[Xiph-Advocacy] Will Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora and FLAC become free and open standards soon?

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Monty]
> This link is a 404.

Gah.  Stupid site killing links.  Anyway, search for "European
Interoperability Framework", to hopefully find a working link to
<URL:http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/3473>, download the PDF for
"EIF version 1.0".

>> or Digistan in
>> <URL:http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition>.
> 
> I'm a bit confused.  All of our offerings meet this criteria.

Good to hear.

> I suspect what the critics mean is 'we're not the IETF or ITU'.

Yes, I guess you are right there.  :/ The argument is mostly that
Xiph.Org Foundation is not a well known standardization organization,
and it is hard to figure out who control the organization.  And
Xiph.Org is obviously not a very well known standard organization. :)
I suspect it would help if there were more information on the web
about for example the members of the board of the foundation, the
funding and internal governance to get a peek into the inner working
of the foundation, and thus gain more trust about its non-profit
status and who control it.

> We meet these definitions.  We even have paperwork on file with the
> Norwegian government saying so (at their request).

Good. :)

> Also, the Nowegian government has formally proposed the Xiph codecs
> for goverment use as complying with these standards:
> 
> http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad/pressesenter/pressemeldinger/2009/forslag-om-standarder-for-lyd--og-videoi.html?id=541949
> 
> http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf

Yeah, I follow this work closely, and am very happy with these
efforts.  I am happy to report that the proposal have been accepted a
few weeks ago, unfortunately slightly modified.  For video, H.264 and
Ogg Theora was accepted side by side and similarly for lossy audio,
MP3 and Ogg Vorbis was accepted into the goverment standard directory.
See
<URL: http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad/pressesenter/pressemeldinger/2009/nye-obligatoriske-it-standarder-for-stat.html >
for information about the passing of the proposal.

Thank you very much for the clarifications.  I can now point people to
this discussion on the web when the topic arrises again. :)

Happy hacking,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen