I was reading a few dozen posts this morning, I couldn't sleep so I figured I may as well do something with my time, and I came across a mention of something that had had failed to really 'click' with me in a several posts regarding firefox 3.5. Then a post from some Fedora guy about the direction Red Hat is taking Fedora actually congealed it for me.

The click was when he mentioned what he called "Free Culture", once I read that phrase it all made sense. I have to give credit for this: his name is "Christopher Smart", and he writes for Linux Magazine.

Look, we are all waiting for the "Year of Linux". It is inevitable really: our tech is so much better(to the point where Linux can be counted on as an appliance), our development method is superior, security is built-in instead of cobbled together catch-as-catch-can, etc. But eventually it is likely there will be a noticable tipping point, past which GNU/Linux just cascades onto new user's machines. That point will likely arrive when Free Culture becomes accepted as a norm, and not until then.

How does FireFox 3.5 and Fedora come into this? Well, Canonical has always put only freely distributable code onto the Live disks. Red Hat does the same, and so does Fedora. This was a post by Christopher about Fedora and a sister distro of theirs called Omega, this is much like Ubuntu and Mint. In other words: you cannot play MP3s natively, nor can you watch a YouTube video from a Live Disk containing only Free Software. It sounds trite but these are ubiquitous functions.

FLASH is needed to access many websites' interface. These site authors could have used AJAX instead and been much more standard and likely faster and richer, but they chose FLASH; it is what it is. And MP3 happens to be the most popular encoding method for personal music collections. In addition to being a non-encumbered standard OGG/Vorbis is a better encoding method(giving better sound quality at the same compression or better compression with the same sound quality) and was developed soon after MP3 was, but MP3 was available at the right time and is now the current de-facto standard; it is what it is.

FireFox3.5 contains a buit-in player for Ogg/Vorbis content. Both video and sound. It is silly that people NEED to have a 3rd party application like FLASH in order to utilize web content. FLASH was developed in order to provide a richer web experience back when connections were very slow compared to what we have today. Site authors just kept using it as time went on. I mention this to illustrate the fact that there is NO reason for Youtube or Google-Video to stream in flash. Other than it is what they have done before. FLASH has to be downloaded and installed into windows machines just like it has to be downloaded and installed into GNU/Linux machines...but what if video sites start streaming in Ogg/Vorbis?

Big deal, right? Just wait a minute though. This is the kind of thing that percolates quite a bit with people. Most folks don't care which technology is used, as long as they get their content. But developers notice. The media notice(they will be confused but they will notice) And some folks will hear about the superior video and sound quality that these codecs offer, plus they are not encumbered by any patents.

* Those who produce music trinkets pay nothing for inclusion of OGG/Vorbis codecs.
* Those who produce music content pay nothing for encoding their music and video into OGG/Vorbis format.
* OGG/Vorbis codecs allow a superior music or video experience at the same level of compression...ie, it's just better.

When/if Youtube or Google make the move to provide OGG/Vorbis playback instead of FLASH only it will mean that enough people are talking about the very usable features of Free Culture we have been bragging about for some time now, and decided to spend the developer time to incorporate support for it into their portals. They will not be supporting Free Culture for any altruistic reason, but just because it makes good sense to do so from a business and technical standpoint.

That is the tipping point. When enough commodity-level services have made the switch to Free Software and to support for Free Software...with that definition though, perhaps we have already achieved it. We are present in more devices at an embedded level then ever before, with more being released all the time. More OEMs in 2010 will offer machines with GNU/linux pre-installed, and not just on net-books either. But the big sling-shot will not occur until more of Free Culture has become part of mainstream culture and is accepted on merits other than being free of charge.

Any thoughts?