Council of the EU Says "We Cannot Support Linux"

An anonymous reader writes "The Council of the EU has a streaming service so that we can watch its meetings — but the service can only be accessed by Mac or MS Windows users. This is because they employ WMV format for the videos. In the FAQ they express a really strange opinion about this: 'The live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union can be viewed on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh platforms. We cannot support Linux in a legal way. So the answer is: No support for Linux.' An online petition has been set up to create pressure to convince the EU council to change its service to one that is platform independent."

Ogg Theora?

[bcmm (768152)]

Ogg Theora?

And even if you think it is illegal to watch MPEG on Linux in the EU, the crime would be committed by the veiwer, not the broadcaster.

Please don't do this

[Sycraft-fu (314770)]

When people recommend half-assed or not ready OSS solutions, it hurts the OSS cause. Theora isn't ready to go, it's not even remotely ready. There's a reason why it's still an alpha whereas Vorbis is a full release. It is in no way shape or form a ready competitor to WMV at this time.

It's much better to admit there's nothing that works out there that's OSS than to recommend a poor OSS solution. The reason is that the number one justification against OSS is shoddy quality. You talk to J. Random PHB and the reason they don't want to use OSS is because it's poor quality/not supported. Well, advocating things that are, in fact, poor quality just provides them with ammo for their argument.

Also it can hurt a format to get lots of exposure before it's ready. If everyone's first exposure to Theora is when it's buggy, that idea will form in their minds and later when it's stable, they will still associate Theora = buggy and thus give it a pass.

At this point, we just need to wait on Theora. Vorbis is great, I've no doubt in time Theroa will be its match, however it's not the kind of thing that will happen in a day.

Re:Please don't do this

[evilviper (135110)]

Theora isn't ready to go, it's not even remotely ready.

Really? Why?

There's a reason why it's still an alpha whereas Vorbis is a full release.

And that reason is???

It's much better to admit there's nothing that works out there that's OSS than to recommend a poor OSS solution.

That wouldn't be true, of course.

The patents on MPEG-1 have long ago expired. It has pretty good quality (better than Theora/VP3) when encoded with a recent implimentation (ie. libavcodec for video, twolame for audio). And more than that, it is by far the most widely compatible format around, supported by just about every video player made in the past several years, on just about every single platform around.

I've no doubt in time Theroa will be its match,

I, however, do. The VP3 codec is hated by just about everyone who knows anything about video.

It has really poor video quality, compared to even much older video codecs.

It is very CPU-intensive to encode.

It's playback performance is horrible. Once you reach resolutions where a full frame can't fit in your CPU cache, you get performance worse than codecs like h.264.

In some 4 years of Theora's development, Xiph hasn't removed any of VP3's limitations, nor added any advantages over the original VP3 codec. Since they've frozen the bitstream, even the potential for them to do any of that has passed...

I was somewhat active in the Theora development process some time ago, but I've long since given it up for dead.

What happened to more eyes, shallow bugs?

[jbn-o (555068)]

I guess we're supposed to ignore all the people who have been using Ogg Vorbis+Theora feeds for years (many listed on the Ogg Theora website [theora.org] and instead give in to an argument based on a version name and vague goals of "readiness", or for another overmoderated post in this thread, market presence built on violating the law. We're not supposed to advocate for people using unencumbered FLOSS software to do this job across platforms in a non-discriminatory way. Even according to the open source argument which dismisses social solidarity out of hand (something governments ought not do), discouraging use seems particularly unwise.

No codecs required, either

[Shawn is an Asshole (845769)]

If you use Cortado [flumotion.net] as the player. It's a java applet that will play Theora+Vorbis files in a way similar to YouTube/Google Video/etc. All the client needs is Java.

Going straight Theora+Vorbis wouldn't work that well, since the user would have the install the codecs first and Vorbis/Theora support is severely lacking on OS X.

Quoting the site:

In order to make your streams as widely available as possible, we provide the Cortado Java applet as free software under the GPL. By embedding this applet in your website, you can give viewers access to streams from either the Flumotion streaming server or play a local file from your server without the need for a locally installed media player supporting the correct formats on the visitori's computer.

Cortado currently include Java decoders for Ogg Theora, Ogg Vorbis, Mulaw audio, MJPEG and our own Smoke codec. You can find examples of Cortado in use on the Fluendo demo site.

Re:Ogg Theora?

[iamdrscience (541136)]

Why limit yourself to just one format? Offer both WMV *AND* Ogg Theora!

Or, to put it another way: "Why limit yourself to just one set of problems! You could deal with the problems of both WMV *AND* Ogg Theora!"

Re:Ogg Theora?

[mrchaotica (681592)]

WMV is far from ideal, but it's better than switching to a format which almost nobody can play without installing additional software.

No, it's not. Using a codec that everyone can play after installing the additional software is better than using one that some people can't play at all.

Besides, it's not as if the Windows users would have to fend for themselves -- all the EU has to do is pick a player for Windows and link to it from their site (maybe write something like "can't see the video? click here"). It's Not That Hard!

Someone's fired

[tulare (244053)]

First off, they didn't hire an interpreter (come on, you going to tell me there isn't a properly-qualified English-language interpreter to fix that garbage? Second, whichever Microsoft zealot wrote that page really needs to expatiate on his reasoning. From where I sit, it looks like a blatant lie to cover up for laziness.

A blatant lie to cover up for laziness...

[Savage-Rabbit (308260)]

From where I sit, it looks like a blatant lie to cover up for laziness.

