On 1/4/07, George Chriss <GChriss(a)psu.edu> wrote:
On 4 Jan 2007 at 16:19, Matt R
<matt_crypto(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
With Wikipedia's large current degree of
popularity, doesn't it have
any influence that could be wielded with manufacturers such as Apple
to encourage them to add Ogg support to their players?
"...influence that
could be wielded with manufacturers such as Apple to encourage them to add Ogg support to
their players?"
Indirectly, yes. Same goes for the entire free software movement. Products follow
consumer demand.
Directly, I think the issue is not within the Wikimedia Foundation's immediate
purview. Just my thoughts.
Of course, there is also the possibility that some companies have
entered into agreements that allowed them use to the MP3 and AAC
patents at greatly reduced prices in exchange for excluding support
for certain free formats, in spite of the existent (although small)
market demand for these formats.
Of course, such agreements would be especially unobtrusive to a player
manufacture who expects to manage the content distribution as well as
the end devices. In fact, a distributor with preferential codec
pricing would have a vested interest in the failure of free formats
which would level the playing field (i.e. a fractional cent per
download overhead is better than no overhead, so long as all the
competition is paying more overhead than you)
Greedy middlemen seem to be a constant in the universe, alas.
...
In any case, their are already third party firmwares for many players
(including many generations of the popular iPOD devices) with support
for Vorbis and other free formats. These replacement firmwares often
with a wealth of other enhanced features.