Flipping MP4/ASF default for 1.6.1

Lukas,

I saw that you're planning on releasing 1.6.1.

I'd like to request that ASF and MP4 support be turned on by default.

The off-by-default status in 1.6 has caused no end of confusion with
packagers who assume that it's off by default for a good reason. AFAIK,
the reason it was flipped off by default was that a long time ago some
distros (like Fedora) made noises about possible patent issues. Since
these same distributions had been carrying the same code in Amarok for
years, it was silly to begin with; but again AFAIK, these have been
resolved to the satisfaction of all of the distros that made those
requests (I know Fedora legal decided it was OK), and all major distros
have ASF and MP4 support turned on. We Amarok guys have specifically
forced this on the distros for consistency's sake, so that users in
various distros don't wonder why the guy next to them can see metadata
of MP4 files and they can't.

For users building from source, we get lots of confusion from users that
didn't realize they had to toggle these on, and lots of questions like
"I don't have ASF files, why do I need to build in support into TagLib?"
The same users generally don't have APE or MPC or Speex files either,
but they don't ask that question because those aren't formats they
specifically have to enable.

All in all, having those formats be optional and off by default is just
causing lots of confusion. I'd prefer they not be optional at all, since
the rest of the formats in TagLib aren't optional (and none of them
would be that hard to patch out for some hardcore distro); but
otherwise, please make them on-by-default.

Thanks,
Jeff



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On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 6:35 AM, Jeff Mitchell <mitchell@...> wrote:
> I'd like to request that ASF and MP4 support be turned on by default.
>
[...]
>
> All in all, having those formats be optional and off by default is just
> causing lots of confusion. I'd prefer they not be optional at all, since
> the rest of the formats in TagLib aren't optional (and none of them
> would be that hard to patch out for some hardcore distro); but
> otherwise, please make them on-by-default.

I can understand the reason for this and I agree with you, but I'd
rather not make this change in a point release. I don't consider it a
real problem, and I'd prefer to keep the release bug-fix only.

--
Lukas Lalinsky
lalinsky@...
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Jeff Mitchell wrote:

> I saw that you're planning on releasing 1.6.1.
> I'd like to request that ASF and MP4 support be turned on by default.

I'd have to echo this request, having seen the fallout and confusion too,
making these items default on would be much appreciated.

-- Rex

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Lukáš Lalinský wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 6:35 AM, Jeff Mitchell <mitchell@...> wrote:
>> I'd like to request that ASF and MP4 support be turned on by default.
>>
> [...]
>> All in all, having those formats be optional and off by default is just
>> causing lots of confusion. I'd prefer they not be optional at all, since
>> the rest of the formats in TagLib aren't optional (and none of them
>> would be that hard to patch out for some hardcore distro); but
>> otherwise, please make them on-by-default.
>
> I can understand the reason for this and I agree with you, but I'd
> rather not make this change in a point release. I don't consider it a
> real problem, and I'd prefer to keep the release bug-fix only.

I consider it a bug that 1.6 shipped with these off by default. :-)




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