[advocacy] Suggestion: Submit the Ogg Vorbis 1.0 Specification to the W3C

[Dave Hodder]

Only recently I was reading a Webmonkey article about the various web
audio formats <http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/99/24/index4a.html>.
Lamentably over the last few years the situation for the average web
developer hasn't improved at all, in that there's still a plethora of
standards competing with each other.

Ogg Vorbis has many great things going for it, not least of which are
it's cross-platform, patent-unencumbered nature.  It was of course
designed to have all the hallmarks of an Internet standard.  The
difficulty is, of course, pushing for it's adoption against the
entrenchment of MP3 and the incoming threat of Microsoft WMA.

This brings me, interestingly enough, to start thinking about PNG
graphics.  The Portable Network Graphics format (also known as the PNG's
Not GIF format) seems to have a certain amount in common with the Ogg
Project.  For one thing, it was designed to be patent free; it also
found itself vying for web space over the entrenched GIF.

PNG development was led by an independent Internet-based group, rather
than by some huge, faceless corporation.  It gained popularity, and in
1996 it became a W3C Recommendation, giving it a much stronger feeling
of legitimacy and resulting in even more popularity.

This, then, is where I'm coming from.  If the Ogg Vorbis specification
can become a W3C Recommendation, it would be great for Ogg Vorbis, and
(eventually) great for developers and users of the WWW.

I won't pretend to be an expert on how the W3C works, but what does the
Ogg community think about this as a suggestion?  Would it make sense for
a key developer to approach the W3C's Document Formats Domain, with a
view to producing a W3C Recommendation or Note?

I'm sure there must be a thousand reasons why this can't or won't
happen.  However, it's a Sunday afternoon, and I've been overcome by a
rare surge of optimism.  Maybe one day Ogg Vorbis will have a nice
shiny book published by O'Reilly, just like PNG.  ;o)

Thank you for reading my little rant.  This is just a personal
suggestion of my own, feel free to ignore.

Dave

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