blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html

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  12  <h1>
  13      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  14
  15  </h1>
  16
  17 </div>
  18
  19
  20     <div class="entry">
  21       <div class="title">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</div>
  22       <div class="date">25th December 2010</div>
  23       <div class="body"><p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
  24 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
  25
  26 <blockquote>
  27
  28 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
  29 as follows:</p>
  30
  31 <ol>
  32
  33 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
  34 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
  35 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
  36
  37 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
  38 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
  39 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
  40 parties.</li>
  41
  42 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
  43 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
  44 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
  45
  46 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
  47 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
  48
  49 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
  50
  51 </ol>
  52
  53 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
  54 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
  55 products based on the standard.</p>
  56 </blockquote>
  57
  58 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
  59 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
  60 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
  61 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
  62 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
  63 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
  64 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
  65 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
  66
  67 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
  68
  69 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
  70 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
  71 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
  72 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
  73 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
  74 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
  75 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
  76 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
  77 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
  78 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
  79 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
  80 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
  81 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
  82 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
  83
  84 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
  85
  86 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
  87 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
  88 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
  89 documentation indicating this.</p>
  90
  91 <p>According to
  92 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
  93 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
  94 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
  95 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
  96 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
  97 report is correct.</p>
  98
  99 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
 100
 101 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
 102 container format</a> and both the
 103 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
 104 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
 105 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
 106
 107 <blockquote>
 108
 109 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
 110 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
 111 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
 112 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
 113 specification compliance.
 114
 115 </blockquote>
 116
 117 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
 118 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
 119 this is the term:<p>
 120
 121 <blockquote>
 122
 123 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
 124 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
 125 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
 126 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
 127 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
 128 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
 129 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
 130 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
 131 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
 132 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
 133 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
 134 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
 135
 136 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
 137 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
 138 </blockquote>
 139
 140 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
 141 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
 142 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
 143 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
 144 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
 145
 146 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
 147
 148 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
 149 Theora format.
 150 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
 151 and
 152 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
 153 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
 154 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
 155 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
 156 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
 157 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
 158 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
 159 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
 160
 161 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
 162
 163 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
 164
 165 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
 166
 167 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
 168 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
 169 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
 170 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
 171 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
 172 this.</p>
 173
 174 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
 175 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
 176 </div>
 177
 178       <div class="tags">Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.</div>
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