[Xiph-Advocacy] The Main Page of SOM

[Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves]

On 10/20/07, Sebastian Pipping <webmaster at hartwork.org> wrote:
> Closed? Proprietary? Non-open?

When I speak with people about it, I use the word "proprietary".  It
is a mess to name things; for instance Wikipedia states what's the
difference between an open format and a free format, as in the former
may have patents, the latter doesn't, and things like that.

While I like the name free formats, free culture, free software, the
project ended up using Open Media, not Free Media, and I could perhaps
take a while to explain why is that, but right now I won't.

Regarding your first question, no, we should avoid being too
technical.  Maybe a bit, but not much.  I think it was Lucas who once
told me that people today(!) still find it hard to spell MP3, much
less know what it is exactly.  It just works, you know, more or less
like DVDs.  "It plays those neat pirate songs of Christina Aguilera
that I just downloaded".  This is our audience.  They don't care about
freedom.  They don't care about patents.  So it is very difficult to
deal with the audience, but if we don't try we get booo'd.

So, generally speaking, the best argument has to be the pratical one.
The quality.  Ease of sharing it over the Web (when HTML 5 browsers
start showing up).  Maybe talk a bit of Free Culture, though not much,
or the audience loses interest.

Any thoughts?

-Ivo