Is the EU Council really excluding Linux users from its web site ?
6 January 2007 | Published in Software, Software Patents | 1 Comment
An article on ZDNet UK is echoing the concerns of a group of Linux users. They are petitioning the EU Council, claming that the video streams on the EU Council web site are unreadable under Linux.
Strange. It is true the files are in the proprietary WMV format. However this format is supported by both MPlayer and the Xine/Totem player. These packages are included in most Linux distributions. So, it is just not true that Linux users are being left out.
The fact is that the WMV format is proprietary, but this is a different story.
The fact is also that the EU Council’s contractor for video streaming, ie Belgian telecom operator Belgacom, has demonstrated its own cluelessness. In its FAQ dated 1st January 2007 (in Google cache), they stated “We cannot support Linux in a legal way. So the answer is: No support for Linux”. This is mistaken of course, as demonstrated above. The newest version of their FAQ deleted the offending sentence. However, they still do not mention the fact that WMV files can indeed be played under Linux.
This raises the question if one would hire Belgacom to do the video streaming, knowing the company is apparently not able to do a simple homework of googling for “Linux WMV” ? The same question applies to the ZDNet staff writer, by the way. Can you trust an IT information source where journalists seem unable to do some research before publishing a paper ?
However, I agree the EU should use open file formats for publishing information on the Internet. This is why most docs on the EU web sites are posted in PDF format. Soon, documents will also be available in ODF format, where they were previously only in the proprietary MS Office formats. For video streaming, there is still a need to do more. Do we have one open file format that is allows live streaming that compatible with MS Windows, MacOSX and all the different flavours of Linux and *BSD ?
Update: I tried and it failed. The issue is not so much the actual streaming, but the javascript and AJAX put around the URL so that it displays in your current browser window rather than launching another one.
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7 January 2007 at 1:02 (#)
While wmv is a format understood by linux the question remains, what codecs are used. Some codecs are not patent free and therefore are distributed sporadically on linux machines. So the choice of codecs is important when streaming the files.
As which patent free format can be used, for audio the format ogg vorbis is well known and works on all platform, unfortunately on windows you need to download plugins.
For Video the format is oog Theora, which is still in beta but works, and there the plugins are even more rare.
However it is not uncommon to use several formats when streaming to cater for the difference of bandwidth of the clients but as explained you need to have a clue of what you are doing because then you need specialised streaming software.
Now if you don’t need to stream, the most common platform in use is flash, it works everywhere, however you cannot download the file to play later.
There is still some work to be done on streaming, but raising awareness, get people thinking. It is like asking your upstream provider for an IPv6 address, it won’t happen till a lot of people ask.