Council of the EU Says "We Cannot Support Linux" 370
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."
Someone's fired (Score:5, Insightful)
Where's the illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's so illegal about a Flash-based streaming player?
Not much to be said here (Score:5, Insightful)
The petition to urge them to use a platform-independent format is a good answer.
Needs rewording (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ogg Theora? (Score:3, Insightful)
Realplayer? (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
Will not stand in the EU (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:looking at it from their perspecive (Score:3, Insightful)
90% of a country's population is caucasian, 6% is black, 3% is oriental and 1% is of other racial groups. The EU suddenly decides that it can only offer services to the majority, how fast do you think people's asses would be nailed to the wall?
They have an obligation to not discriminate between groups of people. By only allowing people using Windows or Mac OS/X to use services, that's discrimination.
Also, those statistics are misleading, since Opera identifies itself as IE by default.
Re:Ogg Theora? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please don't do this (Score:5, Insightful)
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:looking at it from their perspecive (Score:4, Insightful)
Haha (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:looking at it from their perspecive (Score:3, Insightful)
Great work... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait a sec...! (Score:4, Insightful)
Not so fast dude! The last time I checked, no body has ever chosen to be born caucasian, black, oriental or otherwise...on the other hand, there is likely a huge probability that all these folks that do not belong to the "chosen" platform to support actually chose to use the platform. And now, they are clamoring for support! Jeez!
Sorry in advance in case you made an application to whoever created you, to create you the way you are.
I'm watching wmv video right now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ogg Theora? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm somewhat of a libertarian and believe in free market competition but sometimes, when everyone is trying to use their own market share leverage their consumer base with the objective of having their formats accepted as industry standards, the consumer is the one who loses out.
If all these competing companies really believed in technology they'd put everything they know on the table and let the best minds meld a standard from the best ideas. Competition is generally good, but look where it got us with cell phone companies. DARPA did a much better job with the Internet.
Re:Instead of rallying... (Score:3, Insightful)
The community is not even really asking for *support*; merely to not be explicitly suppressed.
I have a banking site that I must use, which uses the user agent to decide who may and who may not use the web site to pay their bills.
I do not want "support" for my browser, I just want them to stop purposely trying to prevent me from using it. They do *more* work to try to suppress users than they would do to "support" them.
And any banking institution that has IT staff who consider it appropriate to use the User Agent string as part of security, should be approached with great suspicion anyway. This is not some small independent savings and loan -- it is Wells Fargo. The thing is, Wells Fargo's online banking system is pretty good. But their "Financial Services" division is nowhere near at the same level of competence.
Because *I* owe *them* money in this case, it's not exactly like I can choose to walk away. So I sort of have to take it. I'm just waiting for them to accuse me of fraud because instead of using my normal browser user agent string ("Bond/007; UK; Licensed to Kill"), I change it to something close enough to Internet Explorer 6 to get me in. (Great security *there*, Wells Fargo.)
What happened to more eyes, shallow bugs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Open Government (Score:3, Insightful)
Citizens of the world should unite in the cause of demanding that all closed software be removed from all government computers and all government files. Citizens of the EU and other places often throw it up that the US is not as free as its forefathers planned and attempted to maintain with its Constitution and unfortunately too often they are right. Here is a chance for the EU to help lead the way, some of its countries already moving to keep closed formats out of government documents, time to increase that though. In the EU one should not need the permission of a US company to view EU government at work.
Re:Wait a sec...! (Score:2, Insightful)
Or maybe you mean even the poor have the choice to pirate a copy of Windows.
Re:realplayer (Score:3, Insightful)
How can that be done? Pick a format that doesn't require royalties.
Re:Wait a sec...! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Please don't do this (Score:4, Insightful)
Since when did this exact reason stop Microsoft or other software solution providers from pushing their products?
Sorry, just had to say - this is a chicken and the egg problem. Reminds me of Linux "not being ready for the desktop." If no one picked it up to use on the desktop when it wasn't ready, it will likely never be ready. OTOH, the more people use an open piece of software, the more development it attracts.
Re:Where's the illegal? (Score:2, Insightful)
Until Adobe publishes the Flash standard similarly to PDF then Flash isn't a portable standard.
We need to get our story straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
But whenever we see some site choose to make new content available in those very same Windows formats, many of the same people who were telling potential new users that all these things were easy on Linux suddenly switch and say that Linux users are locked out.
If we want to get people to use Linux, we have to get our story straight as to what Linux can do!
Q. Why is WMV so popular anyways? A. Inertia (Score:3, Insightful)
Inertia, it works,
Re:Forget it (Score:1, Insightful)
It's all ones and zeros, the real art is in the encoding compression, but seems there should be at least some consensus on handling this. I'd like to bet most of the problems here are purely mathematical and what we have with different companies coming up with different systems and patenting them is kind of like that Newton and Leibniz would have patented calculus independently had they made their discoveries today.
With video we have stuff like interlacing, progressive scanning, frames per second, etc.. Everyone seems to want a patent on the most trivial procedures and what we end up with is a big mess. Somewhere there should be a video RFC and a community of geeks should come up with a standard. Companies can still contribute, or if their ideas are so revolutionary and unique, fork and go off on their own.
