[advocacy] is this list active?

[Daniel James]

> There really has been no activity in this long.

I think there are a number of reasons for that. Firstly, Xiph.org is 
not very good at working with the community. I understand the need to 
retain control of projects that have had an intense personal input 
over a number of years, but it seems every offer of help or 
suggestion from outside the core group is shot down in flames. 

For example, a couple of months back this list was discussing ideas 
for hardware branding, and came up with a number of suggestions. None 
of the ideas or offers of help were taken up, and the impression I 
got was that Xiph.org didn't actually want input from members of this 
list. I'm not surprised, therefore, that there hasn't been a 
large-scale advocacy campaign so far.

The second reason is that the Vorbis codec has (so far) failed to 
achieve critical mass among music listeners, and so potential Vorbis 
advocates are probably losing interest. It's all too easy to 
compromise, and use MP3 instead, because Fraunhofer has avoided the 
heavy-handed enforcement of its royalties policy. Either that, or 
Fraunhofer just doesn't want to use up resources chasing every copy 
of lame out there, or every cheap piece of hardware.

The third reason is that MP3 listening has switched from something 
that you listen to mostly on a computer, to something you mostly 
listen to on an embedded device - be it portable, in-car, or on a DVD 
player. Naturally, it's much harder for end-users to upgrade these 
embedded devices to support Vorbis. 

Some high-level Ogg advocacy work is badly needed with the OSDL 
members (who have just set up a desktop group), the CE Linux Forum 
and the (largely Chinese) OEMs. Xiph.org would also be welcome as a 
member of the Linuxaudio.org consortium, which I have been involved 
in starting recently.

If anyone at Xiph.org is still interested in seeing my suggestions for 
hardware branding, just let me know and I will gladly email a PDF.

Cheers

Daniel

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