MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain

nadamsieee refers us to a piece up at Wired on the fallout from Microsoft's recent courtroom loss to Alcatel-Lucent over MP3 patents. From the article: "Alcatel-Lucent isn't the only winner in a federal jury's $1.52 billion patent infringement award against Microsoft this week. Other beneficiaries are the many rivals to the MP3 audio-compression format... Now, with a cloud over the de facto industry standard, companies that rely on MP3 may finally have sufficient motivation to move on. And that raises some tantalizing possibilities, including a real long shot: Open-source, royalty-free formats win."

Comments

Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore?

[JohnnyLocust]

Ogg Vorbis is the Xiph.org foundation's lossy format. FLAC is the Xiph.org foundation's lossless format. Clear now?

Ogg is Xiph.org foundation's streaming container format. Vorbis is Xiph.org foundation's lossy audio codec. FLAC is Xiph.org foundation's lossless audio codec. Everyone's clear now :)

Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore?

[Jesselnz]

iPods can play ogg/flac files, as can any mp3 player supported by Rockbox.

http://rockbox.org

Even more anal retentive

[DrYak]

Ogg is Xiph.org foundation's streaming container format. Vorbis is Xiph.org foundation's lossy audio codec. FLAC is Xiph.org foundation's lossless audio codec. Everyone's clear now :)

- Ogg is a container like Matroshka (MSK) or AVI (but better than that one. Almost anything is better than AVI)
- Vorbis is a sound codec, just like AAC.

FLAC is a format that considers both the compression codec AND the container (something like MPEG : you have both codecs, like MPEG-2 MPEG-4, MPEG Audio Layer III, and containers like MPEG Programm (MPG files)).
You can have a stand alone FLAC file (with one given container format) or by using another switch on the command line, you can have FLAC compressed audio inside an OGG container.
The first is called "Native FLAC", the second "Ogg FLAC". See here