* Ruairi Newman (bofh at tech-mad.org) [010710 16:05]:
> What most people here would probably be looking for is a player that runs
> natively on *nix. Which means that the way forward is to keep beating Apple
> over the head until they give in.
>> Or if OS X has quicktime support try to bring it across, though not being a
> programmer, I don't know how feasible that would be.
The real issue here isn't the coding/porting of the software, but the
licensing nature of the codecs used. Apple Quicktime uses the Sorenson
Codec which they cannot exactly give away in source. And the cost of
getting a license to use these codecs in development.
We end up with situations like xanim where modules have to be supplied
in binary format written by the developer under NDA. Fine as long as
your OS is one of the ones supported.
Or like the current crop of Linux media players that use the Windows
DLLs to support the codecs.
Or the current loops, tricks and roundabouts used for working on MP3
encoders in the open source market.
Roll on Ogg. Hopefully Vorbis and Tarkin will give us usable open
alternatives that can be used on _all_ platforms to easy share media.
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