Linspire Supports Latest Windows Media Versions

Posted Nov 19, 2004 0:06 UTC (Fri) by chill633 (guest, #16013)
In reply to: Linspire Supports Latest Windows Media Versions by JoeBuck
Parent article: Linspire Supports Latest Windows Media Versions

It wasn't a surprise. Reading the entire article uncovers that back when Michael was running mp3.com, he had a discussion with then chief of Microsoft's Media dept who told him "any where, any time" as far as their codec licensing plans were. Inexpensive and open to all. His response then was "yeah, right".

He was pointing out that he *knew* they were lying back then and this just proves it.

The "patch them into your operating system" is a bit misleading. There is/was no standard way to load codecs into Linux. It depended on your player: Xine, MPlayer or what have you.

With Linspire, it is fully licensed and they do the "what have you" for you. They also have a fully licensed DVD/CSS codec that is plugged into Xine on Linspire. It is rather slick and this seems to be their niche.