Windows 8 is in…

Windows 8 is interesting to say the least. It does give me a few mild concerns, but I’m attempting to stay optimistic about it, and have adopted a “wait and see” approach. After all, it has only just reached RTM status, and there are no computers out yet to take full advantage of the software.

What does concern me though — and I have yet to see anything good or bad in this regard — is that some open source programs will effectively be banned from the ARM versions of the tablet due to potential legal issues. Take VLC, or Media Player Classic for example — They both support DVD playback without valid licenses from the governing body responsible for such things. This means that they will very easily get taken off of the Windows Store with so much as an accusation of copyright infringement or some other faulty DMCA claim written to Microsoft.

The solution in this case, I guess, would be to remove DVD access to those versions. After all, tablets won’t accept optical discs anyhow. But what about other missing codec licenses that I’m unaware of? How does Microsoft feel about having WMV code in ffmpeg? What about RealMedia? There are tons of media codecs supported by ffmpeg (and thus VLC) that are not open source like Ogg Theora, Vorbis and Matroska.

Really hope that it won’t be an issue to get a functional media player for free that plays everything, and doesn’t try to sell more music and video like Xbox Music/Video does right now.