Multimedia on the web is dominated by closed formats, encumbered by patents owned by large companies. This means that any advanced technology to create video and audio is subject to licensing fees, and innovators face threats of patent lawsuits. Even multi-billion dollar companies are at risk: one court ruling, which was later overturned, ordered Microsoft to pay $1.5 billion for alleged MP3 related patent infringements. How can we bridge the digital divide and bring rich content to people all over the planet when patent threats loom over key technologies?

The Wikimedia Foundation only hosts videos and audio files that are available in open formats, most notably the open source standards Ogg Vorbis (audio) and Ogg Theora (video) developed by the non-profit Xiph.Org Foundation. These standards are unencumbered by patents and can be used by anyone freely to build any kind of video or audio technology. As such, they provide a secure baseline for innovation.

The Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the Firefox web browser, agrees. We’re very happy to share the message below, posted by Wikimedian and long-time free software supporter Greg Maxwell on the Foundation-l mailing list.  Some background about Ogg, Theora, Vorbis, and free software in general can be found on Wikipedia. You can also view some samples of Ogg Theora videos on the Wikimedia Commons.

(thanks also to the WM UK Chapter’s David Gerard for keeping us posted on the development)

[Foundation-l] Theora and Vorbis support in Firefox 3.1a2
Gregory Maxwell
Wed Jul 30 22:27:15 UTC 2008

“Mozilla is committing to include native support for OGG video and
audio in its next release that includes support for the video element
tag.” [http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/?p=492]

This is an announcement that Mozilla will be supporting the WhatWG
HTML5 multimedia tags as well as including Xiph’s unencumbered media
codecs as part of Firefox.

The WHATWG HTML5 <video/> and <audio/> tags allow supporting browsers
to naively display multimedia content just as they display still
images: without the need for plugins or extensions and with full
integration. Mozilla’s commitment to including a set of reasonably
performing and unencumbered codecs as a baseline means that web
developers and users have an opportunity to have multimedia that Just
Works without licensing obligations adding friction to the free flow
of knowledge. Together the native multimedia support and the baseline
inclusion of unencumbered multimedia codecs are an essential step
forward in preserving the open and unrestricted qualities of the web
which are so important to our mission.

The Wikimedia projects have long had a strong commitment to free media
formats, and Wikimedia Commons is probably the largest repository of
videos in Ogg Theora on the web. But our commitment has, at times,
been a costly one: As an early adopter of free media technology we’ve
suffered from more than our share of complications and incompatibilities.
After years of effort driving adoption and our own work improving the
state of the art for free media formats we’re now seeing the beginnings
of a true mainstream adoption which will allow these multimedia formats
to be truly costless for producers and consumers of knowledge. I know
from my own involvement that Wikimedia’s adherence to free formats has
been essential in moving things this far, and everyone who has worked
on multimedia within the Wikimedia projects should be proud of our
collective contribution here.

This could never make it into the mainstream without the groups
developing and promoting these free codecs — particularly Xiph.org,
spreadopenmedia.org, and the FSF’s PlayOGG campaign. The W3C’s policy
of only accepting royalty-free technology has played an essential
role by not allowing encumbered codecs as part of the standard, but
there has been a stalemate in the adoption of a useful, royalty free
baseline codec set. Because of this, I’d like to personally extend
thanks to the Mozilla Foundation for joining our leadership in this
important area of web standards. Without their help Web Video would
have no hope of escaping the environment of incompatible, proprietary,
“de facto standards” with their related costs.

The Wikimedia projects have had integrated video playback support
for some time now via the OggHandler extension. OggHandler supports a
multitude of playback methods (such as a Java player using Cortado, and
the VLC browser extension) in an effort to get unencumbered multimedia
format support working for as many people as possible. OggHandler has
been a great success, already working for a vast majority of readers, but
the native support in a popular browser will make OggHandler even better
(smoother performance, zero install or an easy upgrade to FireFox, etc).

The new <video/> tag in Firefox has been supported as a playback method
in OggHandler since day zero so the new Firefox builds will automatically
use their native playback ability on the Wikimedia sites.

The code for native support for Ogg Theora and Vorbis
was checked into the Mozilla mainline last night and is
already available in nightly builds marked 3.1a2pre or later
[http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/ - be sure to grab versions marked 3.1a2, not 3.1a1!].
The support is new and pretty raw: There are obvious outstanding issues
with things like timing and audio access on some platforms (such as many
GNU/Linux distros). Once the known bugs are fixed I’ll be soliciting
Wikimedians to check for bugs in both our own player code as well as
the Firefox test releases.

Now would be a good time to start building up some material on commons
to showcase this support for Firefox’s official release. Although
we’ve had video on our projects for a long time it’s still largely a
new and unexplored territory for us. There are many opportunities to
make important contributions and to have a lot of fun.

–Greg Maxwell

Do you happen to have 650 GB of free diskspace? If so, you can grab a copy of Wikipedia. Don’t fret: The compressed download of all language editions only clocks in at 40 gigabytes. Thanks to our developer Tim Starling for working on this project.

