On 07/01/14 22:08, Timo Juhani Lindfors wrote:
Torsten Grote Torsten.Grote@fsfe.org writes: At least point 4 is quite difficult to assess. Does ogg vorbis meet it for example? I have no idea if xiph.org foundation meets "developed independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties;".
As (to the extent of my knowledge) The Xiph.Org Foundation is selling neither support nor software that implements Vorbis decoder/encoder, the Xiph.Org Foundation is not a vendor of Vorbis by definition. It is also unlikely that they are secretly collaborating with a single vendor to dictate the format.
Regarding the openness of the process… If I am not mistaken, the specification is/has been produced from the reference implementation's code base. The reference implementation itself is Free Software and its development is open to collaboration.
So in all likelihood, Vorbis conforms to point 4. Furthermore, Vorbis is considered an open standard by the Free Software community.
Also could a compelete but non-free implementation fullfill point 5?
Possibly. However, proprietary software sometimes grants its users freedom 0 (the freedom to run for any purpose), but is that relevant to Free Software in any way? No, because an Open Standard should conform to all five points in the definition as Free Software must conform to all four freedoms.
Sincerely,