[Theora] Theora, great stuff!

[Michael Smith]

> 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.

We can make an argument, though, that adoption of theora will
(roughly) follow adoption patterns that the vorbis codec did. And we
clearly saw more adoption of the vorbis codec as a _direct_ result of
relicensing from LGPL to our current BSD-style license. This is the
major reason why our later codecs (including theora) have chosen this
BSD-style license to begin with (relicensing is a pain!).

The core point to see is that Xiph's primary mission is to provide a
foundation for free multimedia - free software/open source is the
mechanism we have chosen to pursue this goal, but is not in itself key
to why we exist. So a license that allows more people to use our
codecs very directly helps fulfill our primary aims (even if you
believe that it acts against our seconary goals of providing free code
to people - and I don't think that experience has shown us that).

Mike