Subject: Re: [AVT] [dispatch] Proposal to form Internet Wideband Audio Codec WG

From: Christopher Montgomery <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 22:12:48 -0400

I've been following this discussion through the archives, and it seems
time to dip a toe in. Apologies for the vaguely formal language, I'm
speaking for my organization.

I'm happy to see more IETF interest in taking up the subject of
royalty-free codecs for the Internet.  Several of our Xiph.Org members
have been quietly advocating for this within IETF for some time, and
it's nice to see the call coming from other sources as well. It's no
coincidence that the Internet's greatest success stories have all been
unencumbered.  Any new technology that rolls out with a royalty
pricetag has a steep uphill climb to do anything more than fragment
and muddy both social and business interoperability.

The Xiph.Org Foundation is a registered non-profit created toward
designing and deploying unencumered media codecs.  I'd like to
stand up and say officially that we would very much like to work with
the IETF on roaylty-free codecs.

Xiph.Org does two things: we research fundamental codec technology to
further the state of the art, then develop and deploy this research
without royalty or licensing restrictions.  We've created and made
available the Ogg container format and the Vorbis, Speex, FLAC, Theora
and CELT codecs.  Ogg-related protocols are already covered by a few
RFCs.  We exert no IP claims on our specifications and our reference
implementations are all BSD licensed.  Our codecs are a means to an
end, not an end in and of themselves.

Unfortunately, unencumbered access to basic media technology (a level
playing field) has meant reinventing and reimplementing from the
ground up. On the plus side, reinventing and reimplementing has
allowed us to use new [and rediscovered] techniques to better fit the
needs of the Internet.

...so we'd like to toss our hat into this ring and volunteer the
experience our own organization has gained in the past 15 years of
building royalty-free, unencumbered media tech from scratch. We
look forward to working with others who recognize the importance of
open and free media technology.

Monty
Xiph.Org