[snip]
Finally, my opinion of such "alternative"
and "embedding options" for videos
is that it must be up to the user. So we wouldn't embed into our web a java
applet nor a flash player (ugh!) to show it, but give them a box
"Here there's XXXX.ogg {video|sound} You can [[media:download it]],
[[play it on your broser]] (needs xyz plugin) or
[[play it with flash]] <sup>[[Help:flash|help]]</sup>."
It's funny...
I added a java (GCJ compatible) audio player on enwiki a while back
and I've been mostly unable to get people to even comment it (although
it has been used by tens of thousands)...
It makes me sad to see this thread where so many people are willing to
expend energy talking about how we need to compromise our commitment
to free content in free formats when I can't even get people to help
out with simple free solutions which don't require much compromise.
I guess it's just another example of the meta-pedian illness of talk
over action, and that I probably should just ignore this thread...
But I do want to point out, for the record:
1) The majority of video formats used on the web require some degree
of installation, although some of them can be autodownloaded into
Windows Media Player or use a popular client which many users
installed long ago (Real, for example). Our instructions (on enwiki at
least) for installing video support are effectively a single step, and
if there is room for improvement... {{sofixit}}
2) I'm not aware of any computer make thats ships with flash
installed. So all these flash video sites do require an install..
although it's one install providing for many forms of webcruft. :)
3) There are free software java codecs for both Ogg/Theora and
Ogg/Vorbis. I haven't worked too much with the Theora plugin because
it was a bit buggy under GCJ six months ago, but the java vorbis codec
is very mature and robust. We couldn't ask for a better framework
from which to build a video player (and there is even a SOC project to
deeply integrate this support with MediaWiki).