[Consortium] Re: Xiph and Linuxaudio.org

[Andrea Glorioso]

>>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel James <daniel at linuxaudio.org> writes:
                                                                                
    >> Monty, Ralph, and I all discussed this and decided we'd like to
    >> join the organization. :)
                                                                                
    > Great! I'll add Xiph to the members' page.
                                                                                
I'm *so*  happy about this.   The Xiph Foundation participation inside
the (prospective?) Linux Audio  Consortium was a very important  point
for  the AGNULA  project,  and I'd  like to  say  a big "thank you" to
everybody that made this happen.
                                                                                
    >> Our only concern about linuxaudio.org is the wording of policy
    >> #5:
    >>
    >> The Linuxaudio.org consortium supports open standards and file
    >> formats. However, it recognises that reverse engineering of
    >> proprietary formats is sometimes required to enable
    >> interoperability.
                                                                                
    >> I think it's important for  the Free Software movement's future
    >> that  we place     strong emphasis  on  getting  support    for
    >> royalty-free open standards _by default_, and only then concern
    >> ourselves with the rest.
                                                                                
    > I'd agree -  I think the use  of the  word 'sometimes' here  was
    > intended  to indicate  that.   The only reason  that proprietary
    > formats  were mentioned at all   was that some developers wanted
    > protection  for   reverse  engineering,  following  cases   like
    > Sklyarov. In  practice, this protection  has been hard to  get a
    > consensus for among commercial companies.
                                                                                
I was one of the strongest supporters of  this kind of protection, and
I can   confirm that the  original idea   was really  to  support free
formats and,  only if necessary, give  people the necessary protection
to reverse engineer proprietary formats.
                                                                                
Shall we reword point #5 as:
                                                                                
  The   Linuxaudio.org consortium supports  open   standards  and file
  formats.   Moreover,  it recognises   that  reverse engineering   of
  proprietary formats is often required to enable interoperability and
  supports this kind of activity.

?
                                                                                
bye,

--
Andrea Glorioso                      andrea.glorioso at agnula.org
AGNULA Technical Manager                 http://www.agnula.org/
M: +39 333 820 5723                     F: +39 (0)51 930 31 133
      "Libre Audio, Libre Video, Libre Software: AGNULA"