Re: [Fsfe-uk] BBC's DRM Iplayer windows only

[Jon Grant]

Hi,

On 06/01/2008, Dave Crossland <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 06/01/2008, Jon Grant <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> > It is even worse if we consider the FSF's Gnash (GPLFlash) shoring up
> > the propreitary Adobe Flash format. I asked FSF about this, and they
> > basically said it was too established a "de facto" standard to
> > ignore/boycott now. I personally dont agree,
>
> Please explain why. Flash is a "de facto" standard in my experience:
> My 16 year old sister refused to use gNewSense solely because Gnash is
> still in early development, and went back to Windows.

The FSF plan is to solely support Flash, that is a flawed plan IMHO,
just like solely supporting MS-Word file format would be. Instead they
should develop a multimedia standard for audio/video/vector graphics
and scripting which is better, and include backwards compatible
support for Flash files as an option to assist in the migration to an
open standard.

> > and would have rather
> > seen FSF invest in theora-vorbis support in Firefox or HTML5 standard
> > etc.
>
> Those efforts would be worthwhile and I hope the FSF and FSFe are
> involved in them, but they do not conflict with Gnash development.

Multimedia support in browsers really is where effort should be
focused, not on a pure legacy Flash playback implementation. This all
seems obvious to me, so perhaps I have missed something?

Cheers, Jon