[whatwg] Ogg content on the Web

On 12/12/2007, Geoffrey Sneddon <foolistbar at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 12 Dec 2007, at 17:44, David Gerard wrote:
> > On 12/12/2007, Geoffrey Sneddon <foolistbar at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >> On 12 Dec 2007, at 14:23, David Gerard wrote:

> >>> FWIW, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons only allow unencumbered
> >>> formats
> >>> on the site. Video MUST be Ogg Theora. Compressed audio better be
> >>> Ogg.

> >> Why must video just one of many unencumbered formats?

> > Er, what are the others?

> Technically speaking, Theora is actually unencumbered (it just has a
> RF license covering the patents from On2). Dirac is in a similar
> situation.
> Apart from those two, the others I can think of are those that are in
> excess of twenty years old (and therefore their patents have expired),
> such as H.260.


Dirac is not finished, H.120 has no extant codecs. I may as well call
"motion PNM" an "unencumbered video format."

In any case, the point remains: Theora is the only practical option
for video on Wikimedia sites at present, so that's one top-10 source
of video that will greatly be enabled for the end user by HTML5 having
a video tag with Ogg Theora as the default (even as a SHOULD). Claims
that there are no sources of content are simply factually incorrect.


- d.

Received on Wednesday, 12 December 2007 11:47:05 UTC