Patent nonsense of course refers to the US and Japanese laws which allow software patents. Fortunately the rest of the world isn't (yet) so daft. However, before we get too caried away with banning the world's standard formats, lets consider what it involves us banning: *JPEG (the Forgent patent, Sony paid and an unnamed comapny paid US$15 million). So, most current camera photos will be banned. I'm not yet aware of a suitable alternative, though I hope there's one. I doubt that there's one with wide enough browser support for our purpose. If you're not aware of this one, search - it'll probably be the top Google result. *GIF of course, still royalties required in much of the world, though not the US. I assume that we'll ban something allowed in the US but encumbered elsewhere? I hope not,though - it would be foolish. *Most video formats. JPEG, MPEG, MP4 (including DivX), Real Media, Microsofts. I'm aware of some work in this area but nothing which will meet the needs of our users for at least a year or three. *Most fonts. Apple has patents on much of the core font hinting technology. We use fonts covered by these patents and if you've seen the alternatives, you probably won't want to switch to using them. See http://www.freetype.org/patents.html for a summary of the issues. *Probably others - I didn't take more than a few seconds to come up with this list. So, should we ban the most widely availabel and backwards compatible still image, audio, video and font technologies from Wikipedia? With respect, that would be shooting ourselves in the foot. We do need to recognise that these are the formats people have. And recognise that, however much we may like it, Windows 95 may not have support for Ogg. Libraries, schools, offices and many other places prohibit software installation without permission and we probably don't want to bar those users from our content, nor third world or poor users who may have older equipment. We do, of course, want to encourage the use of formats which are less restricted. While doing that we should remember that it's common for patent holders to wait a decade and then spring a trap, even when they have participated in standards meetings where participants were asked to disclose their patents in advance. We do need to remember that the format we think is patent free may not be. Rather than doing this piecemeal, lets try to find a policy we and our users can live with today, and one which encourages people to use new formats without blocking those who don't yet have those new formats. The ICANN did that yesterday. It announced the start of IPv6 support in the core DNS servers started yesterday and also said that IPv4 would be supported for about 20 years to allow a smooth transition time. So, I propose for all encumbered formats: *We accept and use the de facto standards, including JPEG, MP3, MPEG and Apple patented type. *Where there is a less encumbered alternative, we encourage people to also make that available and to list the less encumbered format(s) first, to increase awareness of that format. *Browsers send information on the formats they support. Where we have multiple formats available, we should serve the least encumbered format the client says it can support. This will involve changes to the software, which can, I hope, be done fairly slowly as we develop standards for specifying alternative forms of all multimedia works. *Where there is a clear advantage in content or technically, we accept the encumbered format until it's clear that the vast majority (at least 99%) of users support the new format seamlesly, just as we have our target for browser support at about that level. *Where content requires it, we support a format forever. One example is legal cases involving specific media types, where an accurate article will require the use of the exact media type used as evidence or alleged to be infringing. There's simoply no substitute for the exact file used in this sort of situation. *When we do phase out a format, we provide a link to the old file and an archive of all such files with information about where they were used, so we don't completely lock out those who are not able to support the new format. *When we plan to phase out a format, we give at least two yers notice and do not do so until we have alternatives available for all affected content. *Where we are aware of external links to a specific format, we continue to make that format available for as long as the link exists. This approach avoids failing to serve the existing clients, promotes the new formats and provides clear transition times and goals to allow resuers to adapt at a predictable pace. I was tempted to suggest the copyleft approach: use all of the formats the US and Japanese laws encumber and not serve them in the US and Japan, to encourage people to get those nasty laws changed. I took pity on the people in those places, though.:) _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

*GIF of course, still royalties required in much of the world, though not the US. I assume that we'll ban something allowed in the US but encumbered elsewhere? I hope not,though - it would be foolish.