On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 3:33 PM, Patrick Shirkey <pshirkey(a)boosthardware.com So you compile ffmpeg from source??

On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 5:22 PM, Len Ovens <len(a)ovenwerks.net> wrote: One of my favourites: Mozilla Firefox vs. Iceweasel and friends en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_rebranded_by_the_Debian_… I guess you want me to be more --verbose ... By "pattern" I mean this mindset: "Our App Store (official distro repositories) is ours to allow and deny what is available and what not, and we can arbitrarily throw your software out if we want, but unlike Apple we are not evil." The consequences are similar: users can't easily access software they want, even if it is free software that the authors are willing to distribute gratis and freely. The three given examples are not equal though. The worse case is cdrecord, replaced by that old and unmaintained wodim fork in almost all distros. As a consequence, Linux users can't write BluRay discs, and may suffer problems writing DVD discs as well. The issue with Firefox is more important than trademarks and logos, because users may be exposed to security risks fixed by Firefox which may not be available in Iceweasel with the same speed. The solutions may be comparable as well: jailbreak your device, and download from Cydia or alternative stores... Regards, Pedro

On Sunday 13 January 2013 16:01:46 Chris Bannister wrote: Again, neither this time is a Monty Python quote. But you are right, nobody dares to say that, literally, in this world of hypocrisy. I've tried to answer myself the question: What in the world may they be thinking, to get those results? The dramatization may be somewhat exagerated, sorry for that, but I hope the shame would be useful to somebody. Now, returning to the subject: "ffmpeg or libav". CDRecord and Firefox are both free software, but not free enough for you. OK for now. What about ffmpeg? There is no license excuse here. Regards, Pedro

In all three of these examples it wasn't the fault of the Debian maintainers that these alternate versions get used, it was the authors of the software switching from Free a software license such as the GPL to one that the Debian social contract no longer considers free or trying to enforce copyright on corporate logos or whatever. I for one am glad that Debian has some standards here and is willing to maintain them. If you happen not to like it and you are pro copyrights and non-free software then you are free to use Ubuntu, Red Hat or another distro that is more open to non-free or coryright software. It's Debian's social contract that also stops stuff like the Amazon spyware making its way into the Debian repos along with the fact its not run by a corporation which definitely makes if different from Ubuntu and even more so the Apple and Google app stores. There are web pages dedicated to the underhand, often criminal tactics that have been employed by MS and Apple over the decades yet I know of no such list of nasties for Debian or any other community distro other than the usual whines of disgruntled users which you get with any OS. Some of you may not like Debian but they are certainly not in the same league as MS for nastiness by any stretch of the imagination. On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 6:27 PM, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas < pedro.lopez.cabanillas(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Fritz Meissner &lt;meissner.fritz(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: That is a shame then, but the cases of cdrecord and Mozilla are quite different and not the fault of the Debian community. Big changes to a distro ie swapping out a lib which many apps depend on for a new one should really get voted on but I'm not aware that ever happened here - I expect not. Agreed - they should've aimed to keep the same commands as used by ffmpeg. I've not tried using libav from cli yet so I can only hope they've simplified its commands as ffmpeg was hardly the easiest command line program to use but staying true to upstream would've still been the preference on most I'm sure.

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 10:26:18AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote: Certainly to get his view, but would you ask the owner of an egg farm if eggs were bad for you? Maybe it's an Ubuntu quirk? On Squeeze, I run wodim as root with no problems at all. Mind you, that is invoking wodim directly from the command line. -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X

