Re: ISSUE-24 (ogg-delete): Request to delete "should support Ogg" clause before publishing FPWD [HTML 5 spec]

On Dec 2, 2007, at 6:12 AM, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

>
> We could, but that would be pointless. This is not fundamentally  
> about some nice idea of how people should be sharing and caring, it  
> is about whether or not video will interoperate on the Web. In order  
> for that goal to be reached, we need to have codecs on the various  
> platforms the web is available on, and in order to do that we either  
> have to tell people to stop building new devices (which would be as  
> useful as turning back the tides) or find a way we can have codecs  
> reliably. W3C's position on patents comes from this very pragmatic  
> consideration - if people are unable to port technologies then in  
> the long term those technologies are likely to fade away.

If the goal is to support more devices, then Ogg Theora is not the  
most pragmatic choice. Nor is an optional requirement that many  
vendors are not planning to comply with. So by your argument the  
SHOULD clause is not doing its job.

Given that, it does make some sense to remove it and replace it with  
an open issue marker. Though I do not think we need to hold FPWD for  
this.


One piece of interesting info: Nokia's position paper for the upcoming  
Video on the Web workshop at <http://www.w3.org/2007/08/video/positions/Nokia.pdf 
 > mentions that H.261 is old enough that any possible patents must be  
expired, and that it achieves performance close to Ogg Theora. I don't  
know if the performance claim factually true, but if so it may make a  
better choice for baseline codec. There may be other alternatives as  
well.

I think it would be best for us to wait for the W3C to perform  
suitable investigations on audio and video codecs before coming to a  
final settlement on this point.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Monday, 3 December 2007 01:05:37 UTC