Hi Linuxers,

I got this recent Sitepoint newsletter ( issue 180 ) that appears worth sharing.

Where are the web-standards leading? Will these DRM kingpins always keep playing with standards and making things ever more difficult for the developer who is the one finally affected by this 'dog-fight for the biggest slice of bread'.

Its a really sad realization that the wealthiest businesses in the Industry have the cheapest of ways and policies; the two things, apparently, can never be mutually exclusive!

[quote src='sitepoint'] First up, after selecting Ogg Vorbis audio and Ogg Theora video as the standard formats for multimedia in HTML5, the HTML Working Group backed down under pressure from Apple and Nokia, removing these formats from the spec. Faced with the prospect of yet another version of HTML with no clear standard for including multimedia content, developers were up in arms.

Then, while all our backs were turned, Opera filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission over the company's tying of Internet Explorer to Windows, and its persistent failure to support web standards in IE. Instantly, pundits began trading theories over whether the complaint had merit, or was simply an irresponsible publicity stunt from Opera. [/quote]

[quote src='[1]'] Nokia and Apple have succeeded in removing Ogg Vorbis and Theora from the current draft, citing patent uncertainties (read: a reluctance to back a standard that has no provision for including DRM).

Manuel Amador has detailed why he believes the decision to omit these open formats to be an "outrageous disaster:"

"(Given) the fact that there are widely available patent-free implementations of Ogg technology, there is really no excuse for Apple and Nokia to say that they couldn't in good faith implement HTML5 as previously formulated." [/quote]

Full story at [1]

[1] http://www.sitepoint.com/newsletter/viewissue.php?id=3&issue=180&for...