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

[David Gerard]

2008/9/28 Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com>:

> Unfortunately there's some reluctance right now to supporting Theora
> natively and by default in some browsers, like Safari, due to the risk
> of submarine patents.


Well, that's what Apple and Nokia say. Nokia also tried to advance the
odious and bare-faced lie that Ogg Theora and Vorbis was a proprietary
format (and thus MPEG-4 formats were a much better idea), so for some
reason I'm reluctant to ascribe an excess of good faith to either
company on this one.

I think that if users start thinking they suck for not providing
Theora/Vorbis, their business interest will convince them to join the
party soon enough. There's no way it's worth us compromising one jot
in this regard.


>  But those browsers can still use Cortado just
> fine, so again, no users lost.


Particularly as Java is part of Mac OS X. (Not iPhone, but being left
behind is what Apple get for trying to implement Trusted Computing.)


> Everyone's aware that Wikimedia supports Theora, and it *has* made a
> difference.  But video on Wikipedia is hardly so make-or-break that we
> could strongarm anyone into supporting our format of choice --


I did expressly ask whether we count as a large enough content
provider, Hixie said "no." So obviously we need more and better video
content ;-D


- d.