More information about open and / or free formats is available at these sites:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_format

• http://www.openformats.org

There are a number of free formats which are preferred over patent and copyright encumbered formats. Keep in mind that some formats (like PDF or Flash) often have public or semi-public specifications but have some restrictions imposed by their patent-holders. Some replacement formats are listed here:

Purchasing equipment that supports free formats

Audio

If you are interested in purchasing new players (eg. portable audio players), please refer to [http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/VorbisHardware VorbisHardware] to see what equipment will play also these formats.

Specific format / application information

Audio

MP3

MP3 is patent-encumbered, for both encoding and decoding. These patents are being actively enforced, so usage and development of MP3-programs is not encouraged. As mentioned before, you should considering using Ogg Vorbis, which is a free and higher quality alternative to MP3 (you just need to buy audio equipment more carefully).

Other free audio formats:

• FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) for eg. music archival
• Speex (high quality speech compression)

Video

DVD

Non-encrypted DVDs should play, however be aware that mpeg2-video is somewhat patent encumbered and the support for it is not shipped on the CDs

Full DVD-Video support requires support of the Content Scrambling System (CSS). Though the encryption is weak, using libdvdcss to avoid this is classed as a 'circumvention device' and is such illegal in the United States and some other jurisdictions.

However, as you can read at [http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/dvd.htm the DeCSS information page], in most European countries, DVD backup is legal. In fact, you can backup anything that you own in, eg. Norway, Sweden, etc. If you do not require compatibility with a DVD player, consider encoding your videos in [http://www.theora.org/ Ogg Theora].

Other free video formats:

• [http://dirac.sourceforge.net/ Dirac] (another free video format in development)

Desktop publishing, graphics

• ODT (Open Document Text) - This format is used starting with [http://www.OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org 2].

• [http://www.svg-whiz.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page SVG] (Scalable Vector Graphics) - There's a list of [http://www.svg-whiz.com/wiki/index.php?title=Design_Tools design tools] that support this format

[http://docs.scribus.net Scribus] is also a good alternative for desktop publishing.

General multimedia

Flash

There are two projects working to create a free implementation of flash, so that people could view Flash animations without resorting to non-free software:

• [http://gplflash.sourceforge.net GPLFlash] (and GPLFlash2)

• [http://www.schleef.org/swfdec/ SWFDec]

Other

Java

Free implementation of Java is ongoing in many places, including [http://gcc.gnu.org/java/ GCJ], GNU Classpath, [http://www.nongnu.org/gcjwebplugin/ gcjwebplugin] and the new Apache Harmony. Together they aim to provide full Java platform as free software. Current implementations are already being used to run OpenOffice.org 2's Java-parts, Eclipse and many other software. Eventually, the need for non-free Java should hopefully disappear.