9 Oct
2003
9 Oct
'03
7:58 p.m.
Hi,
On Thursday 09 October 2003 15:30, Joachim Backhaus wrote:
Tim,
I completely agree. I've been a Windows user for what, 15 years now?. I
have 5 PCs at home. I've dealt with enough buggy Windows audio software over
the years, so I download and install almost nothing unless I have some form
of assurance from people I trust that it's good stuff that won't mess my
system up. Even with that experience today is the first time I've listened
to an .ogg on any Windows PC.
Granted, I'm a careful guy, but I think from your perspective it's way
more difficult. I've known for a long time what an .ogg is, but when you
come across one Windows Media Player doesn't tell the casual user anything
about making it work. It just says it won't play it. You can attempt to put
instructions on-line, but careful people like me probably won't use them
unless there's something important about what we want to listen to. Worse is
that something goes wrong and people blame you. That's really bad for
business I'm sure.
And on the other hand, Linux based musicians who *want* their music to be
heard are cutting their nose off not making it extremely available through
mp3s. Frankly, independent of the perceived advantages of .ogg over mp3
(open source, sounds better, no licensing issues or royalty payments) it's
just good business to make your product usable by more people. That leads to
good stuff. Forcing people to go to .ogg seems like it's backwards to the
open source movement.
Mark
isn't this a linux list? ;-)
Yes, and the question is a highly pertinent one if you think
about it for a
moment. I manage a music website - using Linux entirely nowadays
- I'd dearly
love to scrap all the .mp3 files in favour of .oggs but it occurs
to me that
this would mean /most/ of my readers won't listen to the music -
it's fairly
unlikely that I'm going to be able to persuade the majority of them to
download /anything/ regardless of how easy any of us think it is to do.
-my2p-
tim hall