[mythtv-users] tv guide line-up free

Aaron Baalbergen aaronb3675 at yahoo.com
Sat Sep 8 16:55:59 UTC 2007


>> If Pluto isn't an approved app, I'd be interested to know what the Pluto folk are using, now.

A user forwarded me this email, so I just jumped on the list so I can respond...  I'm with Pluto.  Our commercial OEM's license Tribune's data.  Our free distro uses stock myth packages so it's up to the user to configure his own source (zap2it/xmltv/etc.).  The only commercial company that I thought was in a gray area was Fiire because they indirectly use our software (they're actually LinuxMCE), and they do sell systems with MythTV commercially, but they don't market it as a PVR; they market it as a Linux PC with all the software pre-installed.  I'm not sure what Tribune's position was on this since on the one hand it was commercial, but on the other hand the software was totally free anyway and the result was no different than buying a pc and installing the software yourself.  It's all moot now anyway.  As soon as Tribune announced they would end zap2it, Fiire contacted us about a commercial solution.  We offered to do the same thing for them as we do for our OEM
 customers, namely provide a commercial license for stuff like the guide data, dvd css, codecs, etc.  However Fiire was adamant about wanting to be a pure FOSS solution as much as possible and wanted to stick to being a Linux PC with only free software that the general public could use to build an equivalent solution with their own hardware, and they didn't want to make their solution a proprietary box.  So, instead of the traditional license, they offered to fund keeping zap2it free by implementing data direct/zap2it on their servers and provide the IT/legal/bandwidth/etc. for the service, and keep it a totally free service as it always had been, and pay Tribune $24k/year for the free users, and pay an additional license for the commercial boxes, so that free users could get the exact same experience as their paying customers.  But Tribune turned down the request since their goal was to make it a pay service.  Based on the emails that I have from Tribune, I think this is
 irrelevant now because it's my understanding that schedules direct is no longer intended to be just for FOSS software because the monthly fee with SD is higher than their commercial fee anyway.  So I think there's no longer an issue of needing to qualify to use SD, but that's intended that anybody can use it even if they sell a commercial box.  Does anybody have any news to the contrary?  BTW, it doesn't effect us anyway since our commercial customers still have separate commercial licenses from Tribune anyway.


       
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