[Mageia-dev] [RFC] Moving various packages/codecs to tainted

[David Walser]

Anssi Hannula wrote:
> Hi all!
> 
> As I've noted in some previous emails, our core/tainted media codec
> split-up is currently arbitrary without any specific logic.
> 
> As far as I remember, the tainted policy is that codecs for formats that
> are claimed to be covered by patents should be there.
> 
> Per that policy, at least the AC-3/DTS/MP3/MPEG-2/MPEG-4/H.264/VC-1
> decoders and AC-3/MPEG-2/MPEG-4 encoders we have in core should be moved
> to tainted section. Note that this will make most current
> .mkv/.avi/.mp4/.mov/.wmv/.mp3 files unplayable without packages from
> tainted section.

That's the absolute last thing I want to see happen.  It's one of the reasons Fedora and others that do that are not viable options for a lot 
of non-technical users, and it just makes it so you have to jump through a lot of extra hoops just to have a reasonably working system 
(whether it's your own or for family members that you might be maintaining).  Obvouisly just about every codec in use has patents relevant to 
it, but I think we're OK to stick with the ones Mandriva shipped for years in core (like mp3 decoding) and things that were in PLF in tainted 
(like mp3 encoding) even if it seems arbitrary.  If anything, it'd be nice if more not-likely-to-be-problematic codecs could be moved to 
core.