Re: early review of RH 9 (Shrike)

[Elton Woo <elwoo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

William Hooper wrote:

> > Upholding the spirit of open source is one thing.  Becoming a
> > profitable business is another.  I understand the philosophical
> > reasons behind their decision, I just hope it doesn't come at
> > the cost of eventually going out of business because they continue to
> > fail becoming profitable.
> >    
AMEN to that!!!

> > As great as OGG is, it is not viable at this time to the general
> > market.  Maybe that will change but right now it's going to hurt
> > Redhat because all of the other distros, that also support the spirit of
> > open source, are offering mp3 decoding in their products.
> >
> > I'm on Redhat's side here, I just want them to succeed.
True.

> > Todd
> >    
>
> Do you think that the same group that is complaining about not having MP3
> support would be willing to go out an *BUY* this add-on pack?  In order to
> make financial sense you have to be getting some revenue for the
> expenditure.  No, they would complain about Red Hat trying to sell this
> add on pack and download the plug-ins that are available now.
>
> MP3 took off because it was free (as in beer).  That is it.  There have
> been other, technically superior codecs developed, but most are not cross
> platform or Free (as in beer or speech).  OGG is technically superior to
> MP3, cross platform and Free (as in speech).
Technically superior doesn't always cut it. <*SIGH*> ... here we go again,
with the old Beta vs VHS argument. IBM's OS/2 was (?) technically superior
to Microsoft Windows 95, 98, Me ... it's now IBM eStation ... a *niche* 
product.

> Face it there is no audio codec "market".  Everyone wants it free (as in
> beer).  You can't please everyone, all the time.  Red Hat has decided for
The problem here is that like Real Audio, and Flash, mp3 / mpeg are not 
just
for entertainment purposes, but are now the defacto standards for 
business presentations
_not limited to_ mere 'presentation' but also for actually selling 
products / services
on the Internet.

... ergo, quo vadis linux?

Elton

(I hate to say this, but maybe when the dust settles, *the* linux 
company just
*might be* SUSe...)

--
 http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_4504.html
 "You only live once, so let's make life EASIER for each other."
 LINUX Registered User #193975. AMD-K7 ATHLON CPU power on board.






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