OGG is an open format. OGG is the default for the FEDORA distribution.
MP3 was eliminated from FEDORA due to licensing considerations. You can of course obtain MP3
and install it, but the fact remains that MP3 is no longer distributed by default.
Wait, you're telling me that the packages a certain commercial Linux distributor ships have any impact on the market? Sorry, but no. If Microsoft stopped shipping .wma as default audio codec and switched to .oog then you'd have a point, but Redhat is in no position to steer a market that extends beyond Linux.
I _hope_ all Linux users of any flavour can manage to compile lame sources.
Why? Because it is open, because it is better quality, and because it is free from licensing drama.
The point about the quality might be true, but as long as I can get an excellent quality open source encoder (lame) .mp3 is open enough for me. Companies that want to use mp3 in a product must purchase a license. That might have helped .ogg had it come along earlier. By now there are one-chip solutions for mp3 decoding and playback and I wouldn't be surprised if a pure-mp3 portable player were cheaper to make than a pure-ogg one in the end.
It is no longer viable to ship a portable player without mp3 support, all the content out there is in .mp3 and for all players that do both the battery life is worse with .ogg. I don't see a single reason why an ordinary non-geek consumer would want ogg. As long as they don't, the format will not catch on and by the time it does the format war will most likely be decided in favor of .wma for the mainstream.
OGG can be implemented by SLIMDEVICES at no licensing cost.
The emphasis is on licensing here. Implementing anything costs money. It does work, you know, transcoding to something lossless is not a bad thing. The question was, why do we need it in the firmware? I really found no answer to that in your post.
C.
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