Bug#678795: task-desktop: Flash support should pull in browser-plugin-lightspark

Per Olofsson pelle at debian.org
Wed Jun 27 14:11:48 UTC 2012


2012-06-27 15:22, Petter Reinholdtsen skrev:
> Actually, you are the one claiming Debian distribute programs
> supporting H.264.  I do not know if that is true.

I am quite certain that it is true. x264 is in Debian main, and its
description reads "video encoder for the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard". The
wiki page <http://wiki.debian.org/MultimediaCodecs> also states that
H.264 is included in Debian. Also see the section "Legal Issues" for a
short explanation.

> I avoid using H.264
> files.  I am just pointing out issues I see with providing H.264
> support in Debian.  If you believe these to be non-issues, I can
> understand your arguments, but I fail to see that it is reasonable to
> believe MPEG-LA have no valid patent to base their considerable income
> on. :)

I understand your point, but the fact is that Debian has decided to
start distributing H.264 codecs. I am not the right person to argue
about it :-)

>> In any case, if you don't think Iceweasel should support H.264, then
>> why support H.264 through a Flash plugin in default installs? Why
>> should some software in Debian support H.264 but not Iceweasel's
>> <video> tag?  Seems inconsistent to me.
> 
> I have not argued here for H.264 support anywhere in Debian, not even
> in Flash.

OK. In any case, H.264 support in Flash is what you get currently if you
install the desktop task, because Gnash uses GStreamer and recommends
gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg which has H.264 support. If you go to YouTube with
Gnash or Lightspark, I believe you will get H.264 videos.

I think what most sites do is that they check if you have Flash, and
then gives you Flash. If Flash works, then you will most likely get
H.264 (Flash does not support WebM). Without Flash, there is at least a
chance of getting WebM, as on YouTube. With other browsers such as
Epiphany and Chromium, you can play H.264 videos using HTML5.

Thus, I think we should consider removing browser-plugin-gnash from the
desktop task (and the gnome metapackage). People who want Flash will
install flashplugin-nonfree anyway.

-- 
Pelle



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