[MEncoder-users] Re: DivX in 1.0rc1

[Jeff Clagg]

On Mon, Oct 30, 2006 at 03:21:17AM +0000, Jakub Misak wrote:

(quoting the entire thing because it deserves to be said twice)

> Joshua Crawford <mortarn_lists <at> yahoo.com.au> writes:
> 
> > Will you be stripping support for other codecs from mencoder as well?
> > 
> > This seems a step backwards, and in that spirit I'm downloading 1.0pre8,
> > which I somehow missed when it was released.
> > 
> > Perhaps there could be a '--with-divx4linux' configure option.
> 
> I can't see how removing support for an obsolete, inferior and useless
> codec is a step backwards. I think removing redundant ancient stuff is 
> a great feature. Cleanup is good. For the past 4 years, DivX on Linux 
> has only been interesting for people who had no idea what they were 
> doing and what DivX really is. People who know what DivX is don't need 
> DivX for anything with MPlayer/MEncoder. And people who don't know it 
> don't need it either, they just don't know they don't need it. Now that 
> the DivX support is officially dead, at least some of these people will 
> hopefully get a clue and realize what the difference between software 
> and format is. Which would be yet another positive outcome of the DivX 
> support removal. Some peple might even discover that FFmpeg exists - this 
> has been a very well kept secret for the past 4 years (most people who use 
> FFmpeg codecs don't know it, many of them even think it's DivX - even the
> MPlayer/MEncoder docs and output used to say that, and still do so to some
> extent).

Very well said. The debate ends here.