[Foundation-l] We should permit Flash video playback

[Stephen Bain]

On 7/21/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> 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.

No, Erik is not suggesting using non-free formats exclusively, just
structuring all new content delivery capabilities around non-free
formats.

> 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?

An analogy that is closer to what I was trying to say would be putting
the whole of the next hardware purchase into serving a Word Document
version of Wikipedia.

My point is that if we are considering adding capabilities for
delivering video, we should be adding to our free format capability.
Formats like FLV could be an option in parallel, but they should not
be our first option.

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com