Re:Richard Stallman on the Ogg Vorbis license (2001)
by ajross on Friday March 29, 2013 @12:37PM
(#5461525)
The MP3 patents have at this point largely expired, so there's comparatively little real cost in implementing them for commercial products. And actually, to the extent that the difference can be measured, Vorbis is generally considered to be a better codec.
But content rules. I have 8G of mostly-mp3 music in my Google Music account simply because that's how I got it. Players out there play mp3 because that's what is out there. Of the successful consumer platforms out there, only Android includes ogg support out of the box, and that mostly due to the whims of its developers than any real market pressure.
It's exactly that point that Stallman was talking about in 2001 -- despite having very good software available, we're now into our second decade of "free software products cannot play music by default". Maybe we should have listened to him more carefully...
Re:Richard Stallman on the Ogg Vorbis license (2001)
by Semaphor on Friday March 29, 2013 @01:54PM
(#5461989)
Sansa clip (a successful player for those of us who want really small devices to play music on the go, before it I still had a usb-stick/mp3 player combo) had ogg out of the box.
But content rules. I have 8G of mostly-mp3 music in my Google Music account simply because that's how I got it. Players out there play mp3 because that's what is out there. Of the successful consumer platforms out there, only Android includes ogg support out of the box, and that mostly due to the whims of its developers than any real market pressure.
It's exactly that point that Stallman was talking about in 2001 -- despite having very good software available, we're now into our second decade of "free software products cannot play music by default". Maybe we should have listened to him more carefully...