Ogg Vorbis is a free and open audio format developed and maintained by Xiph.org.3.19 Chris Montgomery began the Ogg Vorbis project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology soon after the Fraunhofer Institute announced in September 1998 that it would begin charging licensing fees for use of the MP3 format.
It is a fairly new format; the specifications were established in May 2000. Strictly speaking, Ogg is a file format and Vorbis is an audio format. Ogg can be used as a container for audio in other Xiph.org formats (such as FLAC), and Vorbis can exist as raw data without the Ogg container. Nonetheless, the audio format is commonly referred to as simply Ogg Vorbis.
The quality of Vorbis audio at a given bitrate is comparable to AAC and superior to MP3 and Windows Media Audio. At this point, though, the format is not in wide use, perhaps because the patent owners MP3 and AAC codecs have not been aggressive in collecting royalty payments for their use.