[Advocacy] PG and patented formats ( Was: Video conversion)

["Miguel A. Arévalo"]

(I'm crossposting this to the Ogg-Advocacy list because there could be a
good "joint venture" between PG and the Xiph Foundation. I think that
with some of the latest news -Theora freeze, RealPlayer under the GPL,
Fluendo launchment, etc- there is a good PR oportunity for an
announcemente like "PG make the switch for a patent-free media format"
or something like that.)

Ogg Theora has been freezed a couple of weeks ago, now with Ogg
(Vorbis+Theora) we have a patent-free format for movies. There is an
encoder on the latest Theora distribution.

By the way, what is the legal status of other patent encumbered
filetypes distributed by the PG? For example, distributing contents on
MP3 is not free in many aspects. Although PG is not required to pay the
MP3 license (because it has no revenue), if any company (magazines,
etc.) wants to redistribute PG MP3s files for free will have to pay a
$2000 fee only because the format chosen is MP3 instead of a free (and
better one) like Ogg Vorbis.

More info:

http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/emd.html

Regards,

Miguel A. Ar?valo

Greg Newby wrote:
> David Starner has produced a wonderful digital video
> of Buster Keaton's "Cops."
>
> It's encoded in an AVI file using the DIVX4 codec.
>
> I would like to have a straight MPEG file, if possible, but
> can't seem to find any software to do such a conversion.  Does
> anyone know how to do this, or whether it's feasible/possible?
> I can put the Cops files up for download, if you'd like to try.
>
> If there's no good way to do this, I'll just post the files
> I have (they're super!).  Thanks...
>   -- Greg
>
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