[tex-live] movie15 and media9

[Herbert Schulz]

On Mar 18, 2012, at 1:44 PM, Heiko Oberdiek wrote:

>> 
>> 2) the output of movie15 and/or media9 uses certain features of PDF that
>> are part of the ISO standard
> 
> Yes.
> AFAIK, it's ok for TL.
> 
>> 3) said features haven't been implemented by any viewer except Adobe's?
> 
> By any *free* viewer.
> See http://www.tug.org/texlive/copying.html:
> | Therefore, to the best of our knowledge, all the software in TeX Live
> | meets the requirements of the Free Software Foundation's definition of
> | free software, and the Debian Free Software Guidelines. In the rare cases
> | of conflict, we generally follow the FSF.
> With the links:
> * Free Software Foundation's definiton of free software:
>  http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
> * Debian Free Software Guidelines
>  http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
> 
> And http://www.tug.org/texlive/copying.html states the
> additional requirement:
> | Furthermore, the material in TeX Live should not require nonfree software
> | to be useful.
> 
> Nobody has shown the usefulness of movie15/media9 with free software yet.
> 
>> And it should still be excluded from TeXLive because of 3) ?
> 
> AFIAK, this is the reason.
> 

Howdy,

Hmmm... this makes it sound as though the TeX Live standards are even more restrictive than FSF and Debian. I didn't know that.

>> I understand the logic of excluding proprietary software, but out seems
>> strange (to put it mildly) to use 3) as a basis for exclusion.
> 
> AFAIK, it's the policy of the TL team to support and strengthens
> free software. But they don't want to fill their spare time with
> many countless voluntary hours working on support for non-free
> or even commercial software.

If you don't allow those features to be embedded aren't you telling the free software developers that there is no need to add those features to their software. My impression, maybe incorrectly, is that these features are part of the ISO standard so there is nothing proprietary in adding them to free software. Sounds like we are going in circles here.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)