Microsoft's HD Photo to Become JPEG Standard?

Mortimer.CA writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft has submitted their HD Photo to the JPEG committee: 'Microsoft's ongoing attempt to establish its own photo format as a JPEG alternative (and potential successor) took another step forward today when the JPEG standards group agreed to consider HD Photo (originally named Windows Media Photo) as a standard. If successful, the new file standard will be known as JPEG XR.' Microsoft has made a 'commitment to make its patents that are required to implement the specification available without charge.' While JPEG 2000 exists, HD Photo has several advantages (not the least of which is a lot less CPU power is needed). Is this a big of an issue as ODF/OOXML?"

Comments

As long as anyone can implement it ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The key issue is not whether it is coming from MSFT or if it gives MSFT any leg up. They key issue, can anyone implement the standard directly without payments, without agreements without any restrictions? MSFT can very well say, there is no payment but all implementors should sign some agreement with us. Then there could be a clause that could revoke the agreement. Thus if any competitor gets too big MSFT can pull the rug from under them.

If the specification is as free as ASCII, to use one example, then there is nothing wrong in adopting that as a standard.

Re:As long as anyone can implement it ...

[ajs]

They key issue, can anyone implement the standard directly without payments, without agreements without any restrictions? MSFT can very well say, there is no payment but all implementors should sign some agreement with us. Then there could be a clause that could revoke the agreement. You're not thinking deviously enough. What they REALLY want to do is have all of the most popular Web data formats require the use of their patents, and then issue a blanked right to use those patents for free to anyone... but in a way that's not GPLv3 compatible.

This is Microsoft's dream because you can't contest it in court. The agreement you're violating if you mix this technology with GPLv3 code is NOT the agreement with Microsoft, but the GPLv3! You would have to sue the FSF in order to use Microsoft's image format in your GPLv3 code.

For all that I despise the tactic, I have to admit that it's a clever little hack.

Re:can this be the only solution?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Microsoft makes their promise to make this free. The exact wording from the article is, "offer a royalty-free grant for its patents that are required to implement" --I'm sure there are more details to the offer, but just because it is royalty-free doesn't necessarily mean that there won't be other terms that are deal breakers.

Public Domain

[daeg]

If they are truly interested in making the patents "available", they would simply surrender the patents into the public domain. Since they have not done this, assume they will not always make the patents "available" to everyone or will have special cases where it is not available (for example, to extend the specification, or to set up a company that certifies HD Photo implementations, or "no government use without paying us", etc).

Re:can this be the only solution?

[LionKimbro]

Well, here's a thought --

They say, "One important aspect regarding the standardization of HD Photo is Microsoft's commitment to make its patents that are required to implement the specification available without charge."

"Alright, fair enough," I think, but then I wonder: "So, what's the application process like, and what are the licensing requirements?"

Might they say something like, "Oh, it's available free of charge, but you can't use it in an OpenSource / FreeSoftware project, because that's uncontrolled, there's no telling what liabilities we'll be exposed to, for letting you implement this, ... (etc etc etc, filler nonsense here.)" ..?

Maybe that's "the trick" here?

transfer all control or forget it

[DriveDog]

If MS gives away all rights to the format spec and any algorithms required to use it, fine. JPEG can declare particular implementations in compliance or not. Otherwise, no way.

Re:could someone enlighten me?

[fbjon]

I'm thinking of cameras: JPEG is 24-bit, or 8-bit x 3 channels. Camera sensors can pick up more than that, however. Better compression also means better use of memory cards.

Most importantly, lossless compression might mean that you don't need to shoot in RAW all the time, and be at the camera manufacturer's mercy.

Re:What's wrong with JPEG2000?

[MightyMartian]

I think JPEGs would be a damn hard standard to overcome. They tried it with PNGs to overcome the GIF legal encumbrances, but just what percentage of images out there in the wild are PNGs?

Quite frankly, I think JPEGs as they stand are too far along now for something that, with modern CPU power, offers an almost imperceptible advantage, to get any traction. Ten years ago, when computers and the Internet were slower, they might have had a chance, but now, no way.

There are too many real things to hate and fear Microsoft over. This appears to me to be a nonstarter, sort of like MSN has turned out to be for web searching.

Re:What's wrong with JPEG2000?

