bits from the DPL: June 2012

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Wed, Jul 04, 2012 at 09:42:23AM +0200, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> >> - I got quite some feedback about the debate with debian-multimedia.org
> >>    I mentioned last month. My take away message from that feedback is
> >>    that many users have no idea about the multimedia capabilities (and in
> >>    particular of codecs availability) of recent Debian releases. We
> >>    should probably invest some communication energies into that.
> >
> > I think that's addressed at us. How about the following paragraph in the
> > release notes:

Yep, it was.  I'd have contacted the list explicitly about that too, but
in the meantime I wanted to mention it in my "bits" mail as it did make
quite a fuss last month.  Thanks for beating me at discussing this!

> > Debian wheezy comes with full-featured libav (formerly ffmpeg) libraries and
> > frontends, including e.g. mplayer, mencoder, vlc and transcode. Additional
> > codec support is provided e.g. through lame for MP3 audio encoding, xvidcore
> > for MPEG-4 ASP video encoding, x264 for H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video encoding,
> > vo-aacenc for AAC audio encoding and opencore-amr and vo-amrwbenc for
> > Adaptive Multi-Rate Narrowband and Wideband encoding and decoding,
> > respectively. For most use cases, installation of packages from third-party
> > repositories should not be necessary anymore. The times of crippled
> > multimedia support in Debian are finally over!
> > "
> 
> To me, this reads great, but we really should check with leader@
> (CC'ed) if such a public statement would bring Debian in a problematic
> legal situation. This reminds me of the discussion we had with the css
> installer package.

I don't think that mentioning it in the release notes makes any
difference. Either we have it in the archive or we don't.

On the other hand, what I wonder is whether we really need to get to
that level of detail in the release note. Communication wise, it doesn't
seem particularly appealing to me. How about mentioning the use cases
(e.g. encoding/decoding music for common portable music players,
encoding video for $kind_of_hardware, etc. --- I don't know what the use
cases actually are, but you surely know better on that front)? I think
that could be more appealing for release notes readers.

Then we could then have a separate source of information (e.g. a page on
wiki.d.o, or your debian.net domain if you have one) with all the gory
details for those who care. As a bonus point, that would allow to keep
the information up to date in a stable place for future releases,
backports, or the like.

Just my 0.02€,
Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli     zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ......   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ......   . . o
Debian Project Leader    .......   @zack on identi.ca   .......    o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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