[whatwg] HTML 5, OGG, competition, civil rights, and persons with disabilities

[Oliver Hunt]

>
> Maybe you should listen to the meta-argument, then.
>
> I'm sick and tired of getting screwed by big companies (including
> Apple), and I will *not* quietly accept it.

That's not unreasonable, but you have yet to give a solid technical  
reason for reverting to the old text,
so far your only argument is that ogg should be kept because it is  
FOSS, which on its own is insufficient.
My understanding based on the numerous comments from Ian is that a  
goal of the video and audio
specs is that they can be implemented in FOSS, and knowing Ian there  
is basically no chance of anyone
slipping anything that couldn't be passed him.

As far as wording goes using the word "SHOULD support" is far too  
weak for HTML5, as SHOULD is relatively
meaningless, a much better requirement is that the wording be "MUST  
support ..."; this is a sensible as
having a spec that says "SHOULD support ogg/vorbis and ogg/theora" is  
fairly useless -- all that will happen
is that browser vendors (Apple, Mozilla, Opera, etc) will once again  
be in a position where the spec's wording
means nothing and we end up with yet another standard which is not  
tied to whatever becomes the actual
de facto standard, as implemented by the majority browser.  This is  
much worse for site compatibility for every
other browser as it then becomes necessary to determine what the de  
facto standard actually *is*.

For this reason the old text was insufficient and Ian changed the  
text to indicate that the final wording had
not yet been decided.  This is not an indication that ogg transport  
or that the vorbis or theora codecs are
being ignored, it is merely an indication that a decision has not yet  
been made as to the final wording.

Note: I can't really comment on the actual issues involved in the  
codec or transport selection as that's
not a region i specialise in.

--Oliver