Re: Future BBC Online Services

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 21:50:11 +0000, Andy Leighton wrote:

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 21:02:38 +0000, macerata <not@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The email I received was clearly a brush off. You can't expect the BBC
to give a meaningful response on this, especially when you consider
Highfield's suspect (and amusing) behaviour with Bill Gates.

[snip]

At least this way some of the
people who could change things actually know that what's happening now
is crucial and that there are alternatives to MS.

I have no doubt that there are many people within the Beeb who know that
there are alternatives and may even use them.

I was referring to members of the Select Committees. I'd be surprised if
many of them know much about OSs. People within the BBC know about Linux
all right, but their coverage of computing (e.g. on piracy and security)
rarely informs viewers of the options available to them, thereby
implicitly perpetuating the idea that you're stuck with MS as your OS.

The BBC did trial using
streaming OGG for audio years ago and I think proved it effective and
feasible. The problem is exactly the same as for any other large
business - there is a huge resistance to change, and the suits are happy
with an entirely Microsoft world (for some reason) even when it costs
more and disenfranchises a small number of customers.

Interesting, but with the amount of codecs available for Linux media
players, media formats shouldn't be a problem. Although it shares the
traits you mention with other organisations, the BBC is a publicly-funded
body, not a business. So, unlike Sky, they shouldn't be able to get away
with not keeping to their 'duty of universality'.

On the specific points I think that we will have to put up with some
form of DRM. The video/audio codecs need to be freely available as does
the distribution technology. If they are then it doesn't matter to me
that linux doesn't get the whizzy UI demonstrated by Highfield (if
needed it will be built within the open source community).

Yes, it was pointed out that DRM was important, but the work on that for
this project is being done between MS and the BBC. I'm not too clued up
on the state of affairs with Linux and DRM, so any more info would be
appreciated. I wrote pretty much the same
thing to Sky about the fact that the open source community would work on a
solution, but that wasn't good enough, so specific details on this
would help.

It was clear that the main
emphasis was on peer-to-peer technology. No problem there, then. Like
you suggest, the main hurdles for Linux seem to be DRM and the UI.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: GPL V3 and Linux
    ... Linux shouldn;t move to the GPL3 for the very reason that the DRM ... In my view the Open Source Community ... Access Control System that is respected by the FOSS community would be ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: 2.6.11-mm3 - DRM/i915 broken
    ... Initialized drm 1.0.0 20040925 ... # Firmware Drivers ... # Performance-monitoring counters support ... # Video For Linux ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: Keep it up
    ... something less prone to infection / safer ... something that doesnt phone home/ have DRM / restrict what I can do ... While they may not be directly interested in DRM or the phone home ... The rest is looking for a Windows alternative and Linux ain't that. ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)
  • Re: Windows Media Center is really Pi*&ing me off
    ... I mean I don' thave to go out and buy Linux do I? ... This is sooooooooo god blessed aggravating, I cannot even begin to tell you how aggravating. ... That is that lovely stuff called buggy DRM software bloat. ... How do we know they don't mean Windows Me dia Center? ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general)
  • New DRM driver model - gets rid of DRM() macros!
    ... I've checked two new directories into DRM CVS for Linux 2.6 - ... linux-core, shared-core. ... This code implements a new model for DRM ... share the core. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
Loading