[Vorbis] Re: [theora] This is a sad day for interoperability in the Web

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 8/24/07, Ulrich Windl <ulrich.windl at rz.uni-regensburg.de> wrote:
> Nonsense: My proprietary Audio Player supports Vorbis. I don't want to hack the
> player, I want to listen to audio.

Exactly. Free formats are more important than free software:  When
someone else uses a non-free format you are forced to use particular
software to inter-operate with them, or pay particular licensing fees.

When someone else uses non-free software it does not necessarily
create that imposition, unless the software also depends on non-free
formats.

When the only people who provide free formats are few and only those
people who also provide many non-free formats because of low adoption
and above average technical sophistication, free formats will not gain
in user adoption.

An insufficiently adopted free format carries a substantial switchover
cost which makes the format effectively non-free (in both the freedom
and cost sense) even if it is theoretically a free format.

As such, the initiative to increase open media adoption can be thought
of as a movement to convert the potential freedom of the formats into
actual freedom for more people.

This improvement in freedom happens whether or not the user is
currently using, or will ever use, free software or free content.