Nokia and Ogg: ambivalence or actively hostile?

[hircus]

The official line we've heard so far regarding Ogg support in the Nokia tablets is that it is up to third party developers to implement it -- indeed, Ari Jaaksi pointed to Maemo Garage for such support.

It struck me as odd, then, that the default media player would not play .oggs even after the third-party GStreamer plugin for it has been installed. I'd note that Windows Media Player would happily play OGGs after the DirectShow filter has been installed, and likewise with QuickTime Player. Even iTunes would play OGGs, though refusing to index the metadata properly.

So this begs the obvious question -- is the media player only playing an officially-sanctioned whitelist of file formats?

The situation gets even more worrying with the new position paper (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/09/2045200) attached to the HTML5 video workgroup discussion, calling Ogg formats "proprietary". What gives?

[Rocketman]

I've always thought the lack of inclusion of OGG support to be extremely odd as well. Granted, the dsp has always taken care of the heavy lifting for mp3 support, so maybe they are worried that OGG playback would slow down the rest of the user experience? Nokia's recent foray into DRM'd to death music sales makes me really question if they get openness.

[ldrn]

I think the new position paper made it crystal clear: yes, it's actively hostile.

[Rocketman]

Well, so far we have a paper submitted by an individual to a working group whose main purpose seems to be to decide whether to bring back the <blink> tag. Whether his views represent Nokia at large or the NIT group in particular is pure speculation. Does anyone have any past citations that might further clarify/muddy the debate as to Nokia's position on OGG for NITs?

[hircus]

Spoke too soon regarding the built-in player -- Tuomas' ogg-support 0.4 has enabled Ogg playback. He's not too impressed by the level of documentation provided, though.

[Rocketman]

There are a lot of closed source applications, taskbar widgets, etc. included with the NITs. I know that many people would like to enhance the functionality of the WiFi and Bluetooth taskbar widgets, but can't because they are closes source. In this case, something which should be fairly straightforward like adding support for a new media format becomes more complex because Tuomas can't look under the hood.

[R-R]

I don't get that part of the strategy from Nokia...
Are they just trying to be the most open device in their category or really trying to be open here?
Oh, and can someone fire that lawyer who wrote that pdf linked from slashdot? :P

[vvaz]

Bad Nokia, bad. Looks like main reason against Ogg is lack of DRM support.

[lardman]

Perhaps Nokia are worried that as they don't need to license vorbis from anyone (and therefore cannot limit their liability), they would be open to being sued if someone found a patent infringement in vorbis.

[Jonnycat26]

I don't get that part of the strategy from Nokia...


It's easy to get if you realize one important thing...

Nokia today is not Nokia from a few years ago. The old Nokia was a company that sold you mobile devices. The problem was, some ***** sat inside Nokia and lusted after Apple's business model... which leads us to the new Nokia.

The new Nokia is a company that wants to sell you a mobile device that you'll use to purchase lots of music and other forthcoming content (N-Gage games) and lock you into their portals and services (navigation subscriptions). The device is only a means to an end, and giving customers choices by making the devices open limits Nokia's future revenue.

[yerga]

I think like Jonnycat26 about Nokia reasons.
But btw, I also think we will see ogg support for Nokia in the Internet tablets, though it only is support for ogg vorbis.

[vvaz]

Perhaps Nokia are worried that as they don't need to license vorbis from anyone (and therefore cannot limit their liability), they would be open to being sued if someone found a patent infringement in vorbis.

This apply to practically all available today pieces of code. You never know where submarine patent lies. And this is THE argument against software patents.

[LordFu]

If there wasn't Ogg support, I'd never have bought my N800. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Nokia should think about that, seriously. Ogg is, IMO, the replacement for mp3. It's superior in numerous ways, and it's not tied up by the patent police. Every device that plays digital music should support it. There's no good reason not to, although there are several bad ones.

[lderkacz]

Maybe that'll explain something.
S**TF**s from Nokia :)
http://www.w3.org/2007/08/video/positions/Nokia.pdf

[R-R]

If there wasn't Ogg support, I'd never have bought my N800. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Nokia should think about that, seriously. Ogg is, IMO, the replacement for mp3. It's superior in numerous ways, and it's not tied up by the patent police. Every device that plays digital music should support it. There's no good reason not to, although there are several bad ones.

