Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: lessig.org site supporting Adobe's proprietary Flash format

[Jon Grant]

Hi,

On 29/02/2008, Lee Braiden <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Friday 29 February 2008 15:37:28 Chris Croughton wrote:
>  > If you want ordinary people to look at what you produce, do it in the
>  > format they are most likely to be able to use.  Doing it in some weird
>  > new format they've never heard of with the material you want htem to see
>  > being in a 'legacy' area will only annoy them.
>
>
> Hmm.. I would say fix the root bug, rather than breaking known-good things as
>  a workaround for the bug.  For example, websites should never have been
>  adapted to work with non-compliant browsers like IE.  That works around a
>  bug, instead of fixing the buggy browser.  As a result, we all have to live
>  with horrible legacy web compatibility issues.
>
>  In this case, I think the right thing to do is put content on sites in open
>  formats.  If they are difficult to play, then explanations should be provided
>  in the short-term, and plugins should be provided in the long-term.

Good point.

It's similar to the NDISwrapper problem I wrote about recently:
http://jguk.org/2008/02/ndiswrapper-problem.html

..and the WINE problem, and the MS-Word problem.. the list goes on and
on when supporting someone else's proprietary formats and APIs!

Cheers, Jon