[Vorbis] [rms@gnu.org: http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/PortablePlayers]

[John Morton]

On Wednesday 04 May 2005 13:17, Tim Olsen wrote:
>  Has RMS changed his mind on this?
>
>  -----------------------------------------------
>  In response to the change of license, Richard Stallman of the Free
> Software Foundation says, "I agree.  It is wise to make some of the Ogg
> Vorbis code available for use in proprietary software, so that commercial
> companies doing proprietary software will use it, and help Vorbis succeed
> in competition with other formats that would be restricted against our
> use."
>  ------------------------------------------------
>  taken from:   http://www.vorbis.com/press/20010226.txt
>
>  Vorbis has yet to win the battle against other codecs.

I don't see any contradiction between FSF approving of the strategic advantage 
of using the BSD license for the vorbis reference libraries on the one hand, 
but only advocating the use of hardware players with Free firmware 
themselves. 

I do think that a distinction that effectively states that players that don't 
need a firmware upgrade to play vorbis (or FLAC or speex...) is somehow more 
free than one that does is a false distinction.

(And maintaining a list of FSF approved portables on behalf of FSF is a mug's 
game, but it's neither my time nor my dime, I guess.)

John