[cmowire]

The problems largely boil down to:

1. JPEG2000 is covered by patents that haven't been properly licensed
2. JPEG2000 has very little software support, wheras good old JPEG will work eveyrwhere. Which helps your average user who doesn't want to need an image editor.
3. The digital camera market has standardized to RAW for cases where JPEG isn't good enough. Neither the existing JPEG2000 nor HD Photo are designed to store un-demosaiced data from the sensor. This allows a RAW converter to offer smarter noise reduction and sharpening modes... and it's not trivial enough of an operation that any arbitrary JPEG2000-ish tool should be forced to implement properly.
4. People don't quite realized the level of screwed we are with respect to TIFF, so it still seems "good enough" for most folks.
5. Adobe, who has the photo-editing market by the balls, would rather have you stuck with their proprietary formats as much as possible.

Deja GIF.

[Spy der Mann]

If there are restrictions, Microsoft's HD photo will go the way of the GIF format.

Re:Deja GIF.

[mark-t]

If PNG had supported animations the way GIF does, it would have probably all but killed GIF completely. I know there were a couple of attempts at standardizing animation formats that used PNG as an underlying picture format (MNG and APNG come to mind), but I believe it was a serious oversight on the part of the original PNG developers to not define a standard for at least some sort of successive frame-based animation (sort of like GIF) as part of the core spec.

The "evil" in MS's actions:

[Gr8Apes]

Well, the inability to use it in GPL v2/3 code would be the evil part that the OP was referring to. There you go.

Re:can this be the only solution?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

I did some early work with it when it was still Windows Media Photo. It's genuinely a good format. I just hope it doesn't get bogged down in politics and legal wrangling.

I won't speak to the potential for "legal wrangling", but regarding "politics", if this does get bogged down in politics then you can bet that it'll be the anything-but-Microsoft folks that are to blame. Hell, this very subthread starts with a post saying that this format should be rejected just because it comes from Microsoft, regardless of the merits and regardless of how liberal the license is. In other words, the format should be rejected on the basis of politics. The same BS that goes on in the ODF vs OOXML debates (the reality is that 90% of that debate is politics BS, not technical merits).

Re:can this be the only solution?

[Twanfox]

I would imagine much of this distrust stems from Microsoft's tendency to stifle competition and get away with it. That is not to say that this move of theirs isn't appropriate, genuine, or truly innovative. Once you've been bitten once (or several times), you tend to look at the person biting you with a more cautious eye and wonder if/how/when they're going to bite you again.

Re:"Nothing for you to see here; please move along

[snoyberg]

I think you might be mistaking irony for despair. Whatever Microsoft does Microsoft does for Microsoft; and that means what will make them money. Why would they have gone to the bother of making a (very good, i hear) new image file format... for our benefit? I don't think so....

This can only end badly.

Look, I dislike Microsoft just as much as anyone else, but that comment is just ill informed. Just because M$ might stand to make money off a deal does not mean it will "end badly." In the vast majority of industries, consumers gain when companies do something just to make money. Just because M$ in the past has found ones of making money that have been harmful to us doesn't mean it will be the case this time.

Re:can this be the only solution?

[The_Wilschon]

As I understand it, the reason for the politics in ODF/OOXML is that technical factors bring in politics. OOXML allows documents to contain chunks that look like mumble, where mumble is a binary dump of a Word 97 document. This is, of course, a technical matter, a detail of the specification. However, since Word 97 format is not itself open in the slightest (a political matter, openness), this particular technical matter drags in politics in a big way.

OTOH, this political matter, lack of openness, drags in technical problems as well. A spec which is not open must be reverse engineered (and even then there is dubious legality), so only those who have access to the closed spec will necessarily be able to implement it correctly. This tilts the playing field for the software market heavily in favor of those with access to the closed spec. Any competitors will find that either their software fails to function correctly, or they have to do a lot more work to get correctly functioning software. The result: either a monoculture/monopoly in software using this spec, or a variety of incompatible attempts at implementing the spec, resulting in inability to carry files from one computer to another and expect them to still work.

So, a technical matter in the OOXML spec results in political wrangling, which wrangling is motivated by technical reasons anyways. Dig a little bit deeper than most people are willing to, and you find that it really isn't a matter (for most people) of Anything-But-Microsoft. It may look that way, because MS offerings are so consistently rejected, but nearly always, it is actually for technical reasons (perhaps technical by way of political in the middle, but technical at both ends (motivation for objection, and object of objection)).

Now, the OP who said "we should reject this just because it is from MS" might be a true Anything-But-Microsoft person. That would certainly explain the remark. OTOH, caution, a look at history, and an understanding of the technical matters involved in said history would also explain the remark quite easily. The reference to MS' "track record" suggests to me that perhaps the latter explanation is the right one. But then again, I'm an eternal optimist, always seeking to think the best of people until I actually have a real reason to think otherwise.