On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 1:47 AM, Leslie Carr lcarr@wikimedia.org wrote:
Since such a huge market share basically requires H.264 encoding, I think we should bite the bullet and go for it. If suddenly they start charging, we can drop it immediately.
Those accessing Wikimedia in the browser, yes.
It does seem to be possible to support alternative codecs in software within apps. Here is one example:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id406779775
VLC player also used to be available though it was pulled due to a clash between the code's GPL license and the App Store terms of service, it seems:
http://www.macnn.com/articles/11/01/07/move.said.to.be.related.to.licensing....
It would seem possible to bake Theora or WebM support into the iOS app and direct users there if browsing from mobile Safari. Performance would not be so great given it would only be software decoding (this is why I was asking if anyone is aware of OpenCL decoders).