[Foundation-l] We should permit Flash video playback

[Stephen Bain]

On 7/20/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> What it does say is that it is our mission to "to disseminate
> [educational content] _effectively_ and globally" (emphasis mine).

Don't abbreviate it to "educational content" like that. It's
"educational content under a free license or in the public domain". If
you're going to quote the mission statement to support your argument,
quote it accurately.

On 7/20/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> I think we should simply ask the current patent holders whether they
> would grant us non-commercial rights to use the relevant codecs. Yes,
> such rights won't trickle down to third parties, but we would offer
> the Theora files and promote Theora for this reason. The right could
> be time-limited, and renegotiated regularly.

Why should the Foundation expend its efforts and its goodwill to
achieve this when we could devote those same efforts and goodwill to
achieving greater support for free formats?

If we're spending time talking to all of these organisations about
working with us, should we not even consider talking to Adobe about
facilitating free format support in Flash?

On 7/20/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> I'm 100% in support of "pushing unencumbered formats", but not at the
> expense of usability for the majority of users.

Then I really have to ask, what are you doing on the board of one of
the largest free content organisations around? Your goal should be to
do everything possible to make free content usable for the majority of
users.

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com