Re: Codecs for <video> and <audio>

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 5:08 PM, Ian Hickson<ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Jul 2009, Jonas Sicking wrote:
>> >
>> > I don't think the spec will have any effect on Theora's popularity. In
>> > fact, Theora is probably already more popular than anything else in
>> > the spec, if we go by volume of e-mail sent per topic. Nothing else in
>> > the spec has resulted in this much media attention.
>>
>> Volume of e-mail generated where?
>
> My inbox, either from public-html or whatwg, or from Google alerts and
> BackTalk alerts, or in direct e-mail to me, etc.

It's not popularity among people on this list that matters. It's
popularity with the greater world that does. I'm not saying we should
put something in the spec to artificially make it look popular, but
the fact is that Theora has a very broad consensus with basically only
Apple currently saying no. And the main argument from Apple is that
Theora does not have wide enough support.

>> And do you not think the fact that Theora was being considered for HTML
>> 5 was an important reason for the media attention?
>
> It wasn't mentioned in the media and forums and so froth until the spec
> _didn't_ require Theora. The media and public attention hasn't been
> "Theora might be something to look at, HTML5 might require it", it has
> been "Theora is the way forward, oh my God why is HTML5 not requiring it".

So on one hand you are arguing that it doesn't matter what's in the
spec, it only matters what implementations do. But on the other hand
you're saying that removing Theora from HTML 5 generated a lot of
media attention. So clearly it *does* matter what is in the spec.

I think saying that the spec doesn't matter is selling this whole
effort short. People pay a lot of attention to the spec as an
indicator for future directions of the web.

/ Jonas

Received on Tuesday, 7 July 2009 00:27:48 UTC