<complete_nonsense>
You don't know the EU very well do you? You see this has nothing to do with laziness. If the EU replaces it's WMV streaming systems with a competing product it will result in 68 shirt and tie wearing MCSEs with nice conservative Bill Gates haircuts being replaced by a couple of hairy bucktoothed nerds with a nasty armpit malodor problem and the fashions sense of a Portuguese donkey wrangler. So this whole mess is really all about French objections because of the effect such a change would have on the already low fashion standards of EU employees and all the other EU member countries fears that it might make the unemployment situation in the European MCSE community any worse since the job security of the European MCSE community is already badly threatened by the way Linux looks set to exterminate Windows from the EU's desktop computer market.
</complete_nonsense>

Re:Having said that...

[tulare (244053)]

While I agree with your comments re: the suckiness of English (I speak five modern languages, including a couple of the "hard" ones), my comment in this regard wasn't that English should be forced upon anyone - if that page were in Dutch, French, or German, I'd shrug and figure that's where the website is, so the choice of language makes sense. But the fact that these conferences are streamed in wmv-only format and then the entire website is in broken English - that just looks bad. Really, unprofessionally, and given the number of interpreters/translators available to the EU, inexcusably bad. Moral of the story is: if you can't find a good translator for your webpage, write it in your native tongue.

Where's the illegal?

[by Anonymous Coward]

"We cannot support Linux in a legal way."

What's so illegal about a Flash-based streaming player?

Re:Where's the illegal?

[iamdrscience (541136)]

What's so illegal about a Flash-based streaming player?

Flash embedded video is not a bad idea, but currently the latest version of flash available for Linux is Flash Player 7 which doesn't have support for all the video features added in Flash 8 and Flash 9. They could do it, they would just have to be mindful of the limitations of Flash 7 when they were setting it up. Either that or set it up as flash video and hope that Adobe releases Flash 9 for Linux soon (they've already got a prerelease available here: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9/ [adobe.com])

Not much to be said here

[BenoitRen (998927)]

I would guess they can't support GNU/Linux in a legal way because they can't offer the codecs. Only parties that have an agreement of sorts or have paid M$ royalties can use it. GNU/Linux doesn't, though distributions like that one that used to be known as Lindows (can't remember the name) comes with closed-source ones.

The petition to urge them to use a platform-independent format is a good answer.

Hello, there are open-source players for WMV3

[by Anonymous Coward]

WMV3 has been opened. MPlayer / FFMPEG support it natively now. Google Summer of Code had a project to make an optimized player for it.

Yes I think it still has patent issues or something but in Europe I don't think that matters.

Youtube!!!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Or should I say Eutube!

*ducks*

Needs rewording

[rrohbeck (944847)]

That should be "We're too ignorant to support Linux in a legal way."

realplayer

[Phil246 (803464)]

yes yes, i know. Put the burning torches down :) - Still if the BBC can offer their video services in both WMV and Realmedia formats, why cant the EU? Its certainly supported on linux after all

Interpretation

[DreadSpoon (653424)]

The "legal way" thing probably refers to the inability to provide a legal WMV player for Linux, not that it isn't legal for the EU to stream in another format. I don't think anyone there is trying to say that it's illegal to stream in a different format. Rather, they are saying that since WMV is what they use (for whatever reason - political, economic, or simply fiat), Linux users can't be supported.

Realplayer?

[Goeland86 (741690)]

What about Realplayer exactly is illegal? I know it won't solve *BSDs and other *Nix users' problems, but Linux has a realplayer version.
So why again is it illegal to run something that is not MS specific?
Hello, welcome to the new year, we're in the 21st century, not in the early 90s, there's something called "interoperability" that has been growing in the tech world... Time for reality to harvest!

Re:Realplayer?

[by Anonymous Coward]

It's morally illegal.

IT'S OK

[scenestar (828656)]

We don't support the EU either.

looking at it from their perspecive

[noigmn (929935)]

"The live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union supports Internet Explorer 5 and higher, Netscape Navigator 6 and higher. If you encounter problems with a lower version of your browser, the browser should be updated to facilitate the live streaming media service. Firefox and Opera will be supported with a minimal of functionalities."

This is the market share for browsers as of Nov 2006:

Microsoft Internet Explorer, 80.56%
Firefox, 13.50%
Safari, 4.03%
Netscape, 0.83%
Opera, 0.67%

This is the market share for Operating Systems as of Nov 2006:

Windows XP, 84.95%
Windows 2000, 5.46%
Mac OS, 4.10%
Windows 98, 1.90%
MacIntel, 1.29%
Windows ME, 0.91%
Windows NT, 0.76%
Linux, 0.37%

You could argue for better firefox support, but as much as we love linux, I suppose they have no obligation to make it work for something that is that small minority among desktop users.

Will not stand in the EU

[grimJester (890090)]

Obvoiusly soneone has wanted to point this out, if it's explicitly written on the EU site. At the risk of sounding trollish:

We will not have our legislation locked down in ways that force EU citicens to buy software from one specific vendor. FUCK YOU.

We like to think we're better than the US. Apperarently our legislators are also bought off. If you as an elected politician get your salary from Microsoft Corporation or Apple Computer inc, please report directly to me for your ticket to Baghdad and the Saddam Hussein rope massage. Thank you for your incompetent attempt at running a democracy, please don't come again.

Haha

[GeorgeMcBay (106610)]

The really funny part of this story is you also can't watch those videos if you've got the version of Windows Vista with media player ripped out due to the EU's antitrust rulings (unless you download media player or some other WMV-capable player, of course). Hah hah.

Great work...

[Pengman (1045438)]

First they (the EU) force MS to marked a version of Windows without media-player... and then they release content that needs that very media player...