Attachmate Completes Its Novell Acquisition

[RealNC]

Got an example app?

Yeah, my own: http://qtads.sourceforge.net

[monraaf]

The gnome customizations that openSUSE has are just amazing (version 2 at least; still haven't tried gnome 3).

I'm not sure which customizations you're talking about, but if you're talking about them removing the top panel and adding a windows like start button/menu to the bottom panel. I didn't like that at all. I hope they did a better job with gnome 3.

[RealNC]

BTW install the SDL_Sound library from packman.

http://packman.links2linux.org/package/sdl_sound

Packman is not openSUSE. Therefore I stand by what I said: no MP3 support in openSUSE We have Mono support though, which is great (grin.)

[deanjo]

no MP3 support in openSUSE

Oh but there is mp3 support but it is via 3rd party repo for obvious legal reasons. You just have to put it in there. (BTW the packman repo is already preconfigured in the community repos list.)

[RealNC]

Oh but there is mp3 support but it is via 3rd party repo for obvious legal reasons.

And therefore, as I said, not in openSUSE. And the legal reasons are not "obvious."

[deanjo]

And therefore, as I said, not in openSUSE. And the legal reasons are not "obvious."

BTW, IIRC Fedora does the same thing with their sdl_sound package. Considering you are the only one I have complain about it, it must be very obvious or very obscure.

[yogi_berra]

the legal reasons are not "obvious."

The reason is one of the following:

1.) Novell is too cheap to buy a patent license and give it away.
2.) Lip service to RMS.
3.) Come on how difficult is it to download and install this?

@ deanjo: there is a big difference between repackaging and forking because you have issues with upstream.

[deanjo]

The reason is one of the following:

1.) Novell is too cheap to buy a patent license and give it away.

First of all Novell is a sponsor of openSUSE as are AMD and IPExchange and many other smaller sponsors. SLE is Novells distro. The distro is community driven from the board elections to there feature requests. Also SDL_Sound uses mpg123 which has no patent license to begin with to purchase.

2.) Lip service to RMS.

At one time openSUSE did offer a license decoder on it's repos. The community however decided that the core distro should be free of such blobs. This is why when you install openSUSE you do not have to click on a "Agree" button to install it after a bunch of licensing mumbo jumbo

3.) Come on how difficult is it to download and install this?

Not difficult at all, in fact offers that very item automated with it's pullin-fluendo-mp3 package which pulls in a premade packaged rpm from fleundo in the non-oss repository.

@ deanjo: there is a big difference between repackaging and forking because you have issues with upstream.

Not really, since it is not a fork. It has a distro specific patch applied to it and if the issue lies with the patch oS takes care of it. If the issue lies with the upstream package oS usually not only forwards it upstream but it also ususally is accompanied with the fix for upstream inclusion.

[JanC]

Oh yeah? Why doesn't it work then? All programs using SDL_mixer or SDL_sound for example, totally lack MP3 support.

Your idea of MP3 support is limited to some media players. MP3 isn't there for just music files. There's tons of other programs and libraries where MP3 has been ripped out from them.

Maybe SDL should make codec support plugin-based to avoid / work around the legal mess that multimedia support is (or just use GStreamer, which does that already).

[yogi_berra]

At one time openSUSE did offer a license decoder on it's repos. The community however decided that the core distro should be free of such blobs. This is why when you install openSUSE you do not have to click on a "Agree" button to install it after a bunch of licensing mumbo jumbo

The entire community or a vocal minority?

Not really, since it is not a fork. It has a distro specific patch applied to it and if the issue lies with the patch oS takes care of it. If the issue lies with the upstream package oS usually not only forwards it upstream but it also ususally is accompanied with the fix for upstream inclusion.

Well, yes really, oS is repackaging Wodim which is Debian's fork of cdrtools that only exists because Debian's maintainers of cdrtools had issues with Joerg Schilling and his build system, a build system which could have been replaced without the ensuing drama.

And so it goes.