Nokia and Ogg: ambivalence or actively hostile?
 

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 attached to the HTML5 video workgroup discussion, calling Ogg formats "proprietary". What gives?

Re: Nokia and Ogg: ambivalence or actively hostile?
 

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.

Re: Nokia and Ogg: ambivalence or actively hostile?
 

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

Re: Nokia and Ogg: ambivalence or actively hostile?
 

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?

Re: Nokia and Ogg: ambivalence or actively hostile?
 

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.

Re: Nokia and Ogg: ambivalence or actively hostile?
 

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.

Re: Nokia and Ogg: ambivalence or actively hostile?
 

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

Re: Nokia and Ogg: ambivalence or actively hostile?
 

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

Re: Nokia and Ogg: ambivalence or actively hostile?
 

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.

Re: Nokia and Ogg: ambivalence or actively hostile?
 

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.