[Foundation-l] Freedom, standards, and file formats

[Michael Snow]

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to discuss open standards and file 
formats in advance of the next board meeting. I'd especially like to 
look at how these issues relate to our mission. There are a variety of 
questions involved, which I'll summarize in terms of freedom - the 
freedom that providing access to knowledge can give the recipient, and 
the freedom that avoiding intellectual property restrictions can give 
our culture generally. I trust we'd all agree both of these are positive 
things in line with the Wikimedia Foundation's mission, which is what 
makes it difficult if we have to choose between them.

The more we move beyond simple text, the more intellectual property 
restrictions expand beyond simple copyright to increasing complexity 
(multiple rightsholders, patents, DRM, trademarks, database rights). 
Sometimes these things can be fairly benign, to the extent of being at 
least gratis-free, especially at the "consumer" level. Perhaps in terms 
of our effort to provide access to knowledge, they might not impose any 
real restrictions, except in extreme edge cases. But so far, we have a 
pretty strong commitment to absolute freedom, even with respect to areas 
that don't directly impact our work.

To illustrate this with an example, maybe not the best but one that 
comes up often enough, consider video file formats. (Some of this is 
beyond my technical expertise, so please forgive any misstatements.) 
Adobe Flash has widespread adoption to the point of being 
near-universal. The company has also been moving to make it more open 
for people watching, distributing, and working on content in this 
environment. It's close to free, but I understand there are still some 
issues like patent "encumbrances" around Flash. Meanwhile, there are 
pure free software formats that do similar things but have pretty 
limited adoption.

This brings up a number of questions. First of all, how important is 
multimedia content to us in general? Considering both the investment to 
create it and the environment in which it's produced, historically it's 
a lot less amenable to free licensing. It's still useful, no doubt, but 
what measures should we take to promote it?

Back to the two manifestations of freedom I mentioned, how should we 
balance those? One possibility that's been raised is to allow Flash 
content so long as we require that it be encoded and distributed in a 
truly free format as well. Is that sort of approach an acceptable 
compromise? It would make it much easier to achieve wide distribution of 
free content, while still making sure that it's also available 
completely without restrictions, for those who find that important. Are 
there situations in which this compromise doesn't work out for some 
reason? Why? (And none of this has to be limited to the Flash video 
example, discussion of other formats and standards is welcome.)

In dealing with the limited adoption of certain free formats, some 
people have advocated a more evangelistic approach, if you will. Given 
the reach of Wikipedia in particular, it's suggested that our policy 
could push wider adoption of these formats. That may be, but the 
question is, how much is that push worth? What are the prospects for 
making those formats readable in the average reader's environment, and 
encouraging wider use as a standard? Does an uncompromising approach 
result in significant progress, or would we simply be marginalizing the 
impact of our work? And is it worth the "sacrifice" of the many people 
who would miss out on some of the knowledge we're sharing, because the 
free format isn't accessible to them? (That's also partly a problem of 
disseminating knowledge, of course.) If we adopt a compromise position 
as described earlier, how much do we lose in terms of promoting the 
freer formats?

Before I joined the board, I understand the board considered a 
resolution to create a file format policy. These are the kinds of 
questions we need to consider before we can set such a policy. We're not 
going to be passing anything at next week's meeting, though, the 
discussion isn't far enough along and it wouldn't be right to push it 
through with so little consultation. But we need to have the 
conversation, so I would like the community's feedback on this list, 
both now and feel free to continue during and after our meeting.

--Michael Snow