Free Software Foundation Urges Google To Free VP8

jamesswift writes "The FSF have written an open letter to Google urging them to free the VP8 codec with an irrevocable royalty-free licence: 'With its purchase of the On2 video compression technology company having been completed on Wednesday February 16, 2010, Google now has the opportunity to make free video formats the standard, freeing the web from both Flash and the proprietary H.264 codec.'" Also from the letter: "The world would have a new free format unencumbered by software patents. Viewers, video creators, free software developers, hardware makers -- everyone -- would have another way to distribute video without patents, fees, and restrictions. The free video format Ogg Theora was already at least as good for web video (see a comparison) as its nonfree competitor H.264, and we never did agree with your objections to using it. But since you made the decision to purchase VP8, presumably you're confident it can meet even those objections, and using it on YouTube is a no-brainer."

Comments

Problem still remains

[Anonymous Coward]

The two issues that prevented YouTube from using the Ogg Theora codec still apply.

Many hardware devices already have H.264 decoding built into the chip, ranging from set-top boxes to the iPhone. Moving away would mean losing ability to run on these target devices (or run at an unacceptable frame rate).
The alternative would be to have two versions of the video stored, but they're currently already doing this for Mobile YouTube and regular YouTube, and adding a third wouldn't make much sense.

The cost of transcoding all the videos again is also another issue. Doing this to all the videos at once is somewhat pointless - currently, if you try and watch a video that isn't already encoded for the mobile device, YouTube will attempt to transcode the video on the fly and send it out directly.

I guess this could be done, but while storage is relatively inexpensive, it kinda doesn't make much business sense; the patent licensing cost Google about zilch already, so it'd just cost them more for all these extra "features".

Then again, if they piss off Mozilla, there goes marketshare/traffic/revenue. Put it the other way though, the other browsers (including IE) could just as easily implement H.264 and then gain users from those who can't use FF to play their favourite dancing cat videos.

Re:Problem still remains

[Sycraft-fu]

Well Google has an advantage in that they are large and respected. If they open up VP8 and say "Here's the docs to implement hardware decoding, we'll be supporting this standard well in to the future," companies might be interested in it. This is particularly true since VP6 is what most Flash video is.

Theora has a number of problems that VP8 doesn't:

1) A stupid name. Sorry, but names matter and Ogg Theora is a bad one. When I've mentioned Ogg before (since I like Vorbis audio files) I get some very "Huh?" reactions form non-techies. VP8 is a good name, sounds like a nice tech acronym like MP3.

2) Obscurity. Xiph is something of a nobody. Tech people are aware of them, and if you've done game development you may have seen their stuff in an engine, but most people know nothing of them. Google is a major household name, hell 'google' has become a verb. As such if Google pushes something, there's a lot of force that comes with that. Does YOUR company want to be the only one that doesn't support "The Google format?"

3) Installed base. As I said, Flash uses VP6 heavily. Supposing VP8 is related (I'd bet it is) and supposing they open up a decoder spec that can handle both, this makes it of a whole lot of interest. I'm sure nVidia and ATi would jump on making a video card that "Accelerated HD Flash video," as they already do that with other video. The benefit to a consumer could be realized now, whereas the Theora benefit is theoretical in the future. You implement hardware support hoping it picks up, whereas with the VP codecs, you've got stuff in that format NOW.

So I think Google would likely have success if they opened the codec up and pushed it out as the Next Big Thing(tm) for the web.

Not a good letter.

[fenix849]

This might make me unpopular here, but the whole letter is poorly worded and written in the wrong spirit. Initially it's ok, but then it all starts sounding a little bit desperate, and by the end it's demanding and almost threatening. Imo.

Re:Not a good letter.

[lyml]

I agree, quotes such as:

If you care about free software and the free web (a movement and medium to which you owe your success) you must take bold action to replace Flash with free standards and free formats.

don't exactly make you very willing to help a person who is currently begging you for free stuff.

Re:Not a good letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I agree. This letter is strange. Google is obviously smart enough to have thought about all that, and the letter seems to make the assumption that Google just bought the thing without a clue as what to do with it.

My understanding of the situation is that :
1. Making a video codec patent free is really difficult, since submarine patents are always a threat. Google may be hard working at making sure VP8 can be totally free.
2. Nobody knows really how good the codec is (since it's not available). Google may be hard working on improving and polishing it before releasing it.
3. Right now, there is zero hardware support for VP8. Playing a HD VP8 video on an iPad would likely be very difficult, for example. Google may be hard working on hardware chips for Android smartphone.
4. Other things I don't grasp/didn't thought about.

In the current market place, freeing a good video codec is one thing. Make people using it is another. We've seen that with Theora. Since Google hold so many cards (YouTube, Android, Chrome) in the game right now, it makes sense that they want to play all of them. I have good hope that Google will be releasing VP8 at some point as a free (as in beer, or more). It just makes sense for them.