Even though i understand JohnnyCat26's explanation, i must agree here. I bought this device and i'm going to develop for it, _because_ it's trying to be Open. I don't care about working for a company for free _if_ it benefits the whole of humanity (ok that may be overblown hehe ;-).

The point is, companies lust for short term profit and selling content is another business than selling devices. You can be good at both but you have to do it without sacrificing any part of each for the other or trying to lock in people. This always backfires (at least i hope it always does).

So nokia, if you make the best tablet to access _ANY_ content, than people will recognize your brand, and then may be interested by your open services for content that are probably going to follow the same design and thus be excellent for the consumer. Ethic still has value, you'll see, FOSS is a new world :-)

That's a strategy i'd lust for... :-)

[mwiktowy]

The official line we've heard so far regarding Ogg support in the Nokia tablets is that it is up to third party developers to implement it -- indeed, Ari Jaaksi pointed to Maemo Garage for such support.

...

The situation gets even more worrying with the new position paper (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/09/2045200) attached to the HTML5 video workgroup discussion, calling Ogg formats "proprietary". What gives?

I'm baffled by Nokia's position also. It may be as simple as them assuming that since there is so much demand from the community, that the community will fill that void themselves. But with this paper indicating that they think of ogg as proprietary, I am starting to think that someone high in the Nokia decision making tree is very confused since the front-line devs seem (at least morally) supportive of ogg support. I would love to hear their reasoning behind making that premise-less conclusion so I have asked the question on the maemo-dev list ... I don't expect a clear response but I had to try.

/Mike

[lardman]

The new Nokia is a company that wants to sell you a mobile device that you'll use to purchase lots of music and other forthcoming content (N-Gage games) and lock you into their portals and services (navigation subscriptions). The device is only a means to an end, and giving customers choices by making the devices open limits Nokia's future revenue.

Dare I say "what a load of twaddle", we're not locked in in any way. You can use DRM-free mp3 for your music, etc. You can write and run apps on the device, and you can browse whichever sites you want to do download music. I don't know how you can call this "locked in"?

Some people obviously want ogg vorbis support, this is fair enough, I don't know why it's not included, but have given a possible answer. I don't think it's part of a grand Nokia masterplan to make us only buy their music/service/whatever thoughas mp3 offers as many ways to get out of such a masterplan.

This apply to practically all available today pieces of code. You never know where submarine patent lies. And this is THE argument against software patents.

Yes indeed, my point was that if Nokia have licensed mp3 (for example) from Fraunhofer IIS, they are probably protected from any "submarine" patents which surface (i.e. Fraunhofer IIS would have to guarantee that they hold all the applicable patents otherwise why bother licensing it at all). On the other hand I don't know if they have licensed mp3 (etc.) from them.

[ragnar]

Well, that is ultimately input from just one guy from Nokia. But I guess the final sentence of that PDF is quite important and revealing, in a non-direct manner:

"All these alternatives are, in our opinion, preferable over the recommendation of the
Ogg technologies, based almost exclusively on the current perception of them being
free."

[Jonnycat26]

Dare I say "what a load of twaddle", we're not locked in in any way. You can use DRM-free mp3 for your music, etc. You can write and run apps on the device, and you can browse whichever sites you want to do download music. I don't know how you can call this "locked in"?


Twaddle? Dare I say, you just don't know Nokia.

No, the situation on with the IT side of the company isn't that dire. But look at what they've done with S60. "Symbian Signed" has severely curtailed the development of freeware S60 software, and for a while (months at least, dunno if they've ever fixed it) you couldn't get a free application signed. And no, Nokia, self-signing is not the answer.

One doesn't have to be Nostradamus, or even Criswell, to put Nokia's strategy together. Yeah, you can use non-DRMed music... but they obviously want a piece of the iTunes/online market pie, and who can blame them. Support for MP3 is a must, support for OGG isn't. When it comes to priorities, supporting their DRM'ed online store is going to take precedence over any OGG initiative. We've got an official Rhapsody client for the ITs, but no official OGG support.

Nokia sees a future in services, plain and simple.

[lny98]

I have no problem with any decision regarding what Nokia will include/support, but:

a. they should make sure that they don't withhold information (ie: OS API's, device driver info, hardware info) from 3rd party and open source developers
b. don't actively put anything in their code to preclude others writing support for non-supported code/filetypes/etc, or do anything to degrade performance of others programs

[lardman]

No, the situation on with the IT side of the company isn't that dire. But look at what they've done with S60. "Symbian Signed" has severely curtailed the development of freeware S60 software, and for a while (months at least, dunno if they've ever fixed it) you couldn't get a free application signed. And no, Nokia, self-signing is not the answer.

Yes, the mobile phone side of their operations is probably quite different. I don't use a Symbian phone so I don't know anything about that, but I can understand at least one reason why they'd want to limit what can be run, and that's abuse of a given provider's network.

Support for MP3 is a must, support for OGG isn't. When it comes to priorities, supporting their DRM'ed online store is going to take precedence over any OGG initiative. We've got an official Rhapsody client for the ITs, but no official OGG support.

Oh yes, I quite agree with you on this, they have to support mp3, they don't have to support ogg and drm codecs/services are a money producing avenue for them and/or their collaborators.

With that said, there's still no reason to not provide ogg support "out of the box" (in the form of the relatively free [in terms of cost to develop and maintain] gstreamer plugin rather than an expensive-to-develop DSP task) unless it's some legal thing.

[hircus]

Ogg is, IMO, the replacement for mp3. It's superior in numerous ways, and it's not tied up by the patent police.

Mod insightful. MP3 also has no DRM, tends to have lower quality at the same bitrate, and worse, even after paying up a license fee, Microsoft and other companies have recently discovered that they are still exposed to submarine patents.

So Ogg Vorbis really has no disadvantage vis-a-vis MP3, apart from not being as established in the market. Considering MPEG-4 audio (AAC) is available in both protected and unprotected variants (there are several DRM schemes, in fact -- Apple and Real use different ones), there is nothing to prevent Nokia from creating their own DRM-ed Ogg Vorbis format, if they want.

[konttori]

Hey,

take a look at the mp3 patents:
http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/

If you were an IPR lawyer, you will have to be cautious about the issues, right. So, take a look at those patents and say that you would be certain that OGG doesn't infringe any of them and that it won't infringe any patents for aac or wma. Heck, there must be tons of other codecs with similar patent portfolios.

Now, consider that you choose mp3 now. You pay the price and you are safe. Most of the internet revolves around mp3s anyway. Also, what you will be certain of, is that it will be completely patent free within 10 years and that for the most part it will be patent free within a few years. Some of the later acquired patents don't really affect the normal mp3 playback but some special uses of it (like the theatre 5.1 audio in mp3 patent).

You can read the instruction on patent expiration from here:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=2434

[lny98]

Yes, the mobile phone side of their operations is probably quite different. I don't use a Symbian phone so I don't know anything about that, but I can understand at least one reason why they'd want to limit what can be run, and that's abuse of a given provider's network.


I've heard this argument, and for the life of me, I can't understand what this argument means? How can you 'abuse' a provider's network?

Is it using too much bandwidth? Well, all ISP's can limit this in any economic or technical sense they want. Let them offer limited and/or unlimited packages at their discretion? What's the big deal? Land ISP's have been doing this since the beginning of the internet.

Is it the fear of screwing up the cell voice calls? I can possibly see this, but I would imagine if one wanted to do that, the technologies and radio's are already out there. And assuming it is true, leave the voice processing locked/hidden, but there is zero reason not to leave the Internet Protocol traffic completely open.

The writing is on the wall,and the Google Open Mobile initiative combined with phone manufacturers (eg: Asian) that are not tied to post-sale revenue may very well spell the doom for closed systems.

[ragnar]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071210-nokia-wants-w3c-to-remove-out-ogg-from-upcoming-html5-standard.html Here's a bit better post on the "Ogg" subject.

