On 7/21/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
I don't understand this argument at all.
Nobody is suggesting delivering content exclusively in a patent-encumbered format. The proposal is to deliver content in either Ogg Theora or FLV as the client requires. Converting a video into a non-free format does not make the video non-free. The transparent copy will still be available -- the Ogg Theora source file.
We support Internet Explorer for browsing our website -- we have IE70Fixes.css, for instance. Are you saying that to be truly free, we should delete this file and deny access for anyone using Internet Explorer?
Or to make another analogy, why didn't anyone complain about non-free software when we made the text of Wikipedia available for download in TomeRaider format? Was that a mistake? Now that I have drawn attention to it, should we delete it from our servers and then burn the hard drives that held it in a purification ritual?
We are supporting free software by fully supporting a complete free software stack in the client, and by using free software in the server. It would not help our mission to support free software in this third way -- by boycotting non-free client systems.
-- Tim Starling
I'm reply to this message to agree with everything in it. Tim makes many of the exact points I was about to start penning, but more eloquently (including the IE example).
Allowing Proprietary Flash clients to display our Free OGG content is a Good Thing, even if we have to transcode to flv to get it there. Playback is not a zero sum game -- we can support different clients. Let's not get pretend this is the same as supporting FLV as a native file format -- it's not. It's only about playback.
Also, I'm shaky on details, but I believe gnash player supports having video streams as ogg theora? It would make a lot of sense to support Ogg "embedded" in Flash. However, the only reference I can find to ogg theora on the gnash website is within source code. Hmm..
Peter Halasz [[User:Pengo]]