Re:Will not stand in the EU (Score:3, Insightful)
And that is the crux of the argument. An elected government says, "we're using the a media format that is used by the most-popular operating system and Web browser." On the surface, that seems reasonable, in that they're makeing the information available to most of the viewing audience. It also satisfies the politician's need to appear even-handed. Unfortunately, it makes that same data virtually inaccessible to that still-significant minority that isn't mainstream, and never will be. Regardless of the market-share numbers (and you have to add all the non-Microsoft products together), by not using an open standard the EU is still alienating some millions of computer users. That's not particularly even-handed, however you slice it.
If there was ever an argument for transparency in government and the required use of open formats and protocols
Re:What happened to more eyes, shallow bugs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure they can (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a real difference between accommodating a minority who's that way because of a physical problem they can't overcome (such as loss of limb use, blindness, etc) and a minority who's that way because they choose to be so.
For example suppose you tried to mandate that the government had to provide parking at their official buildings for any kind of vehicle someone might want. Now suppose that a trucker decides that they want to use their rig, complete with trailer, as the means of transportation. Now you have to have to go to a large amount of trouble because someone is choosing to try and make things difficult.
Of course in that case the government doesn't need to accommodate them. That person is perfectly capable of using another car or taking the bus or riding a bike or whatever.
Well the same goes for computers. The government can say they are only supporting the major OSes. You can't say "but they have to support all OSes!" because they don't and that's clearly impossible. What about the guy using a Commodore 128 to get on the net (it happens, encountered a guy who used one to play MUDs back in my MUD days)?
Re:Please don't do this (Score:2, Insightful)
Java Applets (not OSS) come to mind. They were slow-loading, buggy, and had odd UI conventions. Applets would have to be nearly perfect now to get a listen.
Re:What happened to more eyes, shallow bugs? (Score:3, Insightful)
The rest of your reaction basically boils down to complaining about popularity (websites nobody has heard of, codecs that aren't bundled with popular OSes) and oxymoronically complaining that only technical people can read theora.org and claiming I'm speaking only to a technically minded audience here on
Finally, just to be clear, I'm not championing the Open Source movement. I'm encouraging you to consider the rhetoric of that movement and the recommended actions (which are placating popularity even at the expense of an honest pursuit of the narrow developmental message that movement offers to programmers). I support software freedom for all computer users and increased social solidarity based on an ethical examination I hope more people will undertake, therefore I am a Free Software movement advocate.
Re:Wait a sec...! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please don't do this (Score:3, Insightful)
Some websites offer users the choice of more than one format. It doesn't have to be limited to one choice or the other. Here is one example of a web page that allows users to choose which format they want to use when viewing a video clip. In this case it happens to be a choice between Flash and Ogg.
Several video clips in Flash and Ogg format [sun.com]
It is not unreasonable to expect an official government website to make an extra effort to make public records available to all voters. Offering the content in two alternative formats would be a reasonable solution. At least one of the formats should be an open standard such a Ogg, the other could be a proprietary closed standard that would require using Windows Media Player. Flash might possibly be acceptable too, because most Linux computers can play Flash (although the AMD-64 version of Macromedia Flash for Linux is not yet available).
Re:Wait a sec...! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah, that misses the point. Just take the original analogy about "operating systems vs. race" and switch it to "operating systems vs. religion". Religion is something that is a choice - you want to leave yours and join another, you are free to do so - but if the EU would suddenly only 'support' 95% of religions, there would be a heck of an outrage. In modern civilization, it is legitimate to choose your religion. Is the EU saying that the only legitimate choice of operating system is Windows (or Mac)? That's quite a big commercial endorsement there.
The original analogy/argument is valid, the EU is in the wrong on this one. (Although to be fair it's probably only a few EU computer techs and their managers who even know about this decision.)
Re:Ogg Theora? (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Having said that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ogg Theora? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a revolutionary idea. Dare I even say it... Oh well, for good or ill, here goes nothing: Offer the video in both formats ! And mpeg and Flash too.
I guess no one told the EU that the same video can simultaneously exist in more than one format. I'm starting to get the idea that this kind of ignorance and lack of common sense is quite common in EU's decision-making organs.
Re:Having said that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Where's the illegal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:looking at it from their perspecive (Score:3, Insightful)
Eu translates all documents to 20 languages, including Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian and Maltese. With 450 million people in EU and about 400 000 people speaking Maltese, we have EU caring for even 0.1% percent. Even the streaming service includes translations for those languages!
I don't really care about EU streaming service and it's lack of Linux support, but buying shrink wrapped Microsoft solutions has serious economical consequences. Directly: It drains money out of EU. Indirectly: there is less knowledge on howto build streaming solutions in EU, if all we know is howto "click next" in some wizard.
So why not use fluendo streaming [fluendo.com] or some other EU based solution instead?
Re:I have sent them an email: You should do the sa (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing stopping them from 'legally' supporting Linux is the existence of software patents, which are not valid in the EU. Remind them of this.
Finally, remind them that this is not about Linux users. No one cares about Linux users. This is about users of anything other than Windows, including mobile phones. My mobile can play H.263, MPEG-4, and RealVideo 7,8 formats. If they pick WMV, this means the only people who can watch the video on their mobile phones are Windows Mobile users; they are helping Microsoft leverage a monopoly on the desktop to gain on in the mobile space. If they pick H.263 or MPEG-4, then anyone can watch them, whether they have Windows, Mac, or *NIX on their desktop, or Windows, Symbian or Linux on their mobile.
Re:Ogg Theora? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not about Linux users, it's about a government entity supporting monopoly abuse.