Talk:Spread Open Media/en/FAQ

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AndreI's question

AndreL wrote:

> Why aren't GIF, JPEG, and JPEG2000 on this list?

JPEG2000: highly proprietary

JPEG: proprietary (?), lossy with little benefit only, too much inappropriate usage (poor quality images)

GIF: used to be affected by LZW84 patent, this is now expired, but still not fully free (?), obsolete, poor compression, 256 colors only. Problem: no usable PNG animation so far :-(

DOS386 07:42, 2 August 2007 (PDT)

GIF and JPEG are the only two formats you can rely on a web browser to properly decode, and for this reason are by far the most popular image formats on the web. (The most popular web browser doesn't properly decode PNG.) I'd like to know why they aren't considered sufficiently free. People on the JPEG2000 standards committee worked very hard trying to insure that free software implementations would be possible. How did they fail? Andrel

> GIF and JPEG are the only two formats you can rely on a web browser to properly decode

NOT true :-(

> The most popular web browser doesn't properly decode PNG

Please reveal what browser you consider as "most popular". Also, if a browser can't decode PNG correctly, then it is a faulty browser and you should bug maintainers of this browser, rather than promote bad image formats.

The Internet Explorer isn't a web browser by the way.[1] --Mms 08:07, 9 August 2007 (PDT)

> People on the JPEG2000 standards committee worked very hard trying to insure that free software implementations would be possible

Evidence please. AFAIK the opposite is true. And AFAIK NO browser has built-in JPEG2000 support by now.

DOS386 00:09, 4 August 2007 (PDT)

IIRC there is some patent trouble with JPEG2000 (don't know specifics) but to my knowledge JPEG (at least the usual baseline we're all using) isn't problematic (even the Forgent patent that caused some trouble in 2002 is expired by now). GIF, which is a tad bit dated, also apparently isn't covered by any patent anymore. Maikmerten 00:20, 3 August 2007 (PDT)

Not sure about how far JPG is proprietary (if there are still active patents, they will expire soon anyway), the main problem might be inappropriate usage of it for screenshots, tables, graphs, etc. And it's a bit obsolete (some geeks try to recompres JPG lostlessly !!!). DOS386 00:09, 4 August 2007 (PDT)

JPEG is far from obsolete. Lossless compression (read: PNG) is usually generating too big files on photographic content. - Maikmerten 03:57, 5 August 2007 (PDT)

JPEG and GIF do not need promotion for heaven's sake. That list is not exhaustive either. JPEG 2000 is very much proprietary and full of patents. Worse, it offers little advantages over common JPEG. Ah, if only PNG could be used for digital photography... Anyhow, not a big list. Just the most common. Does anyone want to compile an entire list of even the real real obscure ones?--Ivo 17:40, 7 August 2007 (PDT)

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Saoshyant's latest addition

Saoshyant wrote:

> Is SOM related with PlayOgg?

> No, and if you actually want to help promote Open Media formats

> like Vorbis avoid them. Threat tactics, desinformation, and ignorancy

> do _not_ pass the message we want.

Please rewrite. It's _NOT_ obvious at all who of them (SOM, PlayOgg, Vorbis) is the good and should be promoted and who is the evil and should be avoided ...

DOS386 07:42, 2 August 2007 (PDT)

It will be changed.--Ivo 17:40, 7 August 2007 (PDT)

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