[snip]
Finally, my opinion of such "alternative" and "embedding options" for videos is that it must be up to the user. So we wouldn't embed into our web a java applet nor a flash player (ugh!) to show it, but give them a box "Here there's XXXX.ogg {video|sound} You can [[media:download it]], [[play it on your broser]] (needs xyz plugin) or [[play it with flash]] <sup>[[Help:flash|help]]</sup>."
It's funny...
I added a java (GCJ compatible) audio player on enwiki a while back and I've been mostly unable to get people to even comment it (although it has been used by tens of thousands)...
It makes me sad to see this thread where so many people are willing to expend energy talking about how we need to compromise our commitment to free content in free formats when I can't even get people to help out with simple free solutions which don't require much compromise.
I guess it's just another example of the meta-pedian illness of talk over action, and that I probably should just ignore this thread...
But I do want to point out, for the record:
1) The majority of video formats used on the web require some degree of installation, although some of them can be autodownloaded into Windows Media Player or use a popular client which many users installed long ago (Real, for example). Our instructions (on enwiki at least) for installing video support are effectively a single step, and if there is room for improvement... {{sofixit}}
2) I'm not aware of any computer make thats ships with flash installed. So all these flash video sites do require an install.. although it's one install providing for many forms of webcruft. :)
3) There are free software java codecs for both Ogg/Theora and Ogg/Vorbis. I haven't worked too much with the Theora plugin because it was a bit buggy under GCJ six months ago, but the java vorbis codec is very mature and robust. We couldn't ask for a better framework from which to build a video player (and there is even a SOC project to deeply integrate this support with MediaWiki).