[Wikipedia-l] Ogg as standard + some thoughts on going completely free (GNU flag waving alert)

[Daniel Mayer]

On Wednesday 24 July 2002 05:56 pm, LDC wrote:
> A timely announcement: Xiph and Real just announced that they will be
> collaborating to make Ogg Vorbis plugins for RealPlayer and other
> software.  Since it's now standard in WinAmp as well, I now see no
> reason at all to use any other format.

I enthusiastically 100% agree. <emphasis>We should do ///everything/// 
reasonable in our power to promote free (libre) file formats.</emphasis> 
This is especially true nowadays when the companies that control the 
predominant proprietary file formats are trying to wrest even more control 
over media files. We have established a fairly significant web presense and I 
do believe our choice to go completely free would not go unfelt or unnoticed. 
 
We could even decide to do the same for png/jpg and other cases where there 
are totally valid and functional free (libre) alternatives to proprietary 
file formats. We could even draft a press release for this and get some well 
deserved publicity. Of course, we would have to systematically convert all 
that we currently have (at least plan to do so eventually).

On Wednesday 24 July 2002 05:56 pm, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> I have it in no other format. Do you know of a program that converts Real
> Audio into something else?
>
> phma

If we do go this route, we must provide pointers to people where and how they 
can convert their audio files (I'm pretty sure conversion of jpegs to pngs 
could be done on the fly by the server using a GIMP script -- doing the same 
for sound files would be too CPU intensive). This will probably have a side 
effect of reducing the number of sound files uploaded to wikipedia but I say 
so be it for the greater good. 

--mav