Gov't (er, Taxpayer) funded Television and Proprietary Media Formats

[Scott Elcomb]

yro.slashdot is running a story about the BBC getting into hot water,
compliments of the UK's Open Source Consortium.

Apparently the row is about BBC's failure to support media formats
other than Windows Media.

IIRC, there were comments - in the last year or so - that the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation wasn't much better.

I just made a quick check of CBC radio and TV online.  (Admittidly not
very thorough).  Radio One says the stream is in Windows Media format,
and Radio Two + TV (The National) says it's streamed in an mms://
protocol.

So a couple questions:
- Is mms:// an "open" protocol, or at least supported by open source
applications (via the hard-working and rarely rewarded reverse
engineering arm)?

- If not, is there anything we can do to get the CBC to open up?

Take care all,
- Scott.

-- 
Scott Elcomb

"Our Founders' faith in the viability of representative democracy
rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry,
their ingenious design for checks and balances, and their belief that
the rule of reason is the natural sovereign of a free people." - Al
Gore (The Assault on Reason, 2008)

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."  - Benjamin Franklin

'"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting
on its shoes."  - Mark Twain
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists