Explaining Open Standards email attachements

[Sam Liddicott]

Thanks for those comments Hugo - they help to explain what I mean.

Not only will the original author hav to install some other software to convert the mp3 to ogg, they will then have to tell many recipients to install vlc or firefox in order to hear it, and to pass on the same instructions to everyone they send it to.

Also additional software will need to be found and used if recipients want to listen to the audio on an mp3 player. (Users without admin access won't have the ability to do this even if they have the wit). Further as non-aware users can't often judge the charactr of remote individuals telling them to install strange new software they will either refuse (lets hope so) or otherwise we will be responsible for adapting their attitude to be willing to install whatever software some remote spammer tells them to. Corporate users may face discipline for installing, or telling customers or colleagues to install software.

If they had just sent mp3 they would have found no inconvenience except from a few political geeks who's comments (see above) are unhelpful and generally make things complicated anyway.

Whatever we feel here for strategic reasons, those who hear us on this will think we are liars because in the short term all they wil get (and most recipients) will be utter inconvenince that they don't have the background to cope with.

They will learn pavlov-style to never listen.

Hence my belief that the document discussed should be political/idealistic or a helpful guide to interoperability and document exchange, but it can't do both.

Sam

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugo Roy <hugo at fsfe.org>
Sent: 04 April 2010 11:28
To: Sam Liddicott <sam at liddicott.com>
Cc: discussion at fsfeurope.org
Subject: RE: Explaining Open Standards email attachements


Hello Sam,

Allow me just to answer to this point,

Le mercredi 31 mars 2010 à 21:42 +0100, Sam Liddicott a écrit :
> For example: most users cannot handle ogg for flac files. Most users
> who can't accept mp3 but can accept ogg do so out of conscious
> rejection of mp3. And so the argument for ogg is political and not
> about interoperability and therfore will seem dishonest to
> non-technical readers who will then doubt the entire argument. Imagine
> when nearly everyone they send an ogg to (after the initial difficulty
> of producing the ogg - from an mp3) needs to ask what an ogg is and
> how to play it. It will soon be apparent that mp3 should have been
> used.

I have to say that it is not true, because a lot of very common and
famous software can handle those files.

Examples: VLC & Firefox 3.5.
The first one is easy to install and very popular.

Best,
-- 
  Hugo Roy                           im: hugo at jabber.fsfe.org 
  French Coordinator            http://www.fsfe.org/about/roy 

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