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My understanding is this (correct me if I'm wrong...) is this is exactly the business model that has killed Vorbis. Xiph originally created a floating-point fre

My understanding is this (correct me if I'm wrong...) is this is exactly the business model that has killed Vorbis. Xiph originally created a floating-point free reference implementation, and charged for the integer decoder. You pretty much have to use the integer decoder for any sort of hardware implementation, so the effect was the same. With few users and a paid barrier to entry, few hardware vendors took the leap. No hardware support means fewer people bothered to encode to Vorbis... and the spiral to the bottom continued. If you're trying to use the network effect to your advantage, you do exactly what the MPEG-LA has done: the first couple of years are free, then everyone pays. The only want to combat that is to do the same.

mindslight 17y ago
Or the lack of Vorbis encoded media failed to prime the pump for widespread adoption (whereas here, everyone is counting on youtube/follower adoption to do so). Surely the forever-free aspect of the software decoder isn't what held back widespread adoption - it was lack of Vorbis users (which was due to lack of users .. etc) Still, I'll amend my above plan to include some period of royalty-free hardware. The real trouble is device manufacturers not wanting both On2 and H.264 hardware (it's unfortunate that MPEG-LA won't just step up to the plate with perpetual royalty-free software and make the whole issue moot)
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  What's the story with Flash 10.1 for mobile phones? Did they just drop support for all the VP6 encoded Flash video or are they decoding it in software?
ciupicri 17y ago
Wikipedia says: "Tremor, a version of the Vorbis decoder which uses fixed-point arithmetic (rather than floating point), was made available to the public on September 2, 2002 (also under a BSD-style license) [1]". [1] http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/vorbis-dev/2002-September/006399.html http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/vorbis-dev/2002-September/00...
novas0x2a 17y ago
I might as well respond to myself with a mea culpa. I'm totally wrong with my history; I went to the horse's mouth: xiphmont/Monty, who has been with xiph since (at least? I think?) 1999, log from freenode/#vorbis: --- novas0x2a: i feel vaguely insane. did xiph ever (2002 timeframe, perhaps?) charge for a vorbis encoder or decoder? I had a pretty distinct memory of that, but going back and researching it, I can't find any sign of it. Did anyone ever charge for an encoder or decoder impl? xiphmont: I've taken on works for hire in the past. That was not as part of Xiph. There was also a work for hire the company renegged on, and we opened that as the original Tremor. But I also wrote a decoder with Neuros and wrote an encoder for Mercora. novas0x2a: I think I remember reading about tremor before it was open, and that's where my misconception comes from. thanks :)

mindslight 17y ago

Or the lack of Vorbis encoded media failed to prime the pump for widespread adoption (whereas here, everyone is counting on youtube/follower adoption to do so). Surely the forever-free aspect of the software decoder isn't what held back widespread adoption - it was lack of Vorbis users (which was due to lack of users .. etc) Still, I'll amend my above plan to include some period of royalty-free hardware. The real trouble is device manufacturers not wanting both On2 and H.264 hardware (it's unfortunate that MPEG-LA won't just step up to the plate with perpetual royalty-free software and make the whole issue moot)

ZeroGravitas 17y ago
What's the story with Flash 10.1 for mobile phones? Did they just drop support for all the VP6 encoded Flash video or are they decoding it in software?

ciupicri 17y ago

Wikipedia says: "Tremor, a version of the Vorbis decoder which uses fixed-point arithmetic (rather than floating point), was made available to the public on September 2, 2002 (also under a BSD-style license) [1]". [1] http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/vorbis-dev/2002-September/006399.html http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/vorbis-dev/2002-September/00...

novas0x2a 17y ago

I might as well respond to myself with a mea culpa. I'm totally wrong with my history; I went to the horse's mouth: xiphmont/Monty, who has been with xiph since (at least? I think?) 1999, log from freenode/#vorbis: --- novas0x2a: i feel vaguely insane. did xiph ever (2002 timeframe, perhaps?) charge for a vorbis encoder or decoder? I had a pretty distinct memory of that, but going back and researching it, I can't find any sign of it. Did anyone ever charge for an encoder or decoder impl? xiphmont: I've taken on works for hire in the past. That was not as part of Xiph. There was also a work for hire the company renegged on, and we opened that as the original Tremor. But I also wrote a decoder with Neuros and wrote an encoder for Mercora. novas0x2a: I think I remember reading about tremor before it was open, and that's where my misconception comes from. thanks :)