[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] OGG support

[From: Jussi Pakkanen]

--- Martin Grimme <mgrimme at online.de> wrote:

> I have written a little program which can fluently
> play OGG Vorbis
> files on the device. This shows that OGG support is
> technically
> possible and, by utilizing the DSP, it could even be
> implemented more
> efficient.

That's cool. There has been some confusion on why
there is no official OGG support. As far as I can
tell, the situation is as follows (note: I'm not
working for Nokia or any other such company, and I
don't actually know any hidden, hard facts. Consider
the following an educated guess)

The lack of OGG is caused by two things. The time
shortage has already been mentioned on this list.
There have been semi-reliable rumors that
DSP-accelerated OGG is now working somewhere in the
vaults of Nokia.

The other reason is a combination of lawyers and SW
patents. As far as people can tell, there are no
patents on OGG. But a company the size of Nokia can't
rely on that. They have to check and then double check
for themselves, which is a slow process. Their lawyers
simply will not allow an unchecked release, because
otherwise some IP poachers could sue them for millions
of dollars due to "patent infringement". Given the
current (sorry) state of patent laws, this is
unfortunately the way it _has_ to go.

Anyway, I'm fairly confident that the next (or the one
after that) SW release will support OGG. Until then
I'll just use this proggie to play my OGGs.


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