On 01/13/2013 04:54 AM, Fritz Meissner wrote: While I'm still on 12.04 for our media server, I've been getting my ffmpeg from here since I discovered the change (when the fake ffmpeg from the libav package crashed on my vacation video... known bug with lots of reports... worked fine in the real ffmpeg, of course): https://launchpad.net/~jon-severinsson/+archive/ffmpeg This is not a solution. It's just a workaround until the stupid political situation resolves itself. But it does work, as long as you're able to use PPAs and the backports repository (for home use, that shouldn't be a big deal). I love the claims by the libav developer/fake-ffmpeg Debian maintainer that packages of the real ffmpeg "subtly break" other Debian packages. Well, buddy, your fake ffmpeg is more than subtly broken. Which wouldn't matter if you weren't claiming it were ffmpeg. The same thing happened to annoying effect when Debian switched from "gqview" to "geeqie". Yes, gqview is an unmaintained app. But after 3 years, geeqie still has regressions, especially with regard to file management (you don't get to see the image you're about to overwrite when there's a name collision, there's no auto rename, etc.) Someone filed a bug about it over a year ago, but while the developers of forks declare their forks to be the real thing in announcements, when it comes to their bug tracker, what would have been a regression stopping release of the real thing is treated as a feature request in a fork. It's not like there was some license issue with the original file replace dialog; the fork developers just decided they could do better, ripped it out and then never got around to rewriting it. Probably not a big deal for people who use gqview purely as a fast image viewer, but a significant portion of the userbase used it as an image management tool as well. The biggest issue is these "transitional packages", which are nothing but a symbolic link to the fork with the real program's name. If the developers themselves are renaming the package and it's otherwise just a minor update, fine, use a transitional package. But if you're choosing a fork over the original one for political reasons -- and anything other than "the original program has an unpatched remote exploit and we don't have commit access" is a political reason -- and that fork is missing features or is unstable, putting a broken package out there under a different name to stop dependencies from breaking creates more problems than just saying "We don't support the original package anymore because someone on the internet made us mad" would have. In the case of ffmpeg, they get bonus points for claiming to be ffmpeg while also claiming that ffmpeg is deprecated. It's literally fraudulent, simultaneously trying to benefit from ffmpeg's name while smearing it as obsolete. I'd like to see a solution where maintainers are dismissed for making policy decisions for emotional reasons, But the thing about unpaid volunteers, on or offline, is that you have to put up with prima donnas now and then. These are two such cases. At least we Ubuntu users have PPAs and the ability to freeze package versions. Rob

On Sun Jan 13 15:55:29 UTC 2013, Robin Gareus wrote: Security issues are taken seriously at FFmpeg. There is a dedicated address to report vulnerabilities and resolved issues are often backported to the releases. FFmpeg devs are too busy coding. Seriously though I'd like to see some increased attendance at various conferences (and I'd like to attend at least one). But there are always bugs to fix, features to implement, etc... User questions and such are welcome at the ffmpeg-user mailing list and #ffmpeg IRC channel. Feature requests can be filed at the FFmpeg Bug Tracker [1]. I've seen some implemented within a day or two, but it depends on complexity and developer or contributor interest. A somewhat recent development to increase community involvement is the Community Contributed Documentation section of the FFmpeg wiki [1]. It is an effort to supplement the official documentation in a more explanatory, step-by-step, and user friendly manner. It has become more popular than I expected, and contributions are always welcome! [1] https://ffmpeg.org/trac/ffmpeg/ Lou

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 10:13:55 +0100, Dan MacDonald &lt;allcoms(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: And we are free to compile software ourself. For me one good reason to think about switching back from Ubuntu to Debian, but I still wait, to see which distro will solve some upstream issues. At the moment a lot of software I used for years is completely broken for Ubuntu. Perhaps I'll use Arch with systemd in the future, I dropped Arch when it stopped beeing a rolling release, IOW when they switched to systemd. Ubuntu seems to do a step into this direction, OTOH since I won the iPad2 I experienced infamies that are completely no gos. I don't know current Windows, but at least old Microsoft wasn't that evil as Apple is. I never ever would buy something from Apple, btw. I don't buy, but anyway got issues with this evil click and buy crime and to use the iPad users are forced to register with a valid plastics. +1000000000 for all free OS. If people wish to register as e.g. a Linux user, they are free to do it without a plastics and I'm free to completely not register. No, I'm not migrating to FreeBSD ;), but if something should be fishy with Linux, in my case it's a RME cards that isn't good enough supported for Linux, we still can try other *NIX. We not only have the freedom to switch distros or to switch to other *NIX that are close to Linux, we also could maintain or at least help to maintain packages. The non-free software issue IMO isn't a real problem, because we easily can add repositories. Switching for audio work to another *NIX might be not the smartest idea, but switching the distro is easy to do, as long as the Linux user doesn't place value on hype, IOW "distro A is better as distro B and this will be valid for ever and if distro A should ever become less good, than all other distros must become more less good". We are not married with a distro and are allowed to have fun with every distro ;). Regards, Ralf -- FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE amd64

On Sunday 13 January 2013 08:33:39 Paul Davis wrote: Hardly. The belief is that software should not be subject to copyright. GPL is the legal judo to try to get to that state where the law has not changed. The only thing lost were software to be made not subject to copyright would be the ability to require source code. I think I recall RMS writing to the effect that without copyright, the benefit of hiding source would go away for most? software. (The above really only holds where software is also not subject to patent protection as well I think.) In essence it depends on copyright to undo copyright effects. Without copyright law, copyright law would have no negative effects to undo. all the best, drew

