El Mundo Libre

A new age of Web video is dawning. Google has released an efficient video codec (VP8) and accompanying file format (WebM, a Matroska subset) under a Free software license and (even better) a royalty-free patent license. This means that there's already a libre implementation of it (being integrated into browsers as I type this) and that Free software projects don't have to worry about getting sued over patents. Google is already using the codec in the YouTube HTML5 demo section. It's only a matter of time before it will be the standard codec on the popular video website.

When that happens Microsoft and Apple can only follow suit and implement the codec in their own browsers. I'm sure they're not too happy about this, because as far as I know they're still pushing for H.264 to become the (de facto) standard video codec for HTML5. Apple has a finger in the MPEG patent pool, so they're making some money off of it. I believe Microsoft didn't put any patents in it, but it still consists of hundreds of patents owned by many companies. Microsoft's VC1 might be infringing on a number of those, which could be the reason why we don't hear about it a whole lot and why MS bought into the H.264 deal. Seeing such an investment go to waste stings.

But it's almost inevitable that VP8 is going to gain a majority market share in Web video. Apart from Google it's supported by Adobe and many other big names. Support for it in Flash is good in the short term, but I hope it'll be mostly used in conjunction with HTML5 in the long run. Speaking of which: HTML5 (and the video element) has seen fairly slow adoption so far and my understanding is that the video codec issue is for a large part to blame for that. The main problem some companies have with Theora is that, although it's patent-free in theory, patent trolls could potentially pull some submarine patents out of their sleeve to screw everyone over. Neither H.264 nor VP8 is safe from that, but they have the advantage of corporate backing. It also helps that all of Google's patent license grants are automatically revoked for anyone sueing over the codec or file format. That leaves only patent trolls to fear, but not real companies.

As much as I like this new development, it also confirms my worries about Google that the company is becoming way too powerful. It will greatly change the Web's implementation in the following months, whereas the Free Software Foundation and Xiph have barely managed to scratch the surface in the last few years. It's doing this by buying a company that develops and owns the technology (On2, the ones that brought us Theora), cherrypicking from an existing format, slapping that combination onto its website nobody can ignore and making everybody else an offer they cannot refuse. One of the most powerful companies in the world just got more powerful.

The Free Software Foundation is having its annual fundraising drive. I became a member myself last year and will be renewing my membership shortly. Let me elaborate on one of the many reasons for doing that.

I visited T-DOSE last weekend. This is a short overview of some of my impressions.

• Less people?: I'm certainly not a fan of crowds, but a bit more visitors couldn't hurt. Visitor count went up in the previous years, yet it seems to have diminished (or at least stagnated) this year.
• Where were the women? I saw just 4 women during the whole conference, only one of which stayed for longer than half a day. I'm not sure why that number was so low, but today's conferences should be able to do better.
• Much more focus on technical than on open source. In almost every presentation I saw non-free software was used or suggested. Why can't PDF documents just be opened in Evince? Why does OpenLaszlo generate Flash objects that can only be used with the non-free plugin? What's your credibility if you're talking about "open source" in government policy while running your presentation on Windows?
• Apparently some software from the Dutch government is not published as Free software because they fear that the code is in such a state that they would loose face if everyone could see it. That makes perfect sense: it's better to be a dictator than to have to explain why some code isn't properly modularized.
• NOiV, the organisation that promotes open source and open standards in government institutions, is very careful to avoid any mention of the philosophy of Free software. Yes, it's harder to convince people on the merits of ethics, but equating Free software to "freeware" doesn't build a healthy and durable environment for it and you'll have to keep convincing them on a case by case basis.
• If a Dutch school is telling you to use a non-free format, you can (and should) report it.
• VLC is still an awesome media player, and getting more awesome even
• OpenStreetMap is getting cooler by the minute. Hopefully coming soon: secure login (https) on the website. My first track (with my Freerunner) is itching to get on there, once that's implemented.
• If you want to use OpenStreetMap data for routing, then you need some special map instead of the regular one. But that doesn't explain why the map in Navit on my Freerunner was blank all the way. I probably just configured it wrong.
• There was some interest from a guy (sorry dude, I forgot your name, let me know if you're reading this) on the Debian project in gNewSense and my Lemote Yeeloong mini-laptop. He was the only person, apart from me, who seemed genuinly interested in software freedom.
• I should really look into unit testing, code inspection and all that stuff. If your development team is larger than 3 people and you're not doing any of it, then you're probably missing out.

In summary: it wasn't a bad conference, but I expected a bit more. Not all of the lesser points are in the hands of the organisers, but they could do a bit more steering, I think. We'll see if next year will bring some improvements.

The Blender Open Movie project's latest baby (in the making) is called Durian. It's going to be an action-packed animation with lots of cool effects and a female lead character. I'm a big fan of the Blender Open Movies because they show what free software can do in a cool way. A lot of their finances come from regular people. To get more funds for their movies, they provide two incentives (apart from the warm, fuzzy feeling of helping free software): a DVD and credits.

The DVD contains the movie in multiple formats, the source files for it, the script, tutorials and more. It is of course not copy-restricted with CSS. One disadvantage of it are the non-free formats: partly unavoidable to have an actual DVD, but apparently the HD version will also not be in a free format, even though it's just a file on the disk.

Anyway, for the second incentive, your name on the end credits, you have to pre-order the DVD early on. I missed the pre-order+credit window for Elephants Dream. Even though it was too late to get a credit, I pre-ordered the DVD anyway, to add to the funds for it or for the next project. I swore then that I wouldn't miss these opportunities again. So when Big Buck Bunny and Yo Frankie! were announced I made sure I was on time. Sadly, I let my attention drop a bit after that. It was only today, when someone mentioned Big Buck Bunny again, that I realized that pre-orders for the next project must have started by now. So I checked the Durian website and found out that the official pre-order period for credits ended a few days ago. I went ahead to the Blender shop anyway to pre-order and I could still choose to get my name in the credits. Maybe this is an oversight and my choice will be ignored. But there's also a chance that you can still get your name in the credits. I think it's a great way to end Software Freedom Day, don't you?

Your shipment of gNewSense has arrived. It was released last Monday and is already being enjoyed by many. Existing users have gotten it through regular updates, but we've also seen new users taking this important step towards freedom. If you would like to follow their example, just click the download button (which I've finally managed to fix) on this website. (Please use the torrent and seed if you can.)

This new release brings you some added freedom fixes in the packages (see also the software blacklist) and a more free Linux kernel. The other noticable major change in the new default install is the removal of Mono. This comes as a result of Richard Stallman's call to discourage C#. The two default applications that depended on Mono were F-Spot and Tomboy. They have been replaced by gThumb and Gnote respectively. A nice side effect of that is that the download has become smaller, so you can start using gNewSense sooner.

I would like to point out that Software Freedom Day is happening this Saturday. And what can be better than a fully Free operating system like gNewSense to tell people what Free software is all about and what it can do. Here's a selection of what you could do:

• Hand out live CDs.
• Show the live CD or an installed system on a demo machine.
• Show it on your Yeeloong mini-laptop. That would be a different version than the one we just released, but it gives a taste of things to come. And promoting the Yeeloong is a good thing.
• Organize an install party.
• Make (and hand out) bootable USB sticks by installing gNewSense on to one with the live CD or via FUSBi.
• Hand out flyers.

It's possible that you like the idea of a Free operating system, but your not entirely happy with gNewSense's implementation of it. Then there's a variety of other Free GNU/Linux distributions you can choose from. Our friends from Trisquel also just released a new version and Kongoni has just been added to the list. It looks like Software Freedom Day can't go wrong this year.