Ogg Vorbis, the patent-unencumbered sound standard its
developers hope will lay MP3 to rest, is approaching version 1.0.
According to the development team, 1.0 Release Candidate 1 should
be hitting servers today. This release will be feature-complete and
the only changes the team plans to make are for bugfixes.
ZDNet
has a writeup on the significance of the release:
Traditionally, companies that might license other
developers’ software have been skeptical of using anything that
comes before a 1.0 release, viewing that as a sign that there are
still bugs, or flaws, in the software code. Vorbis’ developers have
said that they view the 1.0 release as a critical moment for
gaining support from a wider range of commercial backers.The version set for release Sunday will officially be a “release
candidate”–containing essentially everything that will be in the
final version but still being checked by its users for last-minute
flaws.“After some pounding on this, we’ll ship 1.0,” Jack Moffitt, a
Vorbis developer, wrote in an e-mail. “This is essentially 1.0, but
we’re giving ourselves a short cycle to squash any bugs that come
up.”
The
project download page (where a specifically-labeled RC1 release
has yet to appear)