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 16:17:23 +0100, Paul Davis &lt;paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com&gt; wrote: In Europe the Pirate Party or a successor that hopefully is better, might have better chances, than in the USA. Europe isn't that old-line as the USA are. It's not foreseeable when we will get laws for the whole planet, but IMO there's progress in some areas. Even regress sometimes could be a catalyst for progress in the nearest future. Regards, Ralf -- FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE amd64

On 01/13/2013 10:44 AM, drew Roberts wrote: To free software advocates, it'd be an enormous issue. The right to redistribute is only freedom #2. Freedom #1 is the right to inspect and change a program. Many of us could afford to do everything with proprietary software, but choose free software because we want control over what's running on our hardware whenever practical. (Or, if you're RMS, even if it's impractical.) "Free software" and "freeware" are two very different things. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html Of course, the absence of copyright law would not make EULAs go away; proprietary software makers would just make you sign a contract (which, depending on which legal venue you're in, can sometimes be effected by merely opening a box or clicking a link) saying you won't redistribute it before they distribute the software to you. Advocates of copyleft could do the same thing, though we'd lose a lot of our advantages over proprietary software in that case since you couldn't just throw ISOs everywhere. Rob

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 2:47 PM, drew Roberts &lt;zotz(a)100jamz.com&gt; wrote: clearly, it could not. but i'm not convinced that the scenario with no copyright law at all is actually preferable to copyright+copyleft. contract law would still exist.

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 15:23:34 -0500, Paul Davis wrote: ^ FreeBSD people used to quip that the license is "copy centre". One should take the CD to the copy centre and make as many as you like. But that was in the days when - if anything went wrong with an installation, Jordan K. Hubbard himself would pop round and fix it. :) -- John.

On Mon, 2013-01-14 at 12:02 +0100, Lorenzo Sutton wrote: Debian isn't GNU/Linux any more, it only does provide GNU/Linux and for sure it's the most important port, but there's also a FreeBSD port. http://www.debian.org/ports/ Has anybody tested Debian BSD? I'm playing with FreeBSD (not Debian's FreeBSD) at the moment. I don't think it's ready for serious audio work, but I might be mistaken, since I still set up FreeBSD, when ever I've got the time to "play", so I'm not in a hurry with compiling everything that's needed. FWIW, FreeBSD also does provide packages, but at the moment there aren't packages for all releases. However, Suse even deals with Bill Beelzebub and Debian instead takes care about another *NIX, so we can choose what we do need. Regards, Ralf

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 17:47:42 +0100, Len Ovens &lt;len(a)ovenwerks.net&gt; wrote: Not only your feelings, you're absolutely right. In some cases the issue below the surface has nothing or at least less to do with the supposed subject. Hierarchic encounters, territorial fights most of the times are reasons that cause this issues. Take a look at the jobs of the people who are involved in the most popular Linux wars ;). Regards, Ralf -- FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE amd64

On Sunday 13 January 2013 12:32:52 Len Ovens did opine: Message additions Copyright Sunday 13 January 2013 by Gene Heskett wrote: That, to me is a grand miss-conception on the viewers part, he fails to see that exactly the same sorts of things take place within the closed confines of the M$ world. There is /no/ functional difference. IMO, the people who take Redmonds proclamations as the one true gospel, are reading the wrong "bible". Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> is up! My views <http://www.armchairpatriot.com/What%20Has%20America%20Become.shtml> Most people don't need a great deal of love nearly so much as they need a steady supply. I was taught to respect my elders, but its getting harder and harder to find any...

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 18:23:36 +0100, Len Ovens &lt;len(a)ovenwerks.net&gt; wrote: That's the problem. If people don't hide disputes and other problems, people think that they hide much more evil issues, because it's common practice to hide weak points. Companies, politicians etc. deceive the public. I wonder that in the age of scripted reality people still believe that other people are sick and they guess they self are godlike. I suspect we are still monkeys. Regards, Ralf -- "Fürchte nicht menschlich zu sein, fürchte, nicht menschlich zu sein." - Manfred Hinrich

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 09:53:45AM -0800, Len Ovens wrote: Just to nitpick here, but we are closer to chimpanzees than apes or monkeys, in fact apparently, chimpanzees are more closely related to us than apes or monkeys. -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 04:11:33PM -0500, Brett McCoy wrote: Ahh %$#@, for some stupid reason I was thinking of gibbons and orangutans and gorillas. Huge apologies Len! -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X

On Sun, January 13, 2013 8:59 pm, Chris Bannister wrote: None needed. In the context I wasn't saying one mammal was closer to human than the other, just that monkeys are not very bright.... maybe that makes them closer to human after all. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net