The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has recently launched a campaign to encourage the use of the Ogg Vorbis format, maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation, instead of MP3. Even though the MP3 format is said to be technically a bit better than the ogg, the former has the disadvantage of being proprietary. This has consisted in an impediment even for the developers working on applications that deal with the MP3 format.

Peter Brown, FESF executive director, has stated on this campaign's occasion:

"Ogg is your safest bet to be free from

patent litigation when using compressed audio. This is especially true given the recent upswing in patent-based lawsuits. What is most frightening, and underscores the landmine metaphor often used to describe software patents, is the recent $1.5B preliminary judgment against Microsoft. Microsoft thought it had a paid-up nonexclusive license to practice the patents in MP3. This judgment demonstrates that there is no good way to protect yourself from these threats. The only viable solution right now is to switch to Ogg, and work for the abolition of software patents..."

This campaign targets both the music distributors and the listeners. While today many digital music players support the Ogg Vorbis format and there are also a lot of free applications, encoders and plug-ins available for many operating systems, there is no reason for the Ogg Vorbis not to be used instead of the MP3. The campaign also provides a mailing list.

Ogg is an open standard container for digital multimedia, which does not have any software patents and is designed especially for efficient streaming and manipulation. The name "Ogg" refers to the file format which can multiplex a number of separate independent free and open source codecs for audio, video and text. Files ending in the .ogg extension may be of any Ogg media filetype. The audio file format Ogg Vorbis is Vorbis-encoded audio in the Ogg container. Because the format is free, Ogg's various codecs have been incorporated into a number of different free and proprietary media players, both commercial and non-commercial, as well as portable media players from different manufacturers.