Post by Kahlil MoonwalkerThe Play Ogg campaign should adopt some new graphics, because honestly
the current ones don't make me want to play Ogg very much. I joined a
Play Ogg group on Facebook awhile ago and someone very recently posted
a beautiful new logo --
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1117728&o=all&op=1&view=all&subj=16782458045&aid=-1&id=1381015882
Nice logo.
Sadly, I get the feeling the FSF has more or less abandoned this campaign.
The link to join the mailing list on the playogg site doesn't even work any
more, and the
list of Ogg Sites looks relatively unmaintained (it still lists "This Week in
Tech" for example, despite the fact that the only thing in the Ogg feed is a
short comment from Leo LaPorte
making a snide comment about "the three people who use it" and declaring it's
"too hard" for him to support any more.
I'm actually pretty annoyed with the way this worthy campaign has gone
flaccid. My memory of the time when this mailing list was active (and
someone can
correct me if I'm wrong here) was that the campaign more or less went like this:
"Hey, maybe we can get Google to make YouTube play Ogg Theora video!"
"No."
"Oh. Okay. Guess we might as well give up."
The obsessive focus on Internet TV (largely via the <video> tag) robbed it of
any recognition of the traction Ogg Vorbis audio has been getting, and where
I think
attention would be more useful. "Oggcasting" (audio) has some potential, I
think, as production of audio is much simpler than production of video, and
is more in
reach of amateur (talented or otherwise) and non-wealthy professional
participants on the internet, which would mean a more ready source of
"content" in a Free format.
Momentum and recognition of Ogg Vorbis audio will help benefit both what
remains of Ogg Theora's potential, as well as that of the
presumably-equally-free "webm" (vp8 video/vorbis audio) format.
Post by Kahlil MoonwalkerFrom what I can see, the biggest problem right now is just plain
recognition. I'm noticing a strange lack of Ogg Vorbis where it ought to
be. Take a look at the technical specifications for a lot of Android-based
devices these days, for example - I see a disturbing proportion of them that
strangely omit Ogg Vorbis altogether as a supported audio format, despite the
fact that as far as I know ALL Android devices support it (unless someone
bizarrely paid their developers to remove it for no particular reason).
Likewise, I suspect there are a number of dedicated media players that
support it but may not mention it. And of course, right now, a large
majority of all HTML5-supporting browsers support Ogg Vorbis audio (i.e.
everybody but Safari) out of the box (and Safari also with the addition of
the XiphQT). Support is widespread but nobody seems to know it...if only
there were some kind of organization that was devoted to promotion of this
kind of Free software, you know, some kind of foundation, maybe?...
Okay, enough sarcasm from me.
So...is this campaign really dead and abandoned, or is anyone out there
(including the FSF, of course) still interested?