Binary Freedom: Ogg Vorbis – The Successor to MP3?

[ Thanks to Quinn for this link.
]

“Nowadays, music on the net is readily associated with the
extension .mp3. Not everyone knows what that “.mp3” stands for,
and, much more important, that .mp3 files do not come without a
cost- even if nobody asked you for money for them yet, this doesn’t
mean it won’t happen in the future. But “the times they are a
changing”, thanks to the Ogg project and to Ogg Vorbis, and we
talk about this with Monty, one of the core developers behind the
project.”

“How strong do you feel was the community reaction to the
OggVorbis project? Are you currently experiencing a considerable
amount of participation to the project, either in terms of beta
testings, help with documentation, web design, or code?”

“Monty: Community reaction has been strong both in the
developer/user community, admittedly predominantly the open source
side of this community, and especially in the online music industry
itself. The industry reaction isn’t surprising; we stand to save
almost every company money at the same time we level the playing
field with a standard, freely usable technology. Any company that
isn’t trying to throw their own proprietary format into the mix is
happy to see this.”

“What were your foremost technical objectives when you started
designing the OggVorbis codec format? Do you feel like you are
fulfilling them?”

“Monty: I wanted to improve on what was currently out there, and
that target has moved alot since 1993. We clearly better mp3, and
we’re in the big leagues with the best proprietary formats the Big
Players can muster, and we wanted to keep it all opened up. I’m
personally sick of intellectual property, patents especially, being
used as nothing more than dirty corporate weaponry (artist and
consumer be damned).”

Complete
Story