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Hydrogenaudio Closes Doors For Now
verloren writes "The Admins at Hydrogenaudio, the community site discussing audio compression and related issues, have temporarily closed the site. They've posted a notice stating that they're rethinking the standards of the community, and how they're enforced. It seems to have been sparked most recently by a debate over what media players to use, but has been brewing for some time as the objective standards required at the site have been overlooked by many posters. The sister sites Foobar2000 and Rarewares are still available."
I'm not sure why parent wasn't modded as Off-Topic but Hydrogenaudio != Ogg Vorbis. Hydrogenaudio is a forum for discussion of audio compression, and isn't affiliated, although Ogg Vorbis is one of the favoured codecs (along with MPC, AAC and of course, MP3) and has its own dedicated forums.
However, recently Ogg Vorbis has been falling out of favour because of some questions beinr brought up and currently still unanswered about the truth of the statement that Ogg Vorbis is "patent-free" because of a few patents uncovered recently which Ogg Vorbis may have infringed on. So far Xiph has not answered the questions to the satisfaction of the administrators of the forums... but I doubt all this is the main cause of the forum to suspend service, but maybe one of many. *shrug*
Just a couple of things to make some things clear to the slashdot crowd:
1. HydrogenAudio is/was the No. 1 place on the net regarding the development of audio codecs and other audio related tools. Think of it as "the bugtraq of audio". Several developers of open- and closedsource codecs participated regularly in the discussions and the community helped by providing blind test results (some of them appeared on slashdot even), problem-samples and ideas/general input. It was the center of development of the widely used lame --alt-presets, which brought a new level of quality to MP3 and the foobar2000 audio player.
2. No legal problems whatsoever are connected to the closing down.
3. HA is going to come back shortly (= some days).
So let me get this straight, a web site with no code or corporate involvement was hoping to create a standard for audio?
No. Hydrogenaudio is an audio discussion board where development and testing of various audio formats/encoders and the foobar2000 player takes place, but this is not the main aspect of the board. It's just an informed community (well, mostly) that maintains a high standard of discussion (unlike this place).
Which is why I wish this had never been posted here, now look at the mess and all the misinformation flowing here already... >:(
However, recently Ogg Vorbis has been falling out of favour because of some questions beinr brought up and currently still unanswered about the truth of the statement that Ogg Vorbis is "patent-free" because of a few patents uncovered recently which Ogg Vorbis may have infringed on.
To give air to the otherside of that flamewar, the 'unanswered' questions had more to do with a misunderstanding on the part of some forum members about how the patent system works in the US. "Patent-free" does not mean no one will sue you ever, because anyone can sue you anytime for anything. It's all about the negotiation of expectation for who would win at what cost in a potential legal action.
In that context, and because we feel Xiph.org the organization is a likely target of punitive legal action, we unfortunately feel the less said about what we think about specific patents, the better, to avoid advertising routes of legal attack. Hardly the usual values of openness, but that's what the US legal system argues for.
What Vorbis needs is independent defenders who understand the issues, not demands for justification from groups that should mostly be on the same side.