Full Version: Vorbis on Kuro5hin
This article on kuro5hin has some interesting things to say about Vorbis. An external viewpoint on Vorbis that seems to highlight some deficiencies (?) in the current release methology. Is any of this true? Or (as I suspect) is there more to the story?
The article is an interesting read, but I can't really see the problem: The creation of oggdec, ogg2ogg and of course OggdropXPd were possible with the available sources and specification (okay, they are just frontends for the original libs). And Ogg and Vorbis are still very young standards, compared to MPEG and its famous third layer, and I'm sure documentation will come.
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Read the response of Jack Mophitt from Xiph.org and the story on slashdot.
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Read the response of Jack Mophitt from Xiph.org and the story on slashdot.
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I've always been a believer in Vorbis and found it very promising. But the article on Kuro5hin definitely has a point. If you watch vorbis.com closely you'd agree. The site is down regularly. There're no updates for months. No design changes, news, additions. The lack of professionalism is easily noticeable in the news announcements, the links, etc. Although an extremely promising project Ogg Vorbis is, it looks like even the Vorbis developers don't believe in its success, or don't want to promote it/advertise it. Given that it has such a cool name 
and recent WinAmp support I'm sure more people are visiting the Vorbis site which is unfortunately quite amateurish at the moment. I am an academic that appreciate modesty and I believe such extraordinary things advertise themselves. But at the same time Vorbis project can bring on an enormous hype and thus momentum, just like the linux did if it is given proper attention (though for instance I think FreeBSD is much better, almost noone knows it).
Especially providing a specification is extremely important. I like Monty and I think he's a very capable guy. But I also believe that Vorbis project could only succeed if there're many developers behind it (just like lame). Otherwise it would take many other years for Vorbis to get to 1.1. At the moment Xiph.org (particularly Monty) is the only one behind this immense project and no one else is contributing much in code because no one actually knows what is going on. If Xiph came up with a specification then there might even be several implementations of Vorbis encoders which would bring cross breeding and faster development.
--Alp
and recent WinAmp support I'm sure more people are visiting the Vorbis site which is unfortunately quite amateurish at the moment. I am an academic that appreciate modesty and I believe such extraordinary things advertise themselves. But at the same time Vorbis project can bring on an enormous hype and thus momentum, just like the linux did if it is given proper attention (though for instance I think FreeBSD is much better, almost noone knows it).
Especially providing a specification is extremely important. I like Monty and I think he's a very capable guy. But I also believe that Vorbis project could only succeed if there're many developers behind it (just like lame). Otherwise it would take many other years for Vorbis to get to 1.1. At the moment Xiph.org (particularly Monty) is the only one behind this immense project and no one else is contributing much in code because no one actually knows what is going on. If Xiph came up with a specification then there might even be several implementations of Vorbis encoders which would bring cross breeding and faster development.
--Alp
This article has been posted and discussed at least two times here.
Edit : Yay, this is the original thread. My apologies.
The site is down regularly.
Which was the ISP's fault, not Vorbis's. They've since moved to another one (which also resulted in downtime, of course).
As for the rest of your comment. The problem is mostly manpower.
There is currently, and unfortunately, only one person that can write a complete spec for the Vorbis format, and it's also the only person that can bring it to 1.0 status.
For him, it's a matter of priorities. First finish the software, then write the docs. No sense in writing docs for software that isn't finished yet and can still change.
LAME didn't have this problem. They didn't have to write a spec. First there was the spec, written by someone else, and then the opensource encoders and decoders came. Ogg doesn't have that luxury.
Most 'jobs' with helping out Vorbis development require people that have quite a bit of technical knowledge. You aren't going to find many that have both the knowledge and time to dedicate to the project.
--
GCP
Edit : Yay, this is the original thread. My apologies.
QUOTE
The site is down regularly.
Which was the ISP's fault, not Vorbis's. They've since moved to another one (which also resulted in downtime, of course).
As for the rest of your comment. The problem is mostly manpower.
There is currently, and unfortunately, only one person that can write a complete spec for the Vorbis format, and it's also the only person that can bring it to 1.0 status.
For him, it's a matter of priorities. First finish the software, then write the docs. No sense in writing docs for software that isn't finished yet and can still change.
LAME didn't have this problem. They didn't have to write a spec. First there was the spec, written by someone else, and then the opensource encoders and decoders came. Ogg doesn't have that luxury.
Most 'jobs' with helping out Vorbis development require people that have quite a bit of technical knowledge. You aren't going to find many that have both the knowledge and time to dedicate to the project.
--
GCP
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