[Ldsoss] DVD Player Software

[Tom Welch]

Dan is correct.  Linspire (where I used to work) was one of the very few 
Linux distros where you could "purchase" a legal DVD player but we did 
not ship it as part of the distro because of licensing costs.  Linspire 
does, however, ship with mp3 decoders which they have a license for and 
for which the licensing fees are much cheaper than for DVD.  Fedora, 
Ubuntu, etc., don't include these decoders because of costs.

Tom

Dan Hanks wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Jul 2006, Steven H. McCown wrote:
>
>> Okay, that makes sense.  So, how does Linux get away with including a 
>> DVD
>> player and still providing the source?  Even if it is built outside 
>> the US,
>> some of the distro companies (e.g., Novell) are within the US.  
>> Presumably
>> they would be under the same rules.
>
> As I understand it, the player is included with the distro, but not 
> the library used to decode the DVD. You can use the player to watch 
> unencoded DVDs. Same story for MP3 players. Fedora Core provides the 
> XMMS media player, but not the library to decode MP3 files.
>
> -- Dan
>
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-- 
Tom Welch
welchtc at ldschurch.org
(801) 240-1609
(858) 829-4614 - Cell


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