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FLOSS Codecs Emerge Victorious In Wikimedia Vote
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Maggs from the Wikimedia Foundation's multimedia team has given a final summary of the discussion and vote about whether to support MP4 video or not. Twice as many people voted against adding MP4 to Wikimedia than voted for full support. Now they can get back to their mission of advocating openness. 'Those opposing MP4 adoption believe that in order for what we create to be truly free, the format that it is in also needs to be free, (else everyone viewing it would need to obtain a patent license in some form to be able to view it). ... From that viewpoint, any software infrastructure in Wikimedia projects must adhere to community norms regarding intellectual property, patent status, licensing or encoding methods. Current community requirements are that free/open standards should be used at all times to encode and store video files on the servers that house our data, so that both our content and software can be redistributed without any restrictions. Proprietary video containers or codecs such as MP4 are not allowed on Wikimedia projects because they are patent-encumbered and their software cannot be re-licensed freely (though MP4 content can be freely re-licensed).'"
Mobile devices have efficient hardware support for codecs like H.264, and using something else takes a toll on battery life.
There was an initial surge of pro-mpeg votes by people connected to the WikiMedia Foundation and the technical team which would have been implementing it, then there were many days of mostly anti-mpeg voting when normal Wikipedia contributors heard about this idea.
As someone who has been campaigning for many years against software patents, it was very encouraging to see that the general Wikipedia populous (i.e. after the initial pro-mpeg surge from employees and pre-briefed technicians) was two-thirds against the use of patented formats.
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The whole issue is about idealism, not practicality. In practice, MP4s are available on pretty much any device.
Unfortunately, that idealism is shooting wikimedia in the foot, because there are platforms that don't have open source codecs installed by default, leaving the "average" user unable to view the videos.
So in their zeal to pursue "openness", they've closed the doors on the people who matter most: the users.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
To be fair, you cannot freely re-license any open source codecs either - at least not without contacting all of the folks who contributed to the project and getting their OK on a different license. If the license is currently GPL3 and you want to re-license to Apache - good luck with that.
Some people have priorities beyond people being able to read their website, too.
I thought a website was a way to communicate with people -- a service provided to them. Turns out I'm wrong. Turns out a website is a way of attempting to browbeat people into using hardware that some shadowy collection of self-appointed watchmen have judged pure enough for their tastes.
Turns out a website is a way of attempting to browbeat people into using hardware that some shadowy collection of self-appointed watchmen have judged pure enough for their tastes.
The same could be said of closed source licensors and their behavior towards users who desire some control over their hardware.
Even Archive.org supports MP4, among other formats. YouTube does both Flash and MP4 for the most part, or at least most of the third party downloaders will give it to you in MP4. Clearly the solution is to provide the content in a couple of formats, enough to serve THE USERS. Unless that is, you don't give a shit about users, in which case I don't see why you need a web presence at all...