[Foundation-l] Freedom, standards, and file formats

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Would you agree that it has not been done because it is not productive ?
Thanks,
       GerardM

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 12:18 AM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Brion Vibber <brion at wikimedia.org> wrote:
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> > David Gerard wrote:
> >> 2008/10/3 Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>:
> >>
> >>> Also, I may see that Erik Zachte made good dynamic statistics without
> >>> using Flash (and without SVG, as far as I understand).
> >>
> >>
> >> The <canvas> element of HTML5, in Firefox. That's what all the cool
> >> browsers are doing these days.
> >
> > Which was my example of a preferred target technology. :)
>
> Right.
> I wouldn't be opposed to using flash to run a drop-in <canvas>
> emulator (providing the emulator flash file itself was free software)
> for features where the rest of the code is regular old JS which ran
> without flash on modern browsers.
>
> The important distinction currently between a flash video player and a
> <canvas> emulator is that the canvas emulator would be an option open
> to everyone at no cost while a flash video player currently requires
> codecs that require licensing due to patents. (For the codecs fees
> must be paid for encoders, decoders, and for usage of the encoded
> files).
>
> So even if the use of the canvas emulator misses an opportunity to
> encourage people to install a <canvas> supporting browser that does
> not costs anyone their freedom or leaving anyone feeling forced to
> spend money. Any website could throw up the same JS code that uses the
> native HTML or free softwareFlash Canvas and pay fees to no one and be
> at no risk of litigation.
>
> Those sorts of usage usually don't create any additional accessibility
> problems, nor create any materil security problems.
>
> So yea, I agree that there could be possibly reasonable uses of Flash,
> which was exactly why I singled out flash video in my initial post in
> this thread.  Such uses, which run afoul of no patents nor involve any
> proprietary-only features wouldn't be prohibited by the proposed file
> format resolution (as members of the subset of flash files which are
> not proprietary nor require unavailable codec patents). Sadly, Video
> is not currently one of them but it's the use of Flash everyone but
> Brion thinks of. ;)
>
> Though I do wonder how many of the other uses would ever happen and
> how many are just idle speculation:  For example we've had a Java bulk
> uploader (commonist) for *years* which could be web-started with
> nearly zero effort (throw the jar onto upload, and the rest could be
> done from sitejs) and make bulk uploading much easier. ... Yet, it
> hasn't been done.
>
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