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