Re:Not a good letter.

[bit01]

Not to mention that writing that H.264 is proprietary is wrong.

No, it's right actually. Proprietary means of property, in particular patents. The fact that a group of companies own it collectively rather than an individual company, and that documentation is available, is irrelevant. People can only use it by paying a non-nominal fee and that makes it proprietary.

---

Who owns the copy?

Re:Not a good letter.

[FlyingBishop]

Say what you like about the "average" GPL zealot, but most sysadmins owe RMS and the FSF a lot. I probably wouldn't be a sysadmin if I didn't have the GNU tools, including Emacs, to use. They make it not so much tedious as interesting, as I change flags and run macros, and the text swims and takes on the form I want in front of my eyes. And I didn't have to implement it. They did it for me. Entitlement and quid pro quo are two very different things.

Re:Not a good letter.

[shaka]

Sometimes I find [RMS and the FSF] as annoying as the beggars that shake the cup of coins under your nose to make you give them something. No fucking way.

Really? Stallman asked you for money? Funny, because I never heard about him asking for anything in return for GCC and GDB. Intel, on the other hand...

Intel® Compiler Suite Professional Edition for Linux: $1,349

Whoa!

As FlyingBishop said here before me, quid pro quo. A lot of people owe RMS and the FSF a lot.

Re:Not a good letter.

[smallfries]

A clue?

Point to a single codec from the 80s that would offer a compression ratio comparable in any sense to a modern codec. It is not hard at all to imagine that codecs (not formats as you mistaken say) have progressed massively in two decades of constant vision research.

Re:No one company owns H.264

[Rockoon]

It allows them to swap patent rights.

So if Google goes out and picks up a patent essential to H.264, then they will avoid (or offset) the licensing fees on H.264 forever.

But this doesnt give what that poster wanted, which was Google picking up all the H.264 patents and freeing them. Thats never going to happen, and as is Google seems very willing to use H.264 anyways.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Theora cannot win. H.264 is here to stay and this fact really doesnt effect the end user much, because most end users already have H.264 licenses. Its pretty much just Linux and BSD that have a playback issue as far as end-users are concerned, and with the availability of "illegal" H.264 codecs, that just doesnt matter.

What Mozilla and Opera are doing is trying to make it an end-user problem when it actually isn't. The end users have the codecs. Use them. Giving users the choice is far superior to steadfastly refusing to give them a choice.

Well thats the FSF for you

[Viol8]

Why write an erudite carefully thought out and well argued letter when they can just bang out one of their usual hysterical Good vs Evil style polemics? I doubt anyone except a few dyed in the wool fanbois or anyone who's worked in the real world for more than 6 months take much notice of what the FSF says anymore, they're just a bunch of single issue reactionaries with little new to say. While I respect the software they've written over the years , their politics is a joke.

Re:Well thats the FSF for you

[shaka]

Please study your history and particularly the state of computing in the early eighties, when Stallman founded the FSF. He looked at the future of computing and he saw a bunch of big companies with a proprietary Unix version each, and new players like Apple and Microsoft. Had the Internet been built on that foundation, not to mention robotics, AI and rapid prototyping, today would be a very different world.

It's easy for you to point your finger and talk about "the real world", now that GCC, Linux and the free BSDs exist. Now imagine a company like Google, except they have to pay licenses for the OS, compilers and interpreters, databases, video and audio conversion. Imagine yourself using computers and not having any control of what goes on, with corporations controlling everything from the BIOS up.

Richard Stallman changed the world. "Reactionary", indeed. Do tell, dear Viol8, what you ever accomplished out there in the "real world"?

N.264/MPEG-4 is no more proprietary than MPEG2

[commodore64_love]

We use MPEG2 everywhere without problems (including our ATSC television) - we can certainly do the same with H.264/MPEG4. In fact it's the same standard used in European TV and they seem to be making-out okay.

These two codecs are more akin to V.34 or V.92 modem standards - licensed by their respective committees but essentially liberated (free).

Re:N.264/MPEG-4 is no more proprietary than MPEG2

[mcgrew]

We use MPEG2 everywhere without problems (including our ATSC television) - we can certainly do the same with H.264/MPEG4. In fact it's the same standard used in European TV and they seem to be making-out okay.

It shuts out free software. Where there are royalties there can be no freedom. I don't pay for air and I don't buy bottled water, I'm not going to pay for codecs.

Re:...and it smelled of pot and patchouli

[blind biker]

Nothing wrong with either of those.

Re:x264 is warez

[RMH101]

Only for downloading music and video

No, because ACTA is not yet law

[tepples]

Does your police really come and bust down your door and shove machine guns into your face if you download "unapproved" software?

No. But this is true only because ACTA is not yet law.