On Jan 16, 2014 11:05 PM, "Tim Starling" <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 17/01/14 01:14, Todd Allen wrote: > > This proposal asks to move to a "free as in beer" model, where content will > > be free to view, but not necessarily to reuse (and with the opaque license, > > it may not even be possible to tell). > > I don't really understand this argument. It's not like there are video > cameras that record directly to Theora. So presumably, most videos > uploaded to Commons start life as H.264 or some other proprietary > format, and are transcoded to Theora before they are uploaded to Commons. > > The proposal is to make it possible to upload the source file and have > the server do the transcode, whereas currently, the source file is > private and thus not distributed under a free license. Currently, if > you want to reuse an H.264 source file, you have to somehow contact > the author, beg for a copy of the file, and hope that they haven't > deleted it. With this proposal, if you want to reuse an H.264 file > without a patent license, you can just download the Theora transcode > from the server. > > I am having trouble thinking of a scenario where the current situation > would be better for reuse than the proposed situation. If you can > think of one, please tell me. > > -- Tim Starling > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
If the server does the transcode and ultimately makes available only a video file in a free format, and WMF doesn't have to pay the patent holders to make that happen, then I would have no objection. If, however, the nonfree format is made available for download, or WMF funds would be supporting a software patent, those are clear negatives. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
