Mozilla offers $ 100 000 to develop Wikimedia Ogg Theora
Mozilla and Wikimedia, the foundation probably the best known of the Web, are rarely mentioned together. Except perhaps to talk statistics, their two spearheads (Firefox and Wikipedia) involving hundreds of millions of Internet users.
The first named, most of the revenue generated by Firefox (mostly through Google), but just to subsidize up to $ 100 000 the Wikimedia Foundation, so that it can improve video technologies available, and more specifically the Ogg Theora, declination of the famous video of Xiph.org Ogg Vorbis.
Video compression format free, Theora is strongly supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, which for nearly three years campaigning for Firefox handles this format by default (which is true since with Firefox 3.1 beta).
Mozilla wants to improve Theora however, especially since it is (like Vorbis) routinely used by Wikipedia. But when we know that he wants to develop audio and video files on its platform, it is said that Xiph formats have nice days ahead.
“Open standards for audio and video are important because they can be used by anyone for any reason, without paying royalties (royalties), and can be verified and improved by a community open source “says Erik Möller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation.
“Today, video and audio on the Web are dominated by proprietary technologies, mostly proprietary codecs are built in readers to the source code closed. Wikimedia Mozilla want to help build a web video and audio are first-class citizens: to use and easy to handle by anyone, without the mandatory fees or barriers to contribution. ”
Erik Möller said that the improvements made through the 100 000 dollars will be published within the next six months.
