On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 00:38:03 +0200, Jens Ropers <ropers(a)ropersonline.com> wrote:
Yes, MP3 being license-encumbered is worrying.
BUT:
We neither decode nor encode audio files.
We only host them for people to retrieve.
We don't have to worry about MP3's license status.
Of course we technically don't, but this is not just about doing what
we *have* to do but rather doing what is right. Using a free audio
format guarantees that it can be decoded and encoded in the future
with free software, which means for example that if wikipedia were to
be distributed on a CD along with software necessary to display it the
distributor would not have to pay licence fees to fraunhoffer or worse
not be allowed to distribute the files at all.
Imagine a similar situation where we would use Microsoft Word
documents to store content rather than wikitext, that too would
putting all those who wish to read the content at the mercy of a
corporate entity.
Yes, we would like to advocate free alternatives and no, we should not
disallow .ogg if allowing MP3.
BUT NOTE:
***Most operating systems are not free either and***
***we don't bar Win or Mac folks from using the Wikipedia.***
Your analogy is flawed, what matters is that one should not need
proprietary software to access wikimedia content, you can of course do
so but having the choice is what this is about, with a proprietary
format you might not have that choice any longer.
Remember also that the reason you can access wikimedia content on
multiple platforms today is because it uses open standards, html,
http, png and such, i for one would like to keep it that way.
We even expressly _cater_ for MSIE quirks to a considerable (and
painfully high) extent.
Surely if we do that then we can allow existing users of the non-free
MP3 format to use their known and ***ubiquitous*** format?
Second thought, I'd even go so far as to advocate WP going .ogg only
and becoming a driving force in .ogg adoption, but ONLY, ONLY once a
totally hassle-free solution with simple, short and FULLY sufficient
end user friendly instructions exists.
Despite the concomitant loss of quality (which can be partially avoided
by "oversampling"/using higher sampling rates) we can always convert
MP3 files and switch to .ogg ONCE WE AND .OGG ARE FULLY THERE in terms
of user-friendliness. As long as that's not the case insisting on .ogg
would only serve to prevent most people from using audio with
MediaWiki/Wikipedia.
Honestly i think that you and others are taking this totally out of
proportion, it's a plug in which can be downloaded in 2-5mins, for
free!, remember that through some amazing miracle of ( insert deity
here ) people were very well capable of doing just that when Windows
did not ship with mp3 support not so long ago.
On 26 Sep 2004, at 23:04, Andre Engels wrote:
On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 15:43:27 +0200 Ævar Arnfjörð
Bjarmason
<avarab(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Then
again, as we're not actually in the business of writing audio
encoding software, we might just as well put up with reality and
allow
mp3 uploads.
This has already been discussed at great length both on wikien and
on
wikipedia talk:sound, and the overwhelming consensus was not to use
none-free formats which would possibly lock us into proprietery
software.
So instead we prefer to have every Windows user go through the same
process of seeing that he can't listen to .ogg files and with great
difficulty upload a special program to listen to it, where almost all
of them are already having the possibility to listen to mp3s?
And if we have this policy, why are jpegs still ok? (just google for
jpeg+patent+forgent to see what I mean)
I would like to change this policy, and instead of looking at patent
rights, allow those and only those formats that have widely used
freely available players on all of Windows, Linux and Mac.
Andre Engels
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