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Because despite Wikipedia and sister projects being one of the largest web property, it is running on a thin budget and has starved engineering resources. As fa

by hashar 3y ago

Because despite Wikipedia and sister projects being one of the largest web property, it is running on a thin budget and has starved engineering resources. As far as I know, the transcode code is maintained by a single employee (possibly as a side gig / on top of everything else) and the assistance of a volunteer. For Motion JPEG a recent config change ( https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/operations/mediawiki-config/+/967531 https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/operations/mediawiki-config... ) indicates: > Recent versions of iOS can play back suitably packaged VP9 video and Opus or MP3 audio, with a Motion-JPEG low-res fallback for older devices. So I guess it is there for back compatibility :)

userbinator 3y ago
MPEG-2 or even MPEG-4 ASP seems like a better choice for back-compat.
manquer 3y ago
Why though ? They spend $160M a year [1] and grew their cash reserves by 50% year on year in 2023, so not particularly running in an operating deficit environment. Transcoding is expensive but not that much, if my company doesn’t make 1/20 of Wikipedia and we can afford to do 1000s of hours a day of transcoding surely they can too. [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Wikimedia_Foundation_FS_FY2022-2023_Audit_Report.pdf https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/W...
- laverya 3y ago
  Because in the end every organization is vulnerable to being eaten from the inside and worn as a skinsuit by parasites. Especially charities. Why would they spend money on improvements to the site when they could spend money on other things instead?
  - manquer 3y ago
    it is the easiest line item to spend on . Wikipedia has one of the best SRE teams, they were pretty transparent too, a lot of the communication was on IRC channels you could see, at least that was the case few years back. Running the top 5 website in the world is no joke especially as a non-profit and they do it well. They haven’t had any down time or major incident in the last decade which is pretty impressive. I would think their SRE team is not just good but also very motivated in the mission otherwise they would leave for much higher paying jobs, infra jobs are very lucrative if you have prior experience at more scale not much more scale than Wikipedia .
    - laverya 3y ago
      I agree that their SRE team is good, well motivated, and transparent. That does not mean that they are the first priority for resources, or that it's the easiest line item to spend on.
- kemayo 3y ago
  It's not about the cost of transcoding; it's an ideological stance about open / royalty-free formats. e.g. there was a pretty strong consensus about not supporting MP4 back when the WMF asked whether it should be allowed, mostly on "it's not free" grounds: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/MP4_Video https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comm...
  - userbinator 3y ago
    The decision to not supply H.264 is ideological for sure, and I can understand that from the patent perspective, but then they have MP3 (patent-expired in 2017) but not MPEG-2/H.262 (patent-expired in 2018). Also note that VP8/VP9 is still patented, but just licensed freely. IMHO that's less free than patent-expired (public domain).
    - manquer 3y ago
      My understanding was H264 is kind is licensed freely too after Cisco made their agreement usable for everyone ? Firefox can support mp4 over h264 despite their clear FOSS aligned goals , I am surprised that Wikipedia whose goals more align to open information rather than open source directly has challenges .
mod50ack 3y ago
The problem is not resources. It is an ideological choice. Wikimedia Commons only supports non-proprietary file formats. That means either open formats or formats whose patents have expired. (MPEG-4 Part 2 patents only expired in the US a few weeks ago.)

by hashar 3y ago

userbinator 3y ago

MPEG-2 or even MPEG-4 ASP seems like a better choice for back-compat.

manquer 3y ago

Why though ? They spend $160M a year [1] and grew their cash reserves by 50% year on year in 2023, so not particularly running in an operating deficit environment. Transcoding is expensive but not that much, if my company doesn’t make 1/20 of Wikipedia and we can afford to do 1000s of hours a day of transcoding surely they can too. [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Wikimedia_Foundation_FS_FY2022-2023_Audit_Report.pdf https://wikimediafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/W...

laverya 3y ago
Because in the end every organization is vulnerable to being eaten from the inside and worn as a skinsuit by parasites. Especially charities. Why would they spend money on improvements to the site when they could spend money on other things instead?
- manquer 3y ago
  it is the easiest line item to spend on . Wikipedia has one of the best SRE teams, they were pretty transparent too, a lot of the communication was on IRC channels you could see, at least that was the case few years back. Running the top 5 website in the world is no joke especially as a non-profit and they do it well. They haven’t had any down time or major incident in the last decade which is pretty impressive. I would think their SRE team is not just good but also very motivated in the mission otherwise they would leave for much higher paying jobs, infra jobs are very lucrative if you have prior experience at more scale not much more scale than Wikipedia .
  - laverya 3y ago
    I agree that their SRE team is good, well motivated, and transparent. That does not mean that they are the first priority for resources, or that it's the easiest line item to spend on.
kemayo 3y ago
It's not about the cost of transcoding; it's an ideological stance about open / royalty-free formats. e.g. there was a pretty strong consensus about not supporting MP4 back when the WMF asked whether it should be allowed, mostly on "it's not free" grounds: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/MP4_Video https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comm...
- userbinator 3y ago
  The decision to not supply H.264 is ideological for sure, and I can understand that from the patent perspective, but then they have MP3 (patent-expired in 2017) but not MPEG-2/H.262 (patent-expired in 2018). Also note that VP8/VP9 is still patented, but just licensed freely. IMHO that's less free than patent-expired (public domain).
  - manquer 3y ago
    My understanding was H264 is kind is licensed freely too after Cisco made their agreement usable for everyone ? Firefox can support mp4 over h264 despite their clear FOSS aligned goals , I am surprised that Wikipedia whose goals more align to open information rather than open source directly has challenges .

mod50ack 3y ago

The problem is not resources. It is an ideological choice. Wikimedia Commons only supports non-proprietary file formats. That means either open formats or formats whose patents have expired. (MPEG-4 Part 2 patents only expired in the US a few weeks ago.)