[Gllug] [Fwd: [piksel] Outrageous disaster: Ogg/Vorbis spec taken out of HTML-5]

[Richard Huxton]

salsaman at xs4all.nl wrote:
> On Tue, December 18, 2007 19:10, Richard Huxton wrote:
>> The thing is, I've not seen anyone come up with a good reason why Apple
>> & Nokia *should* back Ogg/etc. It's not easy for me to see what they (or
>> for that matter anyone outside of the "free from patents" community) get
>> from it.
> 
> Because they are supposedly helping to create the HTML standard, a
> standard which exists for the benefit of the world, not for the benefit of
> one or two software companies.

And they're providing their viewpoint, which (presumably) differs from 
yours. The HTML standards are there to help interoperability rather than 
benefit the world (we're not talking about keeping Aids drugs expensive 
here). They're building browsers and I'm not, which is why they get a vote.

The problem is that you and I can see the value in free codecs, but if 
you round down to the nearest 1% then there are *no* users of 
Ogg/Vorbis. There are no compelling technical advantages of the format 
over (already implemented, supported and widely used) rivals. There is 
no guarantee that that format is patent-free, and per-unit it costs 
these companies next to nothing to licence MP3 (which would be the 
logical audio standard).

So what would Apple and Nokia gain by implementing, supporting (and 
possibly defending in court) these codecs?

-- 
   Richard Huxton
   Archonet Ltd
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