As a non-profit organization and a social movement, it’s our core mission to give free knowledge away to everyone. All the text content of Wikipedia is available for free download, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. The point of offering these downloadable archives is not just to make it possible to read Wikipedia while you’re on a plane or without Wi-Fi — it’s to enable people without Internet connectivity to use our content in ways that make sense. In particular, using these copies, it becomes very straightforward to set up a copy of Wikipedia for a school or university with no or limited Internet access. And, if you’re clever, you can use the dump as a starting point to create a version running on DVDs or USB sticks. (As the download page notes, if you create a product using the “Wikipedia” trademark or logo, you need official permission from the Wikimedia Foundation.)

For the technically inclined: The static HTML dumps are an alternative offering to our XML dumps in the original wiki syntax. The key advantage is that they don’t require any additional software to be useful: You can literally simply download them (provided you can handle the amount of data) and open them in your web browser. The wiki syntax format, on the other hand, offers third party users more flexibility in the ways they want to render the output.

Go ahead and download the data while it’s fresh. And if you have interesting stories about the ways in which you’re using your static copy, please drop a note to our Head of Communications, jwalsh(at)wikimedia(dot)org.

Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

It’s a great day to download Firefox 3 and edit your favorite wiki!

Earlier today a small consortium of wiki-developers, including our own Brion Vibber here at the Foundation, put the finishing touches on the Universal Edit Button.  With this little Firefox 3 extension users will be able to click one button, located conveniently in the Firefox address bar, to instantly access the ‘edit’ page for an increasing number of participating wikis, including Wikipedia.  A MediaWiki extension has been created so other wiki operators can implement the button into their own site.

At this time the button is exclusively available on FireFox (get help with the install), but there’s no reason we shouldn’t expect to see similar functionality in other browsers down the road.  Further proof that that the web is quickly shifting to become an ‘edit this page’ kind of place.  The power of public collaboration at work!

The Universal Edit Button was first discussed at the 2007 Recent Changes Camp, and again explored at the recent Recent Changes Camp in Palo Alto.  The button is a great example of the product of open-source collaboration and the mutual commitment of wiki developers to foster a community of interoperability and interconnectedness.

Here’s to the new age of the edit-powered web!

Jay Walsh, Head of Communications

Wikipedia fans and Google maps users may have heard recently that Google has unveiled a handsome new feature for its ubiquitous mapping system.

Alongside the familiar ’satellite’ and ‘terrain’ viewing options for maps, you can know click on ‘more’ then click the Wikipedia check box. In a flash the big serif W you know and love blankets mother earth, offering thousands of links to articles with geographic coordinates.

A great feature, and another novel way to explore the depths of Wikipedia’s millions and millions of articles.

J. Walsh, Head of Communications

Wikipedia in a book? That’s right! I know it may not be the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Wikipedia but our mission at the Wikimedia Foundation is make all human knowledge accessible to everyone, and that includes bringing that knowledge to the offline world.

Wikimedia Germany (the German Wikimedia chapter) spent a lot of time and energy pulling this project together and was able to get the weight of publishing powerhouse Bertelsmann behind the project. Furthermore, they helped Bertelsmann to understand and support our mission because the GFDL would require Bertelsmann to contribute the changes back to Wikipedia. This makes this a unique endeavor in the publishing world and could be considered a success just for getting this off the ground.

Here is a quick summary and the main stats of the book project:

Title: The Wikipedia Encyclopaedia in one volume (”Das Wikipedia
Lexikon in einem Band”)
Size: 993 pages
Illustrations: approx. 1,000
Keywords and definitions: approx. 50,000
Index: WIKIPEDIA’s most frequently accessed keywords
Content: Abstracts/first paragraph of the online-edition; countries
given with basic key facts
Format: 17 x 24 cm
Get-up: Hardcover, four-colour
Target retail price (VAT included): EUR 19.95
Publication date: Autumn 2008

The book is only in German for the German market but we will be watching this innovative project closely because…who knows? You can’t change the world unless you push the limits and try to break existing paradigms. Much of the credit for this arrangement belongs to Mathias, Arne and everyone involved with the German chapter - they did all the hard work. Danke!

Time to celebrate with some schnitzel and a large Dunkel (or an Apelsaft, if you prefer)!

Kul Wadhwa, Head of Business Development

I received an email recently inviting me to RecentChangesCamp 2008, which is, from what I have seen a gathering of people into all things wiki.  After one of my wiki-sprites (thanks Alex) did some research, I was able to find information on a previous RCC at RecentChangesCamp 2007 — Portland, Oregon.

Its description is as follows:

It’s scheduled to take place in Palo Alto, California, on May 9-11, 2008. More information can be gathered from their site,
http://rcc2008.blueoxen.net/.

RecentChangesCamp is open to the public. Everyone can attend.

If you’d like us to post your wiki or free culture related event, by all means, send us an email or leave a comment on this post!

Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator