Back then, the de-facto way of watching videos on the Web was using Adobe Flash which was annoying to me as a user of a fully free operating system and as a huge fan of free formats.
TinyOgg received overwhelming support from free software supporters all around the world and I was honored when the Free Software Foundation wrote a blog post about it which was followed by several reports from free software and GNU/Linux news sites.
But now, it seems that what we are doing is obsolete. In May 2010, Google set free the WebM format which was quickly adopted by major web browsers in addition to the largest online video provider, YouTube. 99% of what people watch on YouTube is now available in WebM and thus playable without Flash or any other unfree technologies. (Well, in addition to the fact that I have not posted any entry in many months, which meant that there was no itch anymore!)
Now is the time to move on to other projects (or to college life, who knows? 
). By July 15th, TinyOgg entries URLs will be automatically redirected to the original video page and I will run the service for at least eighteen months more.
Thank you for everyone that contributed to the project, to those who offered patches (especially mtjm and leorockway), blog posts and encouragement!
يوليو 4, 2011 عند 2:59 م |
tinogg was awesome. helped me you quite some time, thanks for that
(wow, writing this bidi-way is a bit disorienting ^^)
يوليو 5, 2011 عند 12:19 ص |
I have to return the thanks: tinyogg was (still is, for about 10 more days!) a great site. Les us know if you get into a different project. So long, and thanks for all the fish!
يوليو 6, 2011 عند 2:41 م |
My next project will be probably related to some local (Saudi) issue, but the code will always be published and I can always use your help.
Let’s keep in touch.
يوليو 6, 2011 عند 9:29 ص |
that is disaster for me. I using tinyogg to bypass filters of my internet provider…where to go now when I want to watch youtube videos?
(((((((
يوليو 6, 2011 عند 2:38 م |
I’m really sorry to know this, ArtemZ. Is Tor an option? it’s a little bit slow, but I think you’re used to that with TinyOgg.
You can download the Firefox 4 bundle, enable HTML5 and start watching. I’m pretty sure there are many different ways to do this. (How do people in your country usually watch YouTube?)
يوليو 6, 2011 عند 1:53 م |
I will miss tinyogg, even if theres now WebM
… its a very useful site!!!
THANK YOU FOR THIS SITE A LOT!
يوليو 6, 2011 عند 10:52 م |
i am not happy about this, we remain without support for youtube and we can’t anymore watch the videos… for example there is not flash for GNU linux to 32 bit there is only for 64 bit and is not possible to install it. to the same time i don’t want fash, i could have problems of security as Richard Matthew Stallman told to his own conferences. then there not any support for GNU linux gNewSense and this is a distribution 100% Free Software and is impossible to install non Free Software. http://tinyogg.com for us is the last beach , we don’t have other solution awaiting your reply best faithfully and happy hacking from Paolo Del Bene for the good job and it works fine
يوليو 6, 2011 عند 11:06 م |
I’m sorry, Paolo, for the inconvenience, but did you try YouTube HTML5 support? it’s pretty neat and does not require Flash (assuming you are using a modern web browser such as Firefox 4+ or Chromium).
يوليو 7, 2011 عند 3:09 م |
Thank you for creating and running TinyOgg, and special thanks for keeping its URLs cool (“By July 15th, TinyOgg entries URLs will be automatically redirected to the original video page and I will run the service for at least eighteen months more.”)
يوليو 8, 2011 عند 3:00 م |
يوليو 8, 2011 عند 3:48 م |
sorry to see tinyOGG.com ending, it has been a great help in avoiding non-free/non-FLOSS video on the web. hopefully WebM/OGG/Theora/Dirac/etc. can get enough momentum. thanks so much and good luck.
يوليو 8, 2011 عند 10:32 م |
i invite Osama to realize a little movie of one minute to put on youtube where he has to explain why people have to use tinyogg or any other indipendent/alternative, free way to watch movies until to install (the add-on so called by mozilla foundation), flash
يوليو 10, 2011 عند 1:44 ص |
Best of luck to you in whatever you choose to do, Osama! TinyOGG filled a huge hole in the free software world when it was released, and without it, I don’t quite know what those of us who advocated for free software would have done during those hard times when Flash was still the standard. When you first introduced TinyOGG as a GNU Generation project, I was thrilled to see how useful it was. I admit I never expected it to gain as much wide spread popularity as it did, though!
Over 70,000 videos later, I can’t say I’m quite ready to see it go, but I completely respect your decision to move on to bigger and better things. It served its purpose, and there are more important issues going on in the world today. Your motivation and dedication to your causes is admirable, and I’m sure you’ll accomplish whatever you set out to change!
يوليو 10, 2011 عند 1:13 م |
Thanks for this service Osama. I used it quite regularly and still do so (my browser handles Ogg but not yet WebM). In fact, I’d rather not see it go but I guess it also does have a cost for you. If possible, please keep it going, if not thanks a lot for what you’ve done and I wish you all the best for your future endeavours.
يوليو 10, 2011 عند 6:19 م |
Hi Osama: I’m very sorry to see TinyOGG go. I still use it regularly – with Javascript disabled in my browser it is still more difficult to view movies on YouTube and other sites than it is to copy&paste the URL into TinyOGG. I don’t know if it is possible to download a video from the WebM enabled sites, but TinyOGG made it easy. And finally, browsing the TinyOGG queue has introduced me to many new and interesting things I would not otherwise have discovered.
Thank you, Osama – TinyOGG will be missed.
–Bob.
يوليو 13, 2011 عند 8:24 ص |
Im sad to see tinyogg go. I still could use its audio converter service
Best of luck
يوليو 14, 2011 عند 2:34 ص |
Could you possibly write a script or program that would allow users to enter a Youtube url and then download and convert on one’s PC themselves? Or is that just not practical? I would be willing to do that because as many have said in the 2 FSF endorsed distros (I use Trisquel) we don’t have access to non-flash currently. Thank you for this project!
يوليو 16, 2011 عند 2:36 م |
Jason, thee are already many scripts for that purpose. One is youtube-dl for directly downloading the video and since there are excellent free H.264 players, you don’t really need to convert downloaded videos.
يوليو 14, 2011 عند 11:17 م |
Thank you for this great service. It made watching youtube videos without flash player a lot better, waiting included. Unfortunately youtube still requires flash player for videos with advertisements. But I’m sure google will change that soon.
Tinyogg will be missed, but the future seems bright!
يوليو 15, 2011 عند 3:46 ص |
Thanks for running this valuable service, Osama. And let’s not forget — because the server code was released under the GNU AGPL, someone else could pick up and run it themselves, if they still have the itch!
يوليو 15, 2011 عند 8:45 ص |
Can you post the free software?
يوليو 16, 2011 عند 2:30 م |
The source code is available at https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/tinyogg
It’s a small, Django-based script.
يوليو 18, 2011 عند 2:46 م |
Wow, this is a bit unfortunate. Is it just a hosting/maintenence issue on your part, and you don’t want to keep it up? That’s reasonable. Would you be willing to hand over the domain to someone who could keep it running for those still using it? Ping me: singpolyma.net
يوليو 21, 2011 عند 7:16 م |
thanks for all the hard work tinyogg was great, I really enjoyed using it.
مارس 6, 2012 عند 11:12 ص |
create online income…
[...]TinyOgg finally comes to an end « ?????????? ?????????? ????????[...]…
سبتمبر 18, 2012 عند 12:47 م |
Thanks very much for running this service. Big fan here. Good luck with your future endeavors.
مارس 26, 2013 عند 3:11 م |
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