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

[John Vandenberg]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 6:59 AM, Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net> wrote:
> I mentioned earlier that I wanted to discuss open standards and file
> formats in advance of the next board meeting. I'd especially like to
> look at how these issues relate to our mission. There are a variety of
> questions involved, which I'll summarize in terms of freedom - the
> freedom that providing access to knowledge can give the recipient, and
> the freedom that avoiding intellectual property restrictions can give
> our culture generally. I trust we'd all agree both of these are positive
> things in line with the Wikimedia Foundation's mission, which is what
> makes it difficult if we have to choose between them.
>
> The more we move beyond simple text, the more intellectual property
> restrictions expand beyond simple copyright to increasing complexity
> (multiple rightsholders, patents, DRM, trademarks, database rights).
> Sometimes these things can be fairly benign, to the extent of being at
> least gratis-free, especially at the "consumer" level. Perhaps in terms
> of our effort to provide access to knowledge, they might not impose any
> real restrictions, except in extreme edge cases. But so far, we have a
> pretty strong commitment to absolute freedom, even with respect to areas
> that don't directly impact our work.
>
> To illustrate this with an example, maybe not the best but one that
> comes up often enough, consider video file formats. (Some of this is
> beyond my technical expertise, so please forgive any misstatements.)
> Adobe Flash has widespread adoption to the point of being
> near-universal. The company has also been moving to make it more open
> for people watching, distributing, and working on content in this
> environment. It's close to free, but I understand there are still some
> issues like patent "encumbrances" around Flash. Meanwhile, there are
> pure free software formats that do similar things but have pretty
> limited adoption.
>
> This brings up a number of questions. First of all, how important is
> multimedia content to us in general? Considering both the investment to
> create it and the environment in which it's produced, historically it's
> a lot less amenable to free licensing. It's still useful, no doubt, but
> what measures should we take to promote it?
>
> Back to the two manifestations of freedom I mentioned, how should we
> balance those? One possibility that's been raised is to allow Flash
> content so long as we require that it be encoded and distributed in a
> truly free format as well. Is that sort of approach an acceptable
> compromise? It would make it much easier to achieve wide distribution of
> free content, while still making sure that it's also available
> completely without restrictions, for those who find that important. Are
> there situations in which this compromise doesn't work out for some
> reason? Why? (And none of this has to be limited to the Flash video
> example, discussion of other formats and standards is welcome.)
>
> In dealing with the limited adoption of certain free formats, some
> people have advocated a more evangelistic approach, if you will. Given
> the reach of Wikipedia in particular, it's suggested that our policy
> could push wider adoption of these formats. That may be, but the
> question is, how much is that push worth? What are the prospects for
> making those formats readable in the average reader's environment, and
> encouraging wider use as a standard? Does an uncompromising approach
> result in significant progress, or would we simply be marginalizing the
> impact of our work? And is it worth the "sacrifice" of the many people
> who would miss out on some of the knowledge we're sharing, because the
> free format isn't accessible to them? (That's also partly a problem of
> disseminating knowledge, of course.)

Free formats _can_ be accessible to anyone, however proprietary
formats are by definition unable to be accessed by everyone, and
especially not to those who tinker and create new devices, like OLPC.

> If we adopt a compromise position
> as described earlier, how much do we lose in terms of promoting the
> freer formats?

An uncompromising approach results in better adoption of free formats,
which in turn result in better quality software to access those
formats.  The result is information that is actually free and easy to
use, now and in the future.  We haven't needed to compromise yet; why
start now?

Video is a problem, but Flash is not the answer.  The ability to
upload files greater than 20Mb is the most prominent hurdle in that
department.

Angr has a very nice parable about compromise on his user page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angr

--
John