Installing gstreamer media codecs on XO-1

[Martin Langhoff]

On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 8:55 PM, David Leeming
<david at leeming-consulting.com> wrote:
> 1. Is the above the right way to do it, if someone with more Fedora
> experience than I can verify..

That's exactly how I'd do it.

> 2. In our narrowband countries it takes an hour and downloads a lot per
> laptop, this is unworkable in PNG with large numbers of XOs and where the
> bandwidth is so expensive and unreliable. Isn't there a way to do this
> offline with a download, something we can run on a flashdrive?

Install yum-utils, use yumdownloader --resolve <target packages> , you
end up with all the rpms, so then rpm -Uvh *rpm.

> 3. is the update step above necessary (it requires downloading 33MB)

Yep

> 4. In doing the above am I violating a ton of licenses?

That's complicated. I've studied software licensing, but _I am not
your lawyer_, this isn't legal advice, etc, etc. From my time under
books,

 Adobe Flash
 - Not violating licenses if you do it as an end-user, if you do it as
a distributor, you're expected to fill out a form, and get approval.

 Gstreamer codecs
 - Not violating licenses
 - Some (most!) codecs are heavily patented with software patents,
depending on the jurisdiction, you're in the clear, in the gray, or in
the red.

It is safe to say it's impossible to write a useful program without
walking over a dozen sw patents, so it's a sadly nonsensical space.



m
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 martin at laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC
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