[Foundation-l] We should permit Flash video playback

[Tim Starling]

Ben McIlwain wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
[...]
>> You don't need permission. At most you need a patent license, but MPEG LA
>> don't charge for noncommercial use of open source encoders, and they don't
>> charge for "free internet broadcast" either.
> 
> Since when has non-commercial ever been good enough for Wikipedia?
> Non-commercial restrictions go fundamentally against the nature of free
> content.  What good is it if we can do the transcoding because we're
> non-commercial, but most of our mirrors can't?  Using proprietary
> formats puts all sorts of restrictions and limitations on how our
> content can be used by others, and that is unacceptable.

It's not the content that has a non-commercial restriction, it's the
encoder license. It's a different thing. Our mirrors can serve content in
Ogg Theora format if that's what they want to do. It's not a restriction
to add support for another client, it's the removal of a restriction.

-- Tim Starling