When I thought about getting my first MP3-player a few years ago, one of the most important features for me was that it supports Ogg Vorbis, the free as in speech competitor to AAC. I was back then (and still am) a proposer off open source where it makes sense , and an open audio format definitely falls in to this category. I had basically my whole music collection archived in this format so it made total sense for me to also want a portable player that supports this format. But only half a year later, my little travel mate died (can’t blame it, though) and I had to think through all this again.
This time I had just bought my first Mac and kind of liked that whole seemless-ness you get when sticking with Apple products - it’s probably the same feeling you always get when sticking with just one one brand ;-) Another problem was, that it seemed to me like I was the only person out there who liked Ogg Vorbis outside of the science and software development community. There were no stores (at least widely acknowledged as being legel) who sold you music in this format.
Now the FSF seems to be trying to push Ogg Vorbis with its “Play Ogg” campaign in order to make it more visible to the public and so also to make it more attractive for online music shops and hardware and software developers. And they are definitely pushing on the big strength-button of Ogg: It’s royalty-freeness compared to MP3.
Great idea and the moment (1) I find a workable and reversable solution for playing OGGs and AACs on my iPod nano (yes, this goes to you Apple) and (2) I can finally get EMI music from iTunes without DRM I will probably really enjoying switching back again …
But do FSF campaigns really always have to appear so … I’m searching to opposite to “flashy”. Heck, java.com or getfirefox.com are not really perfect examples, but Ogg would at least deserve something in this league :-( Stickers wouldn’t be bad either.
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