Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves, Project Manager of the Spread Open Media project, discusses the project's beginning and goals, namely to help spread awareness and adoption of Free/Libre media formats.

When and why was Spread Open Media started?
SOM started somewhere in March or April of this year. The Xiph.Org Foundation lacked a portal or even a community that bothered to promote their formats. I reckon there's a lot of hatred, or may hatred is much of a strong word, say dislikeness towards free formats, even from FS fans. When they perceive it as a threat against their pirate collection of MP3 albums and Xvid films, they become defensive and fail to understand that free software without Open Media is nothing. What's the whole point of making source code available and
free to change when the files the programs are supposed to deal with are proprietary and heavily patented?

But I disgress again. The project took the form it has today, when Bjorn Wijers, formerly working under Creative Commons Netherlands, convinced me it would be a better idea to actually promote all free formats out there, not just the Xiph ones. After all, SVG and the
OpenDocument are highly important too.

The whole idea is to create a community of supporters around SOM, who will be willing to explain their friends, their colleagues, why Open Media matters, why they should use Theora and Vorbis instead of Xvid/H.264 and MP3/AAC. Only by raising awareness of free formats
does free software has a chance to go somewhere. I recall this article by RMS "Are you ready to fight for freedom?". I sort of chuckled and pictured him ala the ELER comic, but he has a point. If people actually care to control their media and their computers instead of letting someone else taking away that freedom, this is a worthwile cause to fight for.

Where does the project stand at this point?
We finally have most of the things we needed: a CMS hacked to suit the needs of the project, banners for the people to grab and use out there, and a bunch of good articles that get to the point.

But we are planning more things. A good and moderated directory of content, a torrent tracker or a file sharing chat room, a bunch of tutorials, multi-language versions of the site, and a bunch of other things.

How many active people are actively involved in Spread Open Media?
Unfortunately, that's where we are lacking: man power. We need more volunteers to get involved so we'll be achieve all milestones and become popular enough to be the one portal for all people interested in Open Media.

What distinguishes Spread Open Media from other (similar) projects?
The only other more-or-less similar project in the field is the FSF's PlayOgg campaign. And maybe the Creative Commons Directory, although it's filled with proprietary formats.

As stated above, SOM is much more ambitious.

Can you give me any idea of Spread Open Media's impact?
As we are just starting, it's hard to say we already had any impact, although a bunch of people have stated that something like SOM was much needed, so we assume it will have an impact, and hopefully a good one.

Where lies ahead for Spread Open Media? What are some things you want to see happen?
As the Project Manager, I would like to see many changes in how people think in a digital age such as ours. I want to see companies willing to back Open Media. I want to see users demanding Open Media. I want to see someone caring, because as it is, nobody cares right now.

If you bring people's attention to the problem, maybe they will be more than willing to actually care about it.

What are the biggest challenges the Spread Open Media team faces?
* Ignorancy
* Veiled Interests
* Lack of man power to improve free formats

Is there anything else about Spread Open Media you think our audience should know?
Well, Don, I believe your audience is smart enough to understand what's the point of SOM, why we are here, and why it matters so much. What they may do now is examine how to apply this... let's call it "philosophy", the Open Media philosophy in their daily lives. That's
all that matters, really.