It has been known for a little while that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is a tad thick headed in terms of what government they choose to attack or build up. But it would appear that they do the same thing with picking sides in Technology. That's right, the government sponsored organization blatantly chooses to exclude a large swath of the population that ultimately pays their finances by refusing to allow Linux based workstations to play their videos.
Here's a tip: VIDEO IS JUST A FILE FORMAT. Linux plays ALL formats in one form or another.
With that out of the way, excluding an OS from using your wares comes down to either a corporate policy mandated by executive level shills, or an incompetent technology team. I have faith the techs can make the executive vision happen.
What set this rant off for me was this page: http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/ID=1480852536. If you are running anything other than Linux, you can probably see the video just fine. I can't see the video on the website that my taxes help finance, simply because I choose to NOT run the same computer model "everyone else" does.
Don't for an instant think this is an isolated incident though. The Calgary Linux Users List had a recent discussion of this very issue with ANY video at CBC. (unfortunately their mailing list is having troubles so I cannot provide a link.) Enough so that 4 or 5 people responded directly to the question that was asked (how come it doesn't work?), and it became a central topic at the monthly meeting a few days later (attended by 30ish people).
Oh, and there is more! Just today, Linux Journal posted a blog entry by Doug Roberts lamenting the SAME issue at NBC, and other mainstream media stations.
The only conclusion I (and the collective WE?) can come to is that either these networks really don't understand technology (in today's age??? Really???), or they have been paid to make it this way. I'd rather not lean to conspiracy theories, so will put my money on executive level incompetence.
Let's look at the numbers here. Linux market share is very hard to measure because it is totally OK legally to take one copy you have downloaded/bought and install it on as many computers as you'd like. So you cannot easily look at sales metrics, or download statistics to get an accurate picture. Others have tried to use web browser statistics to indicate market share. This is flawed as well because there are so many browsers out there, and not all of them accurately report what OS (or even what browser!) via the User Agent string. And not all installations are used for web browsing (servers, firewalls, etc.) So the numbers are a guess at best.
We are talking about viewing videos on the CBC website though, so perhaps browser share is just as good a measurement as any. Wikipedia reports 2.54% share for Linux as of March 2010. That isn't including Android based phones, which add an additional 0.11%.
But let's take a conservative guess then of 2.5% of online Linux users. For the record though, Linux adoption has recently been reported at 11% or higher, so for comparison sake, we'll work with these two ranges.
Canada has seen a consistent increase in the number of users online. As of 2008, that estimate was 84% of the population (some 28 million people online at the time). Let's assume we are looking at 80% then, knowing the numbers are actually more. The current population of Canada is appox 34 Million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_population_of_Canada_by_years). So the math becomes real simple then:
%_Linux_Users = (Total Population * Online $) * Linux Market % Lower_bound = (34,000,000 * 80%) * 2.5% = 850,000 Upper_bound = (34,000,000 * 80%) * 11% = 2,992,000
So, this simple math says that some executive somewhere has outright dismissed anywhere between 850,000 and approx 3 million possible customers in Canada alone. (This ignores that the Canadian Linux browsing percentage may be different than the global values.)
I'm sorry, but even at 850,000 that is too many people to be insignificant. Because those 850,000 (or up to 3 million) users are PISSED OFF! That is the equivalent of a full city being told they don't matter. That is 850,000 upset customers voicing their opinions and avoiding CBC in any way - aka a PR nightmare in the making. The easiest way to reconcile with these users is to pull the proverbial head out of the ass and make video available as a basic streaming file without OS restrictions. Windows/Mac users will NOT see any difference. Linux users will see a HUGE difference - the videos will work and CBC *may* retain some relevance.