FFmpeg release branch, was: Bug#540729: ffmpeg: Possible regression - fails to decode AAC

[Fabian Greffrath]

Diego Biurrun schrieb:
> Start planning for all possible outcomes.

Reinhard has already started to prepare the infrastructure for the 
debimedia archive.

> IMO a universal OS cannot exclude multimedia support.  The majority of
> users is being held hostage by a small minority that might actually be
> at risk.

But OTOH a software redistributor as Debian has to guarantee that the 
software they ship in their archive is without threat for people who 
use it cluelessly and rely on it being safe.

> Fedora is useful for Red Hat as a development platform for their
> enterprise distribution.  But desktop computing is clearly not the focus
> of Red Hat's work.  Their customers are not desktop users.

Sure, Fedora is a test bed for RedHat's enterprise products. However, 
I believe it holds a close second place in popularity among user -- 
shared with OpenSuse who have become similar strict WRT multimedia 
codecs. The most probable reason for this is that for both 
distributions there are high quality third party repositories that 
provide the desired packages -- something that Debian cannot offer ATM.

> What counts is the out-of-the-box experience.  After installing several
> dozen programs and tools you can even do useful things with Windows.

We will try to keep it as simple as (1) adding a software repo to your 
packaging software and (2) installing the appropriate packages.

> Multimedia format support is an area where free software is *far* ahead
> of any of the proprietary offerings.  It is a crying shame to see it
> held back by FUD...

Yes, but at the moment, we know we simply cannot ship e.g. libdvdcss. 
We still ship ffmpeg and related codecs because we do not know better 
at the moment, but as soon as it becomes clear that they may become 
really dangerous (because of patent threats) they'll sadly have to be 
removed. Spreading FUD in advance is always a bad idea, though.

Fabian


-- 
Dipl.-Phys. Fabian Greffrath

Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Lehrstuhl für Energieanlagen und Energieprozesstechnik (LEAT)
Universitätsstr. 150, IB 3/134
D-44780 Bochum

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E-Mail:  greffrath at leat.ruhr-uni-bochum.de