extra.

I thought xine-lib contained all the codecs? I know Slackware doesn't support DVD playback out of the box, but I've played MP3s, AVI, and MPEG files using the included gxine without installing anything extra.

toddr · Post by **toddr** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 3:53 pm

This may be a stupid question, but, are these legal to sell in the United States?

allix · Post by **allix** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 5:59 pm

Wally Balljacker wrote: I thought xine-lib contained all the codecs? I know Slackware doesn't support DVD playback out of the box, but I've played MP3s, AVI, and MPEG files using the included gxine without installing anything extra.

Remember the interview a few months ago with Pat, he said he included playback support for common closed codecs but not encoding because of patenting.

As Pat said on the irc , nobody has ever got busted for having the mp3 codec illegally

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 10:00 pm

toddr wrote:This may be a stupid question, but, are these legal to sell in the United States?

These are proprietary, legally licensed codecs. Fluendo has a deal with Microsoft (No, not in that sense!) for Windows Media, and also with MPEG LA.

allix wrote:
Wally Balljacker wrote: I thought xine-lib contained all the codecs? I know Slackware doesn't support DVD playback out of the box, but I've played MP3s, AVI, and MPEG files using the included gxine without installing anything extra.
Remember the interview a few months ago with Pat, he said he included playback support for common closed codecs but not encoding because of patenting.

As Pat said on the irc , nobody has ever got busted for having the mp3 codec illegally

See that's the thing, it's insanely hard to research these patents, like with MP3, both Fraunhofer and Thompson has some kind of stake in it.

schotty · Post by **schotty** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 9:28 pm

Well I happily purchased them as soon as I saw that they were available. That is also something that will help empower OEMs to choose to support Linux, more legal options in the grey areas.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 8:42 am

schotty wrote:Well I happily purchased them as soon as I saw that they were available. That is also something that will help empower OEMs to choose to support Linux, more legal options in the grey areas.

How do they come to you? Meaning, is it more or less like the win32 codecs package, or is it something else? I'm not interested in buying gstreamer extensions.

Post by **dann** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 9:51 am

Snarkout wrote:How do they come to you? Meaning, is it more or less like the win32 codecs package, or is it something else? I'm not interested in buying gstreamer extensions.

It's a tarball with gstreamer plugins - a bunch of .so files, that you copy to either the gstreamer lib directory or your own .gstreamer-0.10/plugins directory.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 1:23 pm

dann wrote:
Snarkout wrote:How do they come to you? Meaning, is it more or less like the win32 codecs package, or is it something else? I'm not interested in buying gstreamer extensions.
It's a tarball with gstreamer plugins - a bunch of .so files, that you copy to either the gstreamer lib directory or your own .gstreamer-0.10/plugins directory.

Bummer.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 3:09 pm

I'm pretty sure amarok doesn't support gstreamer any longer - IIRC, the amarok guys actually mentioned this when you interviewed them. They only mention xine, helix, and NMM on their "features" page. I'd absolutely pay for the right to use the win32 codecs - as they are now - but seriously have no use for engine specific codecs. That's borderline lock-in, it seems to me.

If I'm wrong about this, I'd love to know.