2008/11/24 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com>om>:
When the issue came up on foundation-l a little while
back, I stated
that I thought a flash file that used only the publicly documented
subset of flash (or at least works in Gnash) and doesn't use the
patented-encumbered codecs would be okay with the board's proposed
file format policy.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying - are you saying that if
we shipped open Flash code to decode Vorbis that doesn't work on open
clients, that would be objectionable? Even if the Vorbis player didn't
work in Gnash or it relied on proprietary voodoo in Flash 10, I'm not
sure I can see that there is some fundamental problem with sending
open code to client-side black box implementations that makes open
standards work well on those clients. It doesn't strike me as
fundamentally different from supporting, say, proprietary SVG
implementations whe available on the client side, or sending code to
Internet Explorer to render our web pages correctly. It doesn't
exclude anyone or even disincentivize use of open standards.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate