REMINDER - TODAY!
I will be hosting a live Skypecast of a conversation/interview with Brad Patrick and Danny Wool of the Wikimedia Foundation on Friday, August 25, 2006 at 11 am EST. All are welcome to join (using Skype), and also to chime in with questions. Find details on the Skypecast here.
Full details: http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2006/08/24/skypecast-wikipedia-conversation-fr...
Skypecast details: https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk=2906...
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
LONG: I'm in St. Petersburg, Florida, as part of research on a book about Wikipedia, and wanted to interview both Brad and Danny. I figured, why don't we do a "radio-like" show with us in the Wikimedia Foundation offices, and community members can chime in as well? Brad Patrick is the general counsel and interim executive director of the WMF, and Danny Wool is a longtime Wikipedian and holds the position of grants officer. Among the things we'll discuss (but we want audience participation):
What does the WMF office do? Who are the people in the office? What is the difference between Wikimedia and Wikipedia? What happens on a day to day basis in the office? Where are the Wikimedia servers? What can the WMF staff do to help the Wikimedia projects? What are the challenges for the future for WMF?
Please feel free to add comments/questions here, or listen live via Skype and you can "Request the microphone" just like a radio call-in show. We will try to let as many participants chime in.
The time was chosen so that it occurs when most folks are awake - 11pm in East Asia, 9pm in Moscow, 4/5pm in Europe, 11am in Eastern US, 8am in Western US. If you cannot join online, I plan to make a podcast available.
Caveat: This is the first Skypecast we're hosting so please be patient if at 11am we are still working out some kinks.
Will there be any way to record this conversation and upload it to Commons? I'm not all that familiar with Skype, so I don't know if it's even possible. But this might be something worthwhile to make available to everybody, especially since not every person will have the option of tuning into the Skypecast for various reasons, regardless of if they wanted to.
Z
On 8/25/06, Ryan Dabler zhaladshar@gmail.com wrote:
Will there be any way to record this conversation and upload it to Commons? I'm not all that familiar with Skype, so I don't know if it's even possible. But this might be something worthwhile to make available to everybody, especially since not every person will have the option of tuning into the Skypecast for various reasons, regardless of if they wanted to.
On 8/25/06, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
If you cannot join online, I plan to make a podcast available.
Austin
On 8/25/06, Austin Hair adhair@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/25/06, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
If you cannot join online, I plan to make a podcast available.
I had assume that, like Wikimania 2006, this means that it will be available in every format except the ones useful to users of free software.
On 8/25/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
I had assume that, like Wikimania 2006, this means that it will be available in every format except the ones useful to users of free software.
Unfortunately, one limitation of HLS's video setup was that the live stream was only available in Real format. We are, however, going out of our way to make sure that when the recordings are made available, it will be in a Free format—this is, in fact, the reason we don't have them yet.
Audio recordings were posted as soon as humanly possible in their original format, MP3, a format readily understood by a wide variety of free software players. If you mean "patent-free" in addition to your "free software" constraint, however, converted Vorbis files exist also.
Austin
On 8/25/06, Austin Hair adhair@gmail.com wrote:
Unfortunately, one limitation of HLS's video setup was that the live stream was only available in Real format. We are, however, going out of our way to make sure that when the recordings are made available, it will be in a Free format—this is, in fact, the reason we don't have them yet.
Audio recordings were posted as soon as humanly possible in their original format, MP3, a format readily understood by a wide variety of free software players. If you mean "patent-free" in addition to your "free software" constraint, however, converted Vorbis files exist also.
As someone who lives in the US I can not legally use the free software MP3 software.
Most of the Wikimania audio on the site (http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Archives) is only available in MP3, and the few vorbis files available that I've heard are very low quality (due to transcoding a lower quality MP3 into a lower quality Ogg).
It is my understanding that the person who did the Ogg streaming at WM2005 (which worked brilliantly) had offered his services at WM2006, but I'm not sure what happened.
We have people in our community who have experience with large scale streaming and media events using both free software and proprietary software... I'm not sure why we seem to be doing such a poor job delegating.
As we've seen with the (lack of) success with today's skypecast, simply using whatever proprietary toys we have laying on our desks is probably not a good solution.
On 8/25/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
As someone who lives in the US I can not legally use the free software MP3 software.
Of course you can. Hell, it's even included in the base Debian repository (not non-US/non-free).
Most of the Wikimania audio on the site (http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Archives) is only available in MP3, and the few vorbis files available that I've heard are very low quality (due to transcoding a lower quality MP3 into a lower quality Ogg).
They're not on that page, but they do exist; I'll ask around for you. Or you could get one of your non-free friends to transcode them.
It is my understanding that the person who did the Ogg streaming at WM2005 (which worked brilliantly) had offered his services at WM2006, but I'm not sure what happened.
Kyle did an excellent job last year, and I'm sure he could have done even more this year if we'd given him the resources. See below.
We have people in our community who have experience with large scale streaming and media events using both free software and proprietary software... I'm not sure why we seem to be doing such a poor job delegating.
It's not a matter of delegation, it's a simple cost-benefit analysis. Our arrangement with HLS AV gave us much better coverage than last year, and at no cost to us. We could have taken our $10,000 budget for bringing Wikimedians from elsewhere in the world and sunk it into providing live Vorbis streams of every room, but what would that have given us? A warm, fuzzy feeling for being slightly Freer?
It would have been nice to have live coverage of every room, I'll grant, but a delay of a few hours isn't that bad, and the program team was very good about putting events of particular interest in rooms with video. Believe it or not, your soul will not burn up if you use Helix player.
As we've seen with the (lack of) success with today's skypecast, simply using whatever proprietary toys we have laying on our desks is probably not a good solution.
I had to leave before the skypecast, unfortunately, but from what I saw it didn't work out very well. In the future, we should certainly leverage all the resources available to us; this said, Andrew was good enough to open up his interview in the first place, and we should applaud the effort. If this were an official WMF Q&A, planned by the Foundation and billed far and wide for live community participation, I would naturally have a different view.
Austin
On 8/25/06, Austin Hair adhair@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/25/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
As someone who lives in the US I can not legally use the free software MP3 software.
Of course you can. Hell, it's even included in the base Debian repository (not non-US/non-free).
Have you consulted with an attorney on this? Because I have and the advice I received with respect to the MP3 patents is different than the advice you're providing.
Most of the Wikimania audio on the site (http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Archives) is only available in MP3, and the few vorbis files available that I've heard are very low quality (due to transcoding a lower quality MP3 into a lower quality Ogg).
They're not on that page, but they do exist; I'll ask around for you. Or you could get one of your non-free friends to transcode them.
It's inappropriate for us to make the files second class citizens, the transcoded ones are fairly low quality. It was a mistake to record directly into MP3 format...
I have made several request to obtain copies of the DV tapes for the sessions that were video taped so that I could make Oggs of the high resolution video and the uncompressed audio. I have offered to pay duplication costs. My requests have been ignored.
and as far as the files go, they don't effectively exist if even *you* can't find them without asking.
We have people in our community who have experience with large scale streaming and media events using both free software and proprietary software... I'm not sure why we seem to be doing such a poor job delegating.
It's not a matter of delegation, it's a simple cost-benefit analysis. Our arrangement with HLS AV gave us much better coverage than last year, and at no cost to us. We could have taken our $10,000 budget for bringing Wikimedians from elsewhere in the world and sunk it into providing live Vorbis streams of every room, but what would that have given us? A warm, fuzzy feeling for being slightly Freer?
How much money would you have required? $10,000 to get all the audio and video from our sessions into completely free formats for both archival and available live use? I could have gotten you that. No one asked. Kyle was standing the the conference *offering* to record unrecorded sessions, I brought microphones and recording gear (with the hopes of doing a wikimedia choral session, but that didn't end up happening).. and no one could confirm that we had *permission* to record the sessions.
It would have been nice to have live coverage of every room, I'll grant, but a delay of a few hours isn't that bad, and the program team was very good about putting events of particular interest in rooms with video. Believe it or not, your soul will not burn up if you use Helix player.
Considering reals trackrecord for spyware on windows, I'm supprised to see anyone advocating their software with a straight face. ... Although the helix player software is not deserving of that, it's still surprising.
I curious though, what incentive do you have to promote propritary software when there are reasonable free alternative available and people willing to invest their time and money into making them work for us?
As we've seen with the (lack of) success with today's skypecast, simply using whatever proprietary toys we have laying on our desks is probably not a good solution.
I had to leave before the skypecast, unfortunately, but from what I saw it didn't work out very well. In the future, we should certainly leverage all the resources available to us; this said, Andrew was good enough to open up his interview in the first place, and we should applaud the effort. If this were an official WMF Q&A, planned by the Foundation and billed far and wide for live community participation, I would naturally have a different view.
Yes, it's was a good idea. Hopefully next time more of the details will be considered. :)
On 8/25/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
I have made several request to obtain copies of the DV tapes for the sessions that were video taped so that I could make Oggs of the high resolution video and the uncompressed audio. I have offered to pay duplication costs. My requests have been ignored.
I never saw any of those requests. And funnily, I am one of those who can grant access to those tapes.
How much money would you have required? $10,000 to get all the audio and video from our sessions into completely free formats for both archival and available live use? I could have gotten you that. No one asked.
No-one proposed either.
Kyle was standing the the conference *offering* to record unrecorded sessions, I brought microphones and recording gear (with the hopes of doing a wikimedia choral session, but that didn't end up happening).. and no one could confirm that we had *permission* to record the sessions.
I must have missed that question too.
It seems Austin did not either. Maybe you should update your address book.
Cheers,
Delphine
On 8/25/06, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/25/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
I have made several request to obtain copies of the DV tapes for the sessions that were video taped so that I could make Oggs of the high resolution video and the uncompressed audio. I have offered to pay duplication costs. My requests have been ignored.
I never saw any of those requests. And funnily, I am one of those who can grant access to those tapes.
I even asked you about it in person at Wikimania on Monday after the conference was over. :-/ I understand that things were busy and stressful. I also followed up in email, right after the conference to the email first mentioning collecting the tapes. In any case, I understand now that someone has the tapes and is transfering them (and encoding them as Theora, etc), so I am glad I asked.
How much money would you have required? $10,000 to get all the audio and video from our sessions into completely free formats for both archival and available live use? I could have gotten you that. No one asked.
No-one proposed either.
The wikimania pages said it would be streamed early on... It wasn't clear, at least to me, that it wasn't all well taken care of.
Kyle was standing the the conference *offering* to record unrecorded sessions, I brought microphones and recording gear (with the hopes of doing a wikimedia choral session, but that didn't end up happening).. and no one could confirm that we had *permission* to record the sessions.
I must have missed that question too.
It seems Austin did not either. Maybe you should update your address book.
I fail to see how updating my address book is going to improve communications with people whom I was standing a few feet away from in the Berkman center. The argument is foolish. Opportunities were missed due to on person in particulars fault but due to the inevitable result of everyone working at capacity.
I've complained less to criticise you or any of the other conference staff, who did an impressive job in many regards, but rather more to make sure people are aware that there are people who care enough to complain, and thus there should be people you can call on to worry about these matters in the future.
On 8/25/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/25/06, Austin Hair adhair@gmail.com wrote:
Of course you can. Hell, it's even included in the base Debian repository (not non-US/non-free).
Have you consulted with an attorney on this? Because I have and the advice I received with respect to the MP3 patents is different than the advice you're providing.
Sure, I've discussed it with several attorneys, and many more have discussed it ad nauseam on the various free software mailing lists. You can read more about MP3's patents and licensing on Wikipedia.
It's inappropriate for us to make the files second class citizens, the transcoded ones are fairly low quality. It was a mistake to record directly into MP3 format...
Harvard's equipment doesn't record Vorbis. It'd be nice if it did, but it doesn't. Sorry.
I have made several request to obtain copies of the DV tapes for the sessions that were video taped so that I could make Oggs of the high resolution video and the uncompressed audio. I have offered to pay duplication costs. My requests have been ignored.
I do not remember hearing such a request from you; I certainly wouldn't have ignored it.
The 17 tapes in question are currently en route to George Chriss, whom you might remember from the conference. He's tasked with processing the tapes and encoding video of each session in Ogg Theora, which will be uploaded to Commons as soon as they're finished. I have every confidence in his abilities.
and as far as the files go, they don't effectively exist if even *you* can't find them without asking.
I've seen the files with my own eyes, but I don't know where they're posted. Obtaining them hasn't been a priority for me, because I have an MP3 player.
How much money would you have required? $10,000 to get all the audio and video from our sessions into completely free formats for both archival and available live use? I could have gotten you that. No one asked. Kyle was standing the the conference *offering* to record unrecorded sessions, I brought microphones and recording gear (with the hopes of doing a wikimedia choral session, but that didn't end up happening).. and no one could confirm that we had *permission* to record the sessions.
You're right, we never asked you. We're good, but we're not clairvoyant.
Everyone was welcome to make their own recordings, as I told everyone who asked me. Many people did.
It would have been nice to have live coverage of every room, I'll grant, but a delay of a few hours isn't that bad, and the program team was very good about putting events of particular interest in rooms with video. Believe it or not, your soul will not burn up if you use Helix player.
Considering reals trackrecord for spyware on windows, I'm supprised to see anyone advocating their software with a straight face. ... Although the helix player software is not deserving of that, it's still surprising.
I curious though, what incentive do you have to promote propritary software when there are reasonable free alternative available and people willing to invest their time and money into making them work for us?
Real gave us $100,000, to be split amongst the conference organizers as we pleased. And we would've gotten away with it, too...
I never suggested that you use RealPlayer, and I'm not even advocating the use of the Real format. Although I don't object to non-free software on principle, I absolutely believe that the formats used for information exchange should be free, and I was very disappointed to learn that Real was the only option for the live streams. Being practical, however, I was consoled by the knowledge that they would be archived in Ogg Theora for posterity, whatever it took to make that happen.
It's fine to talk about could haves and should haves now, but the fact is, we never heard from you before the conference. In the end, I think we still made out okay.
Austin
On 8/25/06, Austin Hair adhair@gmail.com wrote:
Sure, I've discussed it with several attorneys, and many more have discussed it ad nauseam on the various free software mailing lists. You can read more about MP3's patents and licensing on Wikipedia.
If we're going to being trying to argue from authority on this matter I must caution you that I almost certantly outrank you on this subject.
I frankly do not see how that line of debate is actually going to be productive. Instead we should focus on pratical issues which are material to the foundation.
It's inappropriate for us to make the files second class citizens, the transcoded ones are fairly low quality. It was a mistake to record directly into MP3 format...
Harvard's equipment doesn't record Vorbis. It'd be nice if it did, but it doesn't. Sorry.
Where did I say that they should record in vorbis? I think that would have been a mistake as well (although, a preferable mistake had it been an option, just as recording to higher bitrate MP3 would have been a preferable mistake). The audio should have been recorded as raw PCM. This is a fairly standard pratice. Total audio for all the sessions would have been under 24 GB.
I have made several request to obtain copies of the DV tapes for the sessions that were video taped so that I could make Oggs of the high resolution video and the uncompressed audio. I have offered to pay duplication costs. My requests have been ignored.
I do not remember hearing such a request from you; I certainly wouldn't have ignored it.
The 17 tapes in question are currently en route to George Chriss, whom you might remember from the conference. He's tasked with processing the tapes and encoding video of each session in Ogg Theora, which will be uploaded to Commons as soon as they're finished. I have every confidence in his abilities.
Indeed, he emailed me after my post. I'm glad to hear that it's being taken care of.
and as far as the files go, they don't effectively exist if even *you* can't find them without asking.
I've seen the files with my own eyes, but I don't know where they're posted. Obtaining them hasn't been a priority for me, because I have an MP3 player.
How much money would you have required? $10,000 to get all the audio and video from our sessions into completely free formats for both archival and available live use? I could have gotten you that. No one asked. Kyle was standing the the conference *offering* to record unrecorded sessions, I brought microphones and recording gear (with the hopes of doing a wikimedia choral session, but that didn't end up happening).. and no one could confirm that we had *permission* to record the sessions.
You're right, we never asked you. We're good, but we're not clairvoyant.
Everyone was welcome to make their own recordings, as I told everyone who asked me. Many people did.
I stood with Kyle and asked if we had permission to record, you told us you'd get back to us. I guess it was a misunderstanding.
I curious though, what incentive do you have to promote propritary software when there are reasonable free alternative available and people willing to invest their time and money into making them work for us?
Real gave us $100,000, to be split amongst the conference organizers as we pleased. And we would've gotten away with it, too...
hah. Come on, I wasn't intending to imply anything like that. :)
I never suggested that you use RealPlayer, and I'm not even advocating the use of the Real format. Although I don't object to non-free software on principle, I absolutely believe that the formats used for information exchange should be free, and I was very disappointed to learn that Real was the only option for the live streams. Being practical, however, I was consoled by the knowledge that they would be archived in Ogg Theora for posterity, whatever it took to make that happen.
It's fine to talk about could haves and should haves now, but the fact is, we never heard from you before the conference. In the end, I think we still made out okay.
Well you certantly would have heard from me had I not given the impression that everything was taken care of...
I'll agree that we made out okay once the files are actually up on the site. Had the files actually made it up by now (rather than the mismarsh of formats we have now), you never would have heard a peep fom me.
Incidentally, have you noticed the jOrbis (Java Ogg/Vorbis player) links on the wikimania media archive page? I think thats a pretty good move, and a reasonable stopgap until we get the proper player support in mediawiki.
On 8/25/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
As we've seen with the (lack of) success with today's skypecast, simply using whatever proprietary toys we have laying on our desks is probably not a good solution.
I'm all with you Greg (in general) but today's problems was simple - the network in the building has been crapola all day starting from 8:30am when Danny called me. Even right now, Michael Davis, Brad Patrick, Danny Wool and I are sipping up a minute of connectivity for every five minutes of downtime.
No free, commercial, communist, capitalist, oligarchal software can broadcast with a severed connection.
We can argue the merits of the free software on its own terms, but dumping on the technical merits of Skypecasting because of a lame ISP isn't fair.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
Gregory Maxwell schreef:
Most of the Wikimania audio on the site (http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Archives) is only available in MP3, and the few vorbis files available that I've heard are very low quality (due to transcoding a lower quality MP3 into a lower quality Ogg).
Most of these few Ogg Vorbis recordings there have I recorded. And the are the only recording availbel for some of the most interesting sessions like the "Wikimedia Foundation Board Panel" or "Wikimedia Foundation: building in diversity"
The are made from the RealMedia live-stream, played with gxine and recorded with Audacity and exported to Ogg Vorbis on a gnu/linux computer powered with green electricity. The are not transcoded from mp3 to Ogg Vrobis.
So far I see on the list there are no transcoded recordings on the archive page. There are only mp3 recordings or Ogg Vorbis present, and not both for the same sessions.
On 8/25/06, Walter Vermeir walter@wikipedia.be wrote:
Most of these few Ogg Vorbis recordings there have I recorded. And the are the only recording availbel for some of the most interesting sessions like the "Wikimedia Foundation Board Panel" or "Wikimedia Foundation: building in diversity"
The are made from the RealMedia live-stream, played with gxine and recorded with Audacity and exported to Ogg Vorbis on a gnu/linux computer powered with green electricity. The are not transcoded from mp3 to Ogg Vrobis.
So far I see on the list there are no transcoded recordings on the archive page. There are only mp3 recordings or Ogg Vorbis present, and not both for the same sessions.
Someone sent me a transcoded Ogg of the arbcom panel which sounded terrible, as typical for a low bitrate ogg transcoded from a low bitrate MP3.
I intended no insult to your files, although I had assumed they would be just as bad. :)
Walter Vermeir wrote:
Gregory Maxwell schreef:
Most of the Wikimania audio on the site (http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Archives) is only available in MP3, and the few vorbis files available that I've heard are very low quality (due to transcoding a lower quality MP3 into a lower quality Ogg).
Most of these few Ogg Vorbis recordings there have I recorded. And the are the only recording availbel for some of the most interesting sessions like the "Wikimedia Foundation Board Panel" or "Wikimedia Foundation: building in diversity"
Which reminds me:
Walter have made ''an audio recording with fragments from talks from Wikimania who I believe can be interesting for candidates for the board. It is Jimbo and Anthere giving comments about this election, the current situation with the board and the future of the board.''
*http://tinyurl.com/rdnxu - Ogg Vorbis 11,9Mb 32min *http://tinyurl.com/s2j66 - Webbased Player playing the same file
-----------
Actually, I somehow lost (?) the software which allowed me to read the ogg files, so I heard the second link.
I'll be interested in being recommanded a software to read the ogg file (which will be 1) free of charge and 2) for a macintosh).
Greg, can you help ?
Anthere
The are made from the RealMedia live-stream, played with gxine and recorded with Audacity and exported to Ogg Vorbis on a gnu/linux computer powered with green electricity. The are not transcoded from mp3 to Ogg Vrobis.
So far I see on the list there are no transcoded recordings on the archive page. There are only mp3 recordings or Ogg Vorbis present, and not both for the same sessions.
Anthere schreef:
Actually, I somehow lost (?) the software which allowed me to read the ogg files, so I heard the second link.
I'll be interested in being recommanded a software to read the ogg file (which will be 1) free of charge and 2) for a macintosh).
Greg, can you help ?
Anthere
The only Macintosh I have is an antique. But so far I know the recommended player for playing Ogg Vorbis on Mac, at least if it is MacOS X, is VLC; http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html
That is a very advanced player&more but you can also use it for playing a Ogg Vorbis file.
My apologies btw for the hard words in the email to otrs-en-l I did not knew it was you :-)
Greetings, Walter
Walter Vermeir wrote:
Anthere schreef:
Actually, I somehow lost (?) the software which allowed me to read the ogg files, so I heard the second link.
I'll be interested in being recommanded a software to read the ogg file (which will be 1) free of charge and 2) for a macintosh).
Greg, can you help ?
Anthere
The only Macintosh I have is an antique. But so far I know the recommended player for playing Ogg Vorbis on Mac, at least if it is MacOS X, is VLC; http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html
I downloaded two, one from a link Michael Bimmler gave me (Cog) and VLC.
Both are working, so all is cool !
Thanks
That is a very advanced player&more but you can also use it for playing a Ogg Vorbis file.
My apologies btw for the hard words in the email to otrs-en-l I did not knew it was you :-)
You were correct anyway.
ant
Greetings, Walter
On 8/25/06, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
REMINDER - TODAY!
I will be hosting a live Skypecast of a conversation/interview with Brad Patrick and Danny Wool of the Wikimedia Foundation on Friday, August 25, 2006 at 11 am EST. All are welcome to join (using Skype), and also to chime in with questions. Find details on the Skypecast here.
Do we have any solutions for people who run computers with only free software?
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org