[vorbis] WSJ article

Gian-Carlo Pascutto
Wed, 15 Aug 2001 10:24:10 -0000

Found this on usenet:

August 13, 2001

E-Business
Inventors Release Free Alternative To MP3 Music, but Cost Is High
By MEI FONG
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

SOMERVILLE, Mass. -- Christopher Montgomery wants to be the Linus Torvalds
of
music, the creator of a piece of free software that has the sweeping impact
of
Mr. Torvalds's Linux operating system. He soon may begin finding out if that
is
his destiny as his program is finally released to the public.

But the cost of Mr. Montgomery's three-year effort has been high. It has
broken
up his marriage, kept him jobless and eaten away at his savings.

Mr. Montgomery's program has a mouthful of a name: Ogg Vorbis. He created it
as
a free alternative to the MP3 software that is used to make computer music
files
out of CD disks.

While most MP3 buffs assume that MP3 software is free, since they typically
don't have to pay for it, makers of such programs as the popular Music Match
CD
"ripping" software must pay royalties starting at $15,000 to the
Fraunhofer
Institute of Germany and Thomson Multimedia, which invented the MP3 system.
And
musicians who sell their songs in MP3 format are supposed to pay royalties
as
well.

That rankles Mr. Montgomery, a burly, shy 29-year-old steeped in the hacker
ethic of the free software movement that gave the world Linux and other
programs. " 'Crusader' is too strong a word," he says in
describing himself.
"If
'crusader' is 10 and 'couch potato' is one, put me at a
seven."

Mr. Montgomery, who lives and works in a hacker friend's Victorian house in
this
Boston suburb, has been spending 60-hour weeks coordinating the work of the
volunteers creating Ogg Vorbis. Preview versions of the program have
circulated
widely; Monday, the completed version is being made available for free
downloading at www.vorbis.com.

Someone can use Ogg Vorbis to create MP3-like files from a music CD, and
also to
play them back. Many MP3 playing programs, like WinAmp, offer special
"plug-ins"
to allow them to also play Ogg Vorbis files along with traditional MP3s.
Like
MP3 software itself, Ogg Vorbis is completely legal. It's the passing around
of
copyrighted music files that is a legal problem, as shown in the Napster
case,
not the software used to create the files in the first place.

But why bother with new digital music software to begin with? Because
compared
with MP3, says Mr. Montgomery, his software is not only free, it also
produces
better-sounding music and takes up less space on computers. An average Ogg
Vorbis music file uses about 38% less hard-drive space than an average MP3
file.

Many people in the music-compression field agree that Ogg Vorbis music
sounds
better, although nonaudiophiles would probably be hard-pressed to tell the
difference. Vincent Falco, creator of the popular music file-sharing program
BearShare, says that when measured against MP3, Vorbis "gives better
dynamic
range" in addition to taking up less space.

Whatever advantage Ogg Vorbis may have over MP3 in audio quality, it lacks
when
it comes to a pithy name. Mr. Montgomery explains that "Vorbis" is the
name
of a
villain in a science-fiction novel by Terry Pratchett, while "Ogg" is
a
popular
tactic in an online game called "Netrek." The Ogg maneuver, says Mr.
Montgomery,
is "a kamikaze attack to achieve what you want without any consideration of
the
circumstances."

That definition, though, also applies to the outsized role that the Ogg
Vorbis
project has played in his life.

Born to a blue-collar family in Ohio, Mr. Montgomery got a degree from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. After graduate school in
Japan,
he free-lanced as a computer programmer for five years, writing free
audio-compression software in his spare time. In 1998, after reading about
the
MP3 licensing practices, Mr. Montgomery decided to resurrect an audio
program he
had begun while an MIT student.

That code became the technical basis for Ogg Vorbis. The guiding philosophy
of
the effort, though, was Mr. Montgomery's belief that hackers like himself
have
been responsible for online innovation. "We are the ones who developed the
Net,
not Microsoft," he says. "I thought, 'I must use my powers for
good!' "
Eventually, the project attracted about seven other volunteers around the
globe.

Mr. Montgomery says his two-year marriage fell apart because of the time he
spent on the project; he says he'll "eat, sleep, dream about the
code" for
weeks
at a time. He has been slowly eating away at a $65,000 windfall he made last
year from working at a dot-com called FastEngines. To pay the bills, he does
occasional consulting gigs. He also lives frugally: He works on a fold-up
table
from Staples in a room with green shag carpet and jars full of Siamese
fighting
fish that he is trying to interbreed.

While more than 100,000 people downloaded test versions of the software just
last month alone, that's nothing compared with the scores of millions now
using
various MP3 programs. That means Mr. Montgomery has a long way to go to
reach
his goal of "mainstream acceptance."

As he sees it, the big companies working in online music, such as Fraunhofer
and
Microsoft Corp., are abandoning current-generation MP3 software in favor of
newer systems that stress copyright protection and other business matters at
the
expense of the users. Ogg Vorbis will emerge as a user-friendly alternative,
he
believes.

There is, of course, also the prospect of gaining some of Mr. Torvalds's
fame.
"Being a celebrity isn't half bad," he says.


--
GCP