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Nokia Claims Ogg Format is "Proprietary"
a nona maus writes "Several months ago a workgroup of the W3C decided to include Ogg/Theora+Vorbis as the recommended baseline video codec standard for HTML5, against Apple's aggressive protest. Now, Nokia seems to be seeking a reversal of that decision: they have released a position paper calling Ogg 'proprietary' and citing the importance of DRM support. Nokia has historically responded to questions about Ogg on their internet tablets with strange and inconsistent answers, along with hand waving about their legal department. This latest step is enough to really make you wonder what they are really up to."
I still don't understand why though.
Apart from it not supporting DRM, ogg has only advantages - it's equal or superior to most other codecs (the widely used mp3 and wma are inferior) and it's open-source w/o patents restrictions...
Seriously, does anyone have an explanation for that?
I'm an infovore...
Actually Nokia has a great history with "open" standards (generally defined as RAND as opposed to royalty free). In fact Nokia's entire current business comes out of it's ability to cooperate with arch rivals such as Ericsson to build open standards such as NMT, GSM and WCDMA. So the question is not "why is Nokia opposed to open standards?". The question is "why is Nokia opposing this standard?"
Reading through the document, it's actually much more reaonable (DRM should be possible, but shouldn't be mandatory) than implied. The OGG thing, however, is very interesting. To me it almost reads like they know someone who has a fundamental patent on OGG. A fundamental patent is one which can't be avoided to implement a standard and thus guarantees control of the standard. However, give that Xiph.org have done a patent search and claim that OGG is patent free and nobody has contradicted them, I can think of at least two more likely things here.
a) the recent Microsoft / Nokia WMA licensing agreements have seriously crippled Nokias freedom to operate with different formats.
b) they are afraid of the fact that whilst OGG is open, control of how the standard evolves is "proprietary". By this they mean not under control of an "open" standardisation body that they can join. Looking at it; Xiph.org seems to have too much industry independence.
Make no mistake, though, the Nokia of five years ago is probably not the Nokia of today. Where old Nokia was trying to deliver devices to let you do whatever you wanted to do, new Nokia is trying to become a media company and that means is almost certainly joining the dark side.
Non-discriminatory doesn't mean "Doing whatever anyone wants," it just means being consistent. In the case of a license it means two things:
1) The license must be available to all comers. You do not get to choose who gets a license, anyone who pays the fee gets a license.
2) The fee must be fixed. One person can't get a sweetheart deal and another get the shaft.
You meet those criteria, that is a non-discriminatory license, you aren't discriminating.
Take a situation where I own a bar. If I have a night where I sell beer to any customer for $2, that's a non-discriminatory special. Whoever you are, you get to have beer for that price. However if I run a special where only girls in tight shirts get $2 beers, that's a discriminatory special. I am dictating who or what you must be or do to get the pricing.
Trying to redefine things just because you don't like how it works doesn't change how it really is. You aren't being discriminated against just because someone won't give you something for free. You are only being discriminated against if they will give it to someone else for free, but not you.