As I understand, using closed codecs literally means breaking the law even while playing legal media in some countries. So, the current situation with Ubuntu is full of hypocrisy. Ubuntu's CD doesn't include illegal software, but every user would likely download and install it right after the installation is through. Fluendo codecs are an alternative, but a weak one.
Another point, is that the user is forced to use OpenOffice just because other products can't work with MS formats well. This is also inconvenient, since there are some lightweight solutions that can work with OASIS ODF and thus allow user to do all the basic tasks. And, after all, Office 2003 formats aren't supported even by OpenOffice at the moment.
Finally, the archive formats - rar, ace, arj, which also could be converted to zip or tar.gz2 or whatever.
So here is my suggestion on how to promote open technologies.
At the moment, there are already some web services to convert documents (or even music) from one format to another. For example,
http://koolwire.com
So, what I am talking about, is a web-service, that would allow to convert audio files to OGG Vorbis and FLAC, video to OGG Theora, Microsoft Office files to OASIS ODF (and PDF, in case the conversion cannot be done well for some files). And it would be very nice, if the service would be integrated into the user's environment. So the software necessary for conversion would be installed only on those servers, which can be located in countries where patent issues are not a problem.
Probably, this initiative requires some really mighty servers, but I guess that this can be done on behalf of the Open Source community on the whole, not just Ubuntu/Canonical, so the funds necessary would be raised and the service will be free of charge. After all it's a real opprotunity to promote free standarts.
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