Could Ogg Vorbis be the most important Open Source project ever?
Yes, according the folks at linux.com.
"Ogg Vorbis is an attempt to build a high quality truly open
source media layer for the Internet. It's an ambitious project, and
unusual as the results will directly benefit not just developers
(like, say game developers and multimedia programmers) but
end-users as well: People who enjoy music will not have to worry
about "stealing". Content creators, in turn, will benefit from an
Ogg Vorbis world. Musicians will not have to pay royalties to
distribute their music in compressed format, or be locked into
proprietary schemes like those from Microsoft. Many more people
will enjoy their music, since it will interoperate with everything.
The OGG project could well become the most important application of
open source software there has ever been...."
"According to the Xiph.org web site Ogg is the name for an even
more ambitious multimedia framework that will eventually include
other codecs, like Tarkin (for video) and Squish (for lossless
audio). Vorbis, on the other hand, is the name for the single
compression codec used for digital sound and music."
