[Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Wikipedia Invites Users to Take Part in Open, Collaborative Video Experiment

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Jan 19, 2008 4:13 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 1/19/08, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My understanding is that Michael Dale was told that Wikimedia would be
> > using Kaltura and that it might consider metavid some day 'in the
> > future'.
>
> We've made no firm commitment to using Kaltura anywhere. This is the
> problem with speculation about leaked presentations:

Not about leaked presentations, you've ignored the rest of what I said.
About the impression that you have given other people, and about what
the planned press release your partner was circulating.

It's an impression you created, if that was an error, or a
misunderstanding. Great. There is no reason to be otherwise defensive.

You need to start working to correct it, because this misconception is
appearing on news sites like wildfire. For example:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/17/kaltura-partners-to-add-crowdsourced-video-to-wikipedia/

> > Many months ago I asked if I could travel to Australia (on my own
> > dime, none the less) to attend FOMS for Wikimedia.
>
> Whom did you ask?

*You*.

I think I've said before that I am very frustrated by this
organizations non-responsiveness,  and failure to meet commitments.
It's a near constant problem, which only appears to be getting worse
over time.

> > Correct. Yet WMF is putting our press releases and calling for
> > community help with one and not the other.
>
> I'd be happy to have an open-ended discussion with Michael about ways
> we can drive open source interest in the project.

And other projects?   The point is that Wikimedia hasn't. It's managed
to give people the impression that it is too busy to work on these
things. It manages to give *me* the impression that it is too busy to
work with me.

And perhaps it is too busy, but if thats the case then it puts the lie
to the claim that working with one party does not preclude working
with others.

Many projects we could and should be working with have existed for
years. Some have approached us. Some have submitted code, only to have
it bit-rot and be forgotten.

[snip]
> Wikimedia should always be accessible (including full participation)
> to people using only free software.

This much has universal agreement.  But you are advocating an approach
which does not place users of free system as equals, see below.

> That makes sense -- because
> otherwise, projects like OLPC would run into problems when they want
> to access our content. One of the ongoing discussions we've had is
> whether it's OK or not to make things easy & friendly for people using
> proprietary systems (i.e. the vast majority of web users).

It's not okay for things for people to have to choose if they want
freedom or ease of use.

If the free things are not easy, then they are not really free. They
come with a price: the price is that you and all your friends must be
techno-geeks for you to enjoy freedom. This isn't an acceptable
situation.

It's also a situation which doesn't have to last: It is completely
solved by avoiding the proprietary formats and helping the free
formats become mainstream and gain adoption. So long as you continue
to use the proprietary formats you are increasing their dominance
through network-effects.

Getting over the hump has a cost, it requires building critical mass.
But once it is done .. it's done.

I'm harping on it, but I'm not sure I've been heard: Once a format is
truly free, once it has reasonable support and adoption, non-free
formats just can't compete. The network effects are just too strong,
free is too attractive a price, and freedom creates too much agility.
This is why no one is promoting proprietary alternatives to JPG or
HTML.

> My position
> has been consistently that we should at the very least get a good
> evaluation of the cost of choosing not to support proprietary systems.

The words "choosing not to support proprietary systems" is a little
misleading.  Proprietary systems can a very frequently do read free
formats, while the inverse is usually not true.

But I get what you are saying.  We should know the cost of not
distributing proprietary formated files to our users.  I agree that we
should,  and would even if no one was advocating that we should do
otherwise.

Measuring performance is good.   I can't measure the success rate of
the existing video player anymore, because it's been moved into the
software proper (and I suspect the performance is somewhat different
now due to bugs created and bugs removed).

We should also do some interpolation into the future in our
measurements.   Firefox will ship integrated support for free formats
(our use, around the time you first advocated switching to flash,
played some role in that too :) ).   A past estimate is that ~46% of
our http requests come from Firefox users. (though the number is
probably biased because editors make more requests than most people).
So that will be an additional group of users who gain robust support
for free video/audio added to the groups that get support via Java,
VLC, QT or other means.


> WMF is not the Free Software Foundation;

Indeed, it is not, which is why I don't really understand the call of
victory for getting a startup video app to release some source. It's
nice, but I don't think that it's especially important to what we are
doing.

> our core mission isn't to
> promote free video & audio formats.

No, but it is to part of the effective mission to build a world where
users have free knoweldge and the freedom to use it however they want.
And without effectively free video/audio, they can't get there.

Imagine. I take some Wikimedia content. I build something new.  I go
to distribute my results.  I can now choose between the freedom of a
free format, or after paying some fees and accepting some restrictions
I can putting up something that joe-average can easily view.   Having
to make that choice is not freedom.

In that situation there is no free format.

Today, free media formats are not that bad off: By last measure the
stuff we were doing was working for a good majority of people.

But they are not quite yet up to the point where they are fully free
in practice, and I can tell this because you are taking about the cost
of not using proprietary formats.  If free formats were widely enough
adopted you wouldn't be advocating anything else.

Wikimedia is in a position to drive the adoption of free formats, and
has already done a tremendous amount of work already in making that
happen.

Beyond that, our community has direct with parallel distribution which
hasn't worked too well... The Wikipedia weekly podcasts were offered
off site in AAC/MP3/ and Ogg (AAC was required in order for the itunes
stuff to work with it).   Very frequently the ogg version would be
broken or down for weeks at a time, not due to any fault in the Ogg
software, but simply because most of the users would just click the
mp3 link and go on with life.  (it's also the case that the ogg
formats were transcoded from one of the other compressed formats and
was lower quality, etc)

And this is not some crime on our part: Supporting lots of things is
hard and no one does it well.

The cheapest, and best, option long term is to support movement in a
direction which will not require us to offer multiple overlapping
options.  Free formats are the only solution to achieve that, since
they can be adopted by everyone, and always are once they are
sufficiently successful.

> So does, in my opinion, making it easy
> for users of proprietary systems to access our content and to
> participate in its development.

It really is a false notion that proprietary systems can't read free
formats. Please avoid making that claim. It's very harmful because
that wrong position is easily extended to the wrong position that I
would advocate excluding users of proprietary software!

> In the last few discussions we've had about this issue, you've
> consistently taken the side of what I deem isolationism:

Ahem. What you "deem".  You've in the past made it quite clear to me
that you dismiss my views as isolationist, zealotry, and failures to
assume good faith. It makes it very difficult to discuss anything with
you.

Rather than attacking my motives and character, can we please limit
ourselves to discussing that which can be objectively discussed?

> against
> Creative Commons,

I'm not against "Creative Commons", for it's too amorphous a group for
almost anyone to be clearly against it.

I'm against some of the confusion that they create, I'm against some
of their proposals. I'm against some of their techniques. I enjoy the
things they do well. I'm against the idea that you must agree with all
of something because part of it is really good. I'm am far from alone.

Many of the arguments I've made on that subject are ones which you,
yourself, have made in the past.

If you'd like to point out where I appeared to be simply "against
Creative Commons", I'd be glad to further explain the nuance of my
position.

> against parallel distribution,

The arguments I've leveled against parallel distribution are not
unique to me.  I think that there it is an important issue to discuss,
other people seem to agree. I welcome you to discuss it further.  ...
Simply claiming that I am "against parallel distribution" as though
that makes me a bad guy and walking away isn't fair.

Yes, I'm against it.. I am because I have a arguments to support that
it is usually harmful to our mission, and whenever it is not harmful
it is not needed.

Parallel distribution in proprietary formats has many similar to
arguments against it as parallel distribution option as an option in
anti-DRM clauses in free content licenses, which is the established
precedent there. Though I think those are also positions you don't
agree with.

It my view it's much more important to use only free formats, than any
use of free software.  The reason for this is simple, when you choose
not to use free software it is a personal choice and you accept the
results.  When you choose to offer non-free formats you remove the
incentive for people to adopt and support less popular free formats.
While a free formats is a niche player people will constant feel
forced to use them by factors outside of their control. Only through
rejecting non-free formats will we see the adoption grow to the point
where all people will have the freedom to choose free formats.

> and now against
> working with a company that wants to embrace open source & open
> standards as best they can.

I think I made my fond wishes for Kaltura clear in my prior message.
I'm not against them. I'm against us sending proprietary files out to
the public.  If the office wants to use proprietary files, great, but
what we put out to the public has serious long term implications.

I'm sad that Kaltura is caught in the cross-fire.

I'm also unhappy that Wikimedia has not first given attention and
energy into promoting our own users, and existing open external
efforts. That isn't Kaltura's fault at all.

I'm unhappy that despite prior discussions, staff is acting like
people finding proprietary formats is a surprise.

And yes, you hear me say a lot when I am against something. But it's
not because I am some huge ball of negativity, but because if you are
doing things I agree with I don't need to say anything at all!

[snip]
> I expect that the Foundation will get flak
> from both camps regularly, both of them making apocalyptic predictions
> of our future. It's like Wikipedia itself -- as long as it's seen as
> both a vast right wing conspiracy and a bunch of liberal treehuggers,
> we're probably doing okay. :-)

The danger here is that "both sides" may still also say you are doing
wrong when you are doing wrong.
The world does not divide neatly into little binary boxes.