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Wikipedia's Assault On Patent-Encumbered Codecs

An anonymous reader writes "The Open Video Alliance is launching a campaign today called Let's Get Video on Wikipedia, asking people to create and post videos to Wikipedia articles. (Good, encyclopedia-style videos only!) Because all video must be in patent-free codecs (theora for now), this will make Wikipedia by far the most likely site for an average internet user to have a truly free and open video experience. The campaign seeks to 'strike a blow for freedom' against a wave of h.264 adoption in otherwise open HTML5 video implementations."

5 of 428 comments (clear)

  1. Re:HTML5 Video by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    The cost is still paid by the average user, it's just tacked onto the cost of the O/S or whatever you buy from Apple, MS, etc.

    So they pay a fraction of a penny more? Oh noes! That's gonna break the bank!

  2. Re:HTML5 Video by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    You're an anime fag, so I'd assume that all the viruses and malware you've gotten while trying to watch pedo hentai is probably the true cause of your issues. h264 has none of these problems.

  3. Go Fuck Yourself Troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Go back to crying over your retarded ideology getting bitch slapped by the real world.

  4. Re:HTML5 Video by BitZtream · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    if that wasn't a factor in your choice of phone, then my sympathy for you is nil.

    Thats okay, I feel sympathy for the fact that you won't be able to watch as much stuff as I will since you have a codec that while open, is largely irrelevant as far as content is concerned.

    Especially if you want to connect with Wikipedia, whose commitment to openness is legendary.

    First off, no one right now is going to make a purchasing choice based on if the device can play wikipedia video except Jimmy himself (MAYBE) and an idiot. Theres no content, so no point.

    Wikipedia's commitment to openness isn't much of one. Other than video, everything else wikipedia has an acceptable quality and well supported alternative available. Before Wikipedia came into 'popular' existence, every major browser supported open formats for the main media types. Sound, images, and of course text is text. It wasn't hard to say 'lets use these formats' because those formats were good regardless of their 'patent' status.

    If you want Wikipedia, and any other person on the planet to go with an open format, get one thats superior in some way. Until then, stop trying to brute force people into using an inferior package by making it a requirement for something that you think is a requirement for web browsing.

    Two reasons for that:

    A) You'll fine people can live fine without Wikipedia videos since they are now anyway, no one will care to upload since the majority of the users won't be able to view without going out of their way to do so.

    B) Thats what Microsoft does. Microsoft pisses me off greatly for doing so, and that has in fact been a battlecry of the FOSS community for years. Now the instant you start doing the same thing as the people you are ranting about you've lost the only advantage you really have which is the grass roots nature of it.

    The alternative is to realize that not everything is going to be open source, accept that, accept that OSS and Proprietary will always be mixed, and move on.

    You'll get much further in life when you stop living your life wrapped around retarded ridged rules that make you prejudice against valid alternatives while at the same time giving your competition, which isn't so warped, an advantage.

    Most important, because I save the best for last. Most of the people involved in this conversation need to realize that 'open' does not mean 'GPL' to anyone other than GPL zealots. All current codecs in question for HTML5 video are in fact open.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  5. Strike a blow for Freedom, indeed! by davevr · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Consumers are most interested in freedom from buggy, hard-to-install, hard-to-configure, don't-play-my-youtubes, unsupported-by-my-PC-maker codecs.