Why is movie support so bad?
Movies are poorly supported on most Unix systems. Part of the reason has been use of proprietary, secret, copyrighted, and/or patented formats by some vendors, making it difficult, expensive, or even illegal, for other vendors, and for the free software community, to implement viewers.Another problem is the complexity of movie data formats, and in the free software packages, the use of nonportable coding techniques and compiler extensions, and the excessive dependence on other library layers that are themselves largely nonportable.
Movies are poorly supported on most Unix systems. Part of the reason has been use of proprietary, secret, copyrighted, and/or patented formats by some vendors, making it difficult, expensive, or even illegal, for other vendors, and for the free software community, to implement viewers. Another problem is the complexity of movie data formats, and in the free software packages, the use of nonportable coding techniques and compiler extensions, and the excessive dependence on other library layers that are themselves largely nonportable.
