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Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: lessig.org site supporting Adobe's proprietary Flash f


From: Dave Crossland
Subject: Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: lessig.org site supporting Adobe's proprietary Flash format
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2008 11:15:19 +0000

On 01/03/2008, Richard Stallman <address@hidden> wrote:
> I would be glad to arrange a discussion between someone from Blip TV
>  and Theora developers.  Can you put me in touch with the right person?

Ralph Giles blogged some comments about this at
http://advogato.org/person/rillian/diary/106.html

--- 8< ---

Lawrence Lessig recently posted a summary on the fsfe-uk list about
problems that were blocking Theora adoption. Here's a rebuttal, for
what it's worth.

His first point, that Theora isn't technically competitive with the
lastest batch of encoders for the encumbered MPEG codecs, is entirely
true. From Xiph's point of view is that that's a little like saying
there's no point in using Linux because it doesn't work as well as
Windows, but the technical disparity does need to be addressed.

Monty and Derf have been working on a new encoder the past few months,
but there's nothing to show yet. We believe the Theora format has
scope to offer similar compression efficiency to h.263 with less
complexity. Beyond that, we look to the BBC's Dirac. But in the
absence of software to prove the capabilities of the format, one has
to take our word, as well as being interested in long term planning,
for that to be a meaningful argument.

His second point, about people believing Theora is patented is just
FUD as far as I know. We're not aware of any patents. The original
developer of the VP3 format which became theora grants rights to any
patents they might have on the implementation. Submarine patents are
of course always possible, but they affect MPEG and Microsoft codecs
just as much as independent designs.

I've heard this argument from two different directions. First from
corporations who have already bet on one of the MPEG codecs and want
to dissuade any competition, and second from Free Software people, who
don't understand how patents work, shrug, say it's all equally bad,
and then get behind the proprietary technology.

What happened with the html5 flame fest was that some corporations
said they didn't feel the current demand for web content in
royalty-free formats justified the additional exposure implementing
them would create. That's true so far as it goes, but a very specific
statement about their own interests and hardly a reason for anyone
else to eschew royalty free formats.

There was a lot of talk at the recent FOMS meeting about how to
address the FUD issue and educate the free community about patents.
Hopefully some public documentation will come of it. It's been quite
difficult to find legal counsel who understands the FLOSS development
model well enough to toss ALL the traditional wisdom about patent risk
out the window: namely to never do or say anything at all.

All that said, I completely agree with the recommendation that we get
people talking. It can only help. Free software can't compete with the
installed base of flash video at this point, but we should all be
working to offer an alternative for those who can use it, and prepare
the toolchain so we can provide the greatest support for software and
creative freedom in the next round of web video.

-- 
Regards,
Dave




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