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RFC 6716 defines the Opus interactive speech and audio codec: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716 We should consider making support for OPUS mandatory for the audio tag. See also the comments in https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/09/its-opus-it-rocks-and-now-its-an-audio-codec-standard/ regarding the disclosures around the codec.
Mozilla supports this, and has already deployed an implementation. I will also note that Opus has is manditory to implement in the current IETF RTCWEB draft so we expect other browsers will be deploying this codec in that context as well. Manditory-to-implement documentation: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-audio-00 Chairs confirmation of the decision: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rtcweb/current/msg05267.html
Working groups can't force a browser to implement something. Are all the browser vendors willing to implement it? That's what matters.
Microsoft doesn't believe HTML5 needs to specify a mandatory to implement codec. The market is quite capable of ensuring that popular formats are supported on the web. Opus did not exist when ISSUE-7 was closed. Who knows what formats might be more popular than this by the time HTML5 gets to Recommendation, or after that. It's also not clear that there will be widespread adoption of Opus for the purposes that <audio> is currently used. This does not mean Microsoft is for or against supporting Opus with <audio>, just that the spec doesn't need to say anything on this.
After 4 years of not converging in a satisfactory manner I do not share Microsoft's optimism that the market will sort things out. The current situation has an undeniably negative effect on interoperability and puts an unnecessary burden onto web authors to patch things up. Specifying a mandatory to implement codec, while not being able to force anything, may give additional incentive for offending vendors to "try harder". Vendors may or will not implement everything in HTML-5, but things may move forward a bit more quickly in the codec area if not supporting a certain baseline codec is non-spec behavior, i.e., a clear bug. The arrival of Opus should be incentive enough to revisit this issue. Of course, if all major vendors (Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera) agree to implement Opus in <audio> (no matter if mandatory or not) this whole issue may indeed resolve itself.
Mass move to "HTML WG"
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the Editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the Tracker Issue; or you may create a Tracker Issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Rejected Change Description: No spec change. Rationale: See Ian and Adrian's rationale in comment 2 and comment 3.