I thought it was a simple matter of installing some codecs? (not sure as I've never played a DVD on my computer...)

Well I'm sure that blue ray is "rotating optical media", so I'm not sure that's strictly correct, but optical media is certainly in it's twilight years, but will probably linger on for a long time yet - just like floppy disks did.

As with the wheel or the sharp and pointy stick, there will be demand for optical media as long as people find it useful. I find DVDRs and CDRs to be cheap and useful. It's an ideal way of getting software to someone - through the post - in a non volatile form. If their PC dies, they can use the disc to reinstall. If I sent them a flash drive, which costs several times a much and has way more capacity than is necessary, they might be tempted to use it once, then erase the flash drive and use it for something else.
Well most devices of those types are verging on fashion accessories - not really designed with productivity in mind. In the case of ARM they're supposed to be small, low power consumption and versatile, so fitting an optical drive or hard disk defeats the object.

Just because OEMs decide that devices don't need an optical drive a parallel port or a serial port, does not mean that those devices have become completely obsoleted. You can still buy brand new printers with parallel and serial ports which come with the drivers on optical media...



//edit: And what GazL said.

It's about licensing fees. One reason why even MS dropped DVD movie support from Windows 8. They have to pay for it per copy and almost no one uses it.

If their PC has an ODD, otherwise it's plain useless. You've ever heard of digital software distribution?

Flash drives in the 2 GB capacity range are so cheap, that you can get them for free as advertising gifts.

Yes, I remember this from the 90s: These PCs are just neat little toys and to get real work done, you have to get a RISC workstation with real UNIX on it.

Today, these platforms are almost all extinct. Displaced by the PC. Now history repeats. ;-)

And another reason is that hard disks are also becoming obsolete.

DVD players are also good for making backup copies of data. The prediction is that they will disappear because remote network storage is now widely available. For many situations I find that the ODD is still a good solution.

Many people insist on using the latest and greatest technology, and it is true that I am not one of those. For example, the touchscreen I am typing on is an older resistive type. These things were obsoleted for good reason.
It does help some, now that I found the refresh button for the browser.

So desktop computers are not "new computers"? The percentage of laptops in regard to total sales of new computers is, dependent on the year, about 50-60%. That means that 40-50% are desktop computers, which definitely come to 99.9% with an ODD. Something that still sells to 40-50% can hardly be negligible. But maybe you are right, it seems not be relevant anymore to Slackware to sell CDs and DVDs, since this is obsolete technology.

Oh, wait ....

"Almost no one" uses GNU/Linux.

I installed libdvdcss and libdvdnav from slackbuilds.org and can now play the DVDs I own on my computer. Or maybe I should have just bought all of the DVDs all over again as downloads?

---

But you can't do it legally.

Using libdvdcss ist illegal almost everywhere in the world. This is why Slackware isn't shipping it.

Just to make something clear: If someone doesn't want you to ship binaries without the source code, then that has to be respected, right? But if someone doesn't want you to watch his movie on your Linux computer, then it so okay, to ignore the wish of the copyright holder?

But this is nonsense. There is no theft of any ownership or copyright involved. Just playing a movie I bought on a device I got.

In China some people believe the GPL is nonsense.

You are still free to stick to the letter of the law and remain unable to view your legally purchased DVD.

You've found one of the reasons, why I don't purchase obsolete DVDs. ;-)

Not were I live. Spain had to have something good.

Seriously, the best way to screw many stupid small letter agreements is to respect them in a strict way. "Abide to our stupid terms o return the software." Ok, then I will give you the software and get my money back.

Vote with your dollars. Money is the most democratic path you can follow to change the market!

By the way, count me as an optic media supporter. I have seen too many people have problems because their crapbook main computer had no optic reader, and they had no way to boot rescue media they had on CD. You may not need the CD/DVD reader for a long time, but it is still extremely convenient.

libdvdcss has never been legally challenged, despite being distributed worldwide for over a decade.

Under U.S. copyright law, yes, both your statements are true.

Copyright protection subsists solely for protecting the exclusive rights to copy and distribute the copyrighted work itself, it does not extend to protecting the marketability of products other than that work (e.g., an "official" DVD player or a sanctioned DVD-playing computer).

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From the DeCSS wiki page:

"DeCSS was developed without a license from the DVD CCA, the organization responsible for DVD copy protection — namely, the Content-Scrambling System (CSS) used by commercial DVD publishers. The release of DeCSS resulted in a Norway criminal trial and subsequent acquittal of one of the authors of DeCSS. The DVD CCA launched numerous lawsuits in the United States in an effort to stop the distribution of the software."

DeCSS and libdvdcss are different implementations