[Theora] Theora, great stuff!

[Nick Hill]

Hello Ralph

Ralph Giles wrote:
> 
> Doing so would also raise the barrier to entry for people wanting to use 
> our formats in proprietary applications, both software- and hardware-
> based. Network effects are extremely important in file format success, 
> and we have generally felt that licensing our reference implementations
> under a BSD license to encourage the broadest possible adoption of free
> formats is a more important goal.

This boils down to a common GPL/LGPL/BSD argument which itself boils
down to:

Assuming a BSD style license increases the use of a given piece of code,
which in some cases is true (the BSD TCP stack implementation is used in
  windows and a modified proprietary version of BSD is at the core of
Apple's OS X) in other cases is false (The Linux kernel is more widely
used than the freeBSD kernel [1] and the Linux kernel is widely used in
embedded commercial devices).

Is how much a piece of code will be used the important factor in the
decision? Do we just want to create code which is as widely used as
possible, or do we want to write code which guarantees certain freedoms
to the user.

I accept the L/GPL does take away certain freedoms from the integrator
of the code, but pays back by defending other freedoms. It is a bargain.

There are also other considerations. For example, if someone builds on
our work, do we want them to let us use the improvements? Will the
quality of our code base improve faster if those otherwise secret
improvements are fed back to the code base? Will adoption of the codec
be even faster if those improvements are fed back to the code base
accelerating development? In many cases, for many projects, the answer
has been yes. The linux kernel has benefitted many times where code
would otherwise have been witheld from Linux kernel developers.

So the argument that a BSD style license will in future increase
adoption of a specific piece of code is unsafe, and ignores the reasons
why many might want to make free code in the first place.

Whichever of the free software licenses you use, the Theora project has
provided an excellent free video codec. Thank you!

[1] I am distinguishing between FreeBSD and a modified proprietary fork
of BSD. Also, there are no reliable figures of how many GNU/Linux based
devices and machines are in use compared to Apple OS X.