[lardman]

Yes, the mobile phone side of their operations is probably quite different. I don't use a Symbian phone so I don't know anything about that, but I can understand at least one reason why they'd want to limit what can be run, and that's abuse of a given provider's network.


I've heard this argument, and for the life of me, I can't understand what this argument means? How can you 'abuse' a provider's network?

Is it using too much bandwidth? Well, all ISP's can limit this in any economic or technical sense they want. Let them offer limited and/or unlimited packages at their discretion? What's the big deal? Land ISP's have been doing this since the beginning of the internet.

Is it the fear of screwing up the cell voice calls? I can possibly see this, but I would imagine if one wanted to do that, the technologies and radio's are already out there. And assuming it is true, leave the voice processing locked/hidden, but there is zero reason not to leave the Internet Protocol traffic completely open.

I think it's certainly the latter case, screwing up the network by interfering with the underlying protocols, etc. Yes, I'm sure it's possible to get tools and radios to do this is you really want to, but if a virus could be crafted to do this on every Symbian handset then you'd have a far larger problem (more widespread, next to no cost involved other than time).

It really depends on how much of a black-box the radio is; with OpenMoko it's completely closed and the interface is by sending AT commands over a serial connection. This is pretty much the same as plugging a mobile phone into your PC. If you could manipulate the radio at a low level you could start sending out spurious ID data, using more than your allocated time slice, etc. Lots of things that might "annoy" the provider.

[R-R]

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/09/nokia-to-w3c-ogg-is.html

For the record, another explanation ;-)

[bokubob]

To put it another way, Nokia would rather pay $0.20/player for the ISO standard H.264, and know that they're legally bulletproof, rather than try Ogg Theora for free, and risk get slapped with a few million dollar lawsuit.

The long version: Nokia's paper was on video codecs. Ogg Vorbis is not a video codec, so I don't see the direct relevance. Their concern over Ogg Theora (a video codec) is understandable. It has no market penetration, so it remains legally untested. (In fact, it's origins as a commercial codec make the legal issues unclear, especially when w3c sponsorship would suddenly make it an attractive property) We've seen Microsoft handed a huge lawsuit over mp3 not so long ago, and you'd expect that they would have looked into this. Meanwhile, AAC and H.264, which Nokia suggests, are considerably more straight forward in their licensing.

[linuxrebel]

Well, so far we have a paper submitted by an individual to a working group whose main purpose seems to be to decide whether to bring back the <blink> tag. Whether his views represent Nokia at large or the NIT group in particular is pure speculation. Does anyone have any past citations that might further clarify/muddy the debate as to Nokia's position on OGG for NITs?

The W3C is a lot more than a <blink> tag committe, If you had botherd to ever read any of the html standards versions, you would know that, that tag, was a creation of netscrape/IE and never a part of html, and rejected when submitted.

As for the position paper, all papers must be submitted by individuals. When that individual represents a company, it must be stated (as it is) that the paper represents that company or other organizations position. This is done in order to establish a point of contact, and to prevent anonymous papers that might be harmful to a company being filed by a rival concern. (Sun can't file a paper claiming to be coming from IBM)

Put the mud away we have some real concerns here. Obvously Nokia's Lawyers still don't grok OSS and as yet aren't ready to either use the FSLSC (I hope I have the achronym right.), the legal team for the FSF (Free Software Foundation) or to trust the recent court descisions related to OSS. The education must be done, but not with mud and inuendo.

[This post brought to you by furious pecking and an n800]

[Benson]

The W3C is a lot more than a <blink> tag committe, If you had botherd to ever read any of the html standards versions, you would know that, that tag, was a creation of netscrape/IE and never a part of html, and rejected when submitted.
I don't think that bit of Rocketman's comment was intended quite seriously; at least I truly hope not.
As for the position paper, all papers must be submitted by individuals. When that individual represents a company, it must be stated (as it is) that the paper represents that company or other organizations position. This is done in order to establish a point of contact, and to prevent anonymous papers that might be harmful to a company being filed by a rival concern. (Sun can't file a paper claiming to be coming from IBM)
As I understand Rocketman, his question wasn't whether this is a position of Nokia or merely this individual, but
Whether his views represent Nokia at large or the NIT group in particular
Which still seems to be an open question. In an organization the size of Nokia, it's certain that there will be some differences of opinion between divisions. It could be that this is the "corporate viewpoint", but that there are strong pro-OGG sentiments in the NIT group. Or that this represents the NIT group, but the smartphone people really love OGG. Or maybe they all hate Theora. This probably doesn't matter from W3C's perspective; that it's Nokia's position is probably quite enough for them. But it could have serious impact on what the capabilities of future NITs will be.
Put the mud away we have some real concerns here. Obvously Nokia's Lawyers still don't grok OSS and as yet aren't ready to either use the FSLSC (I hope I have the achronym right.), the legal team for the FSF (Free Software Foundation) or to trust the recent court descisions related to OSS. The education must be done, but not with mud and inuendo. Maybe, or maybe they simply don't want DRM-free formats standardized. It's hard to score content when the people with the content demand DRM, and you can't use DRM. So by avoiding standardization on a codec/wrapper combination with no DRM implementation, they can avoid being accused of breaking standards later when they are delivering DRMed content. They mentioned this as a reason, and I'm inclined to suppose that it is their main reason, and the extra BS is just a bunch of extra BS thrown in for padding.

[BOFH]

Looks like Nokia got their way:

http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=1142&to=1143

[PowerUser]

Sad to read such news.Looks like Nokia has growth issues and problems with a management - while right hand goes to the open world, left hand trashes all efforts to the hell.What the hell there should be DRM in my device?

I'm paying money.It is pretty strange to cripple my legal rights for my moneys.And then some people wonders why there is so many pirates.Simple: pirated content is not just free in terms of moneys.It also does not cripples legal rights and does not invades to my privacy.How far this DRM idiocy can go?When pirated content is better than original one, that's a real shame for authors.This shows how far abuse of monopoly power can go in modern world :E.And now they're trying to "fix" this issue by crippling rights and punishing those who is not agree to pay moneys and get their rights crippled.IMHO such methods are suitable for mafia, not for market with fair competition.

What about H.264 and AAC...
1) I'm do not use AAC at all, thanks to efforts to imporve it.There is too many flavours.AAC LC, AAC HE, AAC Plus... and some other flavours I can't remember.Now, what about compatibility?All software and devices supporting AAC can surely play AAC LC, but it's ineffective and loses to OGG in "bitrate vs quality" competition without any chances.And OGG plays EVERYWHERE.Each device or program capable playing OGG will play it.With AAC Plus or HE this is not so true.You'll have headache checking if target device/profram can play it.And you have to pay patent royalties for AAC AFAIK.In short, AAC is quite crappy "standard" which costs something to end user.

2) H.264... it's state of art, but still heavily patented.And it is we are, the users who pays for all this patent crap.Theora and OGG are free in both terms of source code availability AND lack of royalty fees.So, adding ogg or theora costs nothing.But adding AAC and H.264 costs some bucks to vendor and hence to end user.In long-term I'm preferring to not depend on "standards" which are prohibiting FAIR competition.When something is declared standard and others must support it, it is not seems to be fair competition when you must pay to some entity for implementing standard.IMHO sdandards should be free.To set up level.Others have to try to beat it if they're really want to get moneys.Othervice progress will stuck.

[guerby]

konttori, "Now, consider that you choose mp3 now. You pay the price and you are safe."

No, you're never ever safe.

Paying money to a software patent troll doesn't prevent another patent troll to sue you and your users with another patent related to MP3 which isn't in the pool you paid for.

http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/

[lardman]

Assuming Nokia have a licence to use mp3 from the Frauenhofer institute, if they are then sued for a patent not covered by those held by Frauenhofer (is this possible, or is the Frauenhofer patent and licence for the entire mp3 process?) they can sue Frauenhofer. Or probably more likely is that as so many large companies have licensed mp3, they just club together and bury/buy off the new patent holder.