February 18, 2014 at 01:36Free codecs win Wikipedia poll
The Wikipedia community has completed a vote on the use of MP4 videos. With more than twofold superiority, it was decided to abandon support for this proprietary format: 309 votes against and 145 votes for full support for MP4 (+4 votes for partial support only for viewing and +56 votes for partial support only for downloading a new video).
Opponents of MP4 explained their point. In order to create a truly free product - Wikipedia, to guarantee its full openness and freedom in the future, you need to use only free codecs. Otherwise, in the future there may be a situation when, in order to display the video on Wikipedia, it will be necessary to obtain a license to use a patent in one form or another.
From this point of view, any software that is used in the infrastructure of Wikimedia projects must comply with public standards regarding intellectual property, patent status, licensing, etc.
The current community requirements are that free / open standards should always be used to encode and store video files on servers in order to store data, so that both content and software can be distributed without any restrictions. Branded video containers or codecs, such as MP4, are not allowed on Wikimedia projects because they are patented and their software cannot be freely licensed (although the contents of MP4 itself can be free).
Opponents of MP4 explained their point. In order to create a truly free product - Wikipedia, to guarantee its full openness and freedom in the future, you need to use only free codecs. Otherwise, in the future there may be a situation when, in order to display the video on Wikipedia, it will be necessary to obtain a license to use a patent in one form or another.
From this point of view, any software that is used in the infrastructure of Wikimedia projects must comply with public standards regarding intellectual property, patent status, licensing, etc.
The current community requirements are that free / open standards should always be used to encode and store video files on servers in order to store data, so that both content and software can be distributed without any restrictions. Branded video containers or codecs, such as MP4, are not allowed on Wikimedia projects because they are patented and their software cannot be freely licensed (although the contents of MP4 itself can be free).