Open Format: permanent interoperability matters!
Few weeks ago I got invited to a dinner by Rufo Guerreschi, along with Richard Stallman and Robin Good. Than Robin filmed an interview to Richard.
Some days later we all started to discuss by email about the video format to be used to deliver such recordings. Richard asked Robin to publish those video clips using formats supported by free software applications, and Ogg Theora was the format of choice.
But Ogg Theora is an open format and is supported by an application released under a BSD-style license. So far there is no format’s specification other than the source code of the program. No wonder the format has not been approved by any standardization body yet.
As we know Open standards may impose “reasonable and non-discriminatory” royalty fees and/or other licensing terms on implementers of the standard and are potentially harmful for OSS implementations (see for example FSF position on W3C policies). Besides licensing issues there are other important issues within standardization bodies policies, like the ten rights reported in Krechmer’s paper “The meaning of Open Standard”. And, last but not least, we might need standardization bodies able to decline to certify subset implementations, or to place requirements upon extensions, as suggested by Perens in his Open Standards and practice, in order to avoid predatory practices.
Freedom is about knowledge, and data format is much more important than tools’ licenses.
Roberto Galoppini are discussing.
][ stefano maffulli » Is OGG/Theora a standard? 7:35 am on December 1, 2006 Permalink
[…] Is OGG/Theora a standard? Roberto is asking a very difficult question: is OGG/Theora a standard, after all? Since it is not documented in anything else but the source code, and the code is distributed under BSD license, what will make sure that nobody will start predatory practices on the format? I understand Richard’s request though, based on practical terms as usual: there are no other formats for audio/video that aren’t encumbered by nasty patents. Is OGG a standard? Probably not. Is it an open unencumbered format? I think so. Will my data be safe for future use? This is the most difficult question to answer: one can say that since the code is out there you can always write the decoder. But real life is more complex than that. […]
Roberto Galoppini 11:10 am on December 1, 2006 Permalink
OGG/Theora might become a standard, I mean a published standard.
Unfortunately Xiph.org has not even specified such format, but I believe it might get done. But defining new formats outside of standardization bodies is a risky bet, think about the patent issue.
In my opinion Richard’s position it’s a pure tacticism, a mean toward a goal: promoting free software.
My concerns are about data accessibility, and I think we need a strategy to guarantee access to our data, for ever.
Commercial Open Source Software » Open Format: what do you mean by that? 12:49 pm on December 2, 2006 Permalink
[…] There are many proposal definitions of Open Format, reported by wikipedia (see previous post) to the IDA migration guidelines one, that says: Open Standard protocols are defined as those which are free from patents and with an OSS implementation […]
][ stefano maffulli » Nokia contro il W3C, scontro sui brevetti software 11:23 am on December 11, 2007 Permalink
[…] Il paper segnalatomi dal prof. Fuggetta mi sembra quasi un colpo di rovescio per aggirare questa policy anti-brevetti, dato che Nokia è una di quelle pochissime aziende europee favorevoli ai brevetti sul software. Fa bene invece il W3C a resistere a questo ennesimo attacco della lobby pro-brevetti. Certo OGG Theora non è il formato tecnicamente migliore, la gestione del formato è criticabile, ma è il migliore disponibile. Mi auguro che questo confronto con il W3C serva a far discutere ancora sulle idiozie dei brevetti sugli algoritmi MPEG. […]