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Google to Open Source the VP8 Codec
Several readers noted Google's reported intention to open source the VP8 codec it acquired with On2 last February — as the FSF had urged. "HTML5 has the potential to capture the online video market from Flash by providing an open standard for web video — but only if everyone can agree on a codec. So far Adobe and Microsoft support H.264 because of the video quality, while Mozilla has been backing Ogg Theora because it's open source. Now it looks like Google might be able to end the squabble by making the VP8 codec it bought from On2 Technologies open source and giving everyone what they want: high-quality encoding that also happens to be open. Sure, Chrome and Firefox will support it. But can Google get Safari and IE on board?"
We're all very quick to hit Google when they do something wrong. This one pretty clearly is "do no evil". Thanks Google!
Setting aside the fact that it's just rumors so far... if true, this is really great.
I was generally more supportive of H.264 in this debate for purely pragmatical purposes, but if we can have a codec that is both free, and technically capable, it's a win-win all the way.
Of course, there's still the battle to get it supported on hardware side. But then if Google truly backs it (rather than just dumping a tarball of source on the FOSS crowd), it might be dealt with much faster than how it goes for Theora now. Especially if, say, Google will push to make it supported on Android - the volume of devices is large enough that some established company can come up with a hardware decoding chip and make it profitable.
As a side note - in retrospect, sounds like it's a good thing they didn't prematurely standardize on Theora...
How does it actually compare to H.264, and is there any hardware decoding support? H.264 already has momentum, and big sites are already switching to it.
is actually from Google's POV, "Make others think we believe "Do No Evil" ". The main motivation, as with all other commercial endeavours, is to gain advantage for one's self (profit). "Do No Evil" is a handy PR side effect.
Google saw commercial benefit (or penalties for others) down the line by open sourcing VP8.
If IE doesn't support it, that might just be the nail in the coffin. So I'm sure MS would follow suit.
MOAR FREE! :-)
Sent from my PDP-11
Open-sourcing it alone means next to nothing: there are open-source h.264 codecs. The community still can't use it without a thorough patent examination, a universal royalty-free patent license, and an indemnity guarantee.
Firefox has already committed to supported theora natively. Are they going to dump that now that VP8 is open? Or are they going to support two codecs now? That would just recreate the problem an open source VP8 was meant to solve.
More problematically, patents. I doubt most people owning h264 patents want an open source competitor, and the media companies are probably more comfortable with an IP protected media format. Google has a lot of money, but patent battles could carry on for years and put the ubiquity of VP8 into doubt, much like the problems with BSD.
So now instead of two incompatible codecs for HTML5 video, we will have three? Great!
The only way this will really take off is if Google starts serving up youtube in VP8 to clients that request it. I am not saying that options are bad, and its nice the Google has released this code, but HTML5 video is already hampered by competing standards and this doesn't help.
As far as HTML5 video goes, it doesn't matter so much if the technically "best" codec gets used, so long as a single format is standardised to a large degree. There are better ways of storing photos than JPG, but that's what browsers use and nobody complains. There are better ways of storing video than Theora and everybody bitches about it. I hope it gets sorted out soon one way or another - HTML5 audio is in the same boat.
sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
This is just what I asked for the other day when there was news that Google was supporting optimizing Theora, which is based on VP3. Way to go Google!
According to 3 different browser stat usage, Safari and Chrome are too tiny a market to consider. Which means its more likely to be a battle between Google/Firefox and Microsoft more then anything.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
It's very simple...
Just change YouTube to VP8 and HTML5.
Hell, you can probably just THREATEN it...
There are two types of Free Software, and it has a direct analog in government vs private sector.
The first type is infrastructure. This is operating systems, compilers, networking protocol stacks, and other things that should be standardized. Sure, you could implement your own, but only at the risk of losing interoperability and compatibility with most other systems.
The second type of Free Software is everything else. Apps, tools, graphics subsystems, and the types of things that people should and do constantly dream up and implement. These things require competition to grow and innovate.
However the problem I see is that a video codec is not an infrastructure type of software. It is one among many competing software tools. By entering this On2 codec into the open like this, Google has essentially locked out any other competing codec since content creators will mostly only support the most widely available codec.
By introducing a codec as an infrastructure type software, we lose the crucial competition that improves the ecosystem for everyone.
Also, I hope Google (or another big mover) actively promotes a good media container format. Something better than OGG, perhaps MKV...
its all about the encoders !
google can quite easily make reference but until there is High quality encoders then its pretty pointless
making decoder plugins for IE and mac is actually pretty easy in comparison
hardware reference designes need to be seeded also to the likes of TI and STMicroelectronics before it will even start to be useful after all where do all the camera's now do mp4 come from...
its all about the encoders !
regards
John Jones
You see what it took to kill IE6. MS hasn't supported it for what, 2 years and it's finally now about to die?
Not supporting this video codec is unlikely to kill IE.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The amount of money that Google paid for On2 was pocket change by Google standards. And the amount of money that On2 made every year was in the noise level by Google standards. So it never seemed likely to me that Google bought On2 with the intention of selling codecs for money.
If VP8 really is as good as On2 claimed, Google could save some pretty good money by serving up YouTube videos in VP8 format instead of H264. And even better, Google would not have to worry about the H.264 patent owners changing the rates or changing the rules. So it really would be in Google's best interest if all of the YouTube users were able to view content in VP8. But given the head start of H.264 in the market, the only possible way for Google to get everyone to use VP8 would be to release it for free.
I'm happy about this. This is just a win/win for everyone. If VP8 is decently competitive with H.264, and it is completely free, then as shutdown -p now commented, there is no longer any need to choose between good compression and free software. Everyone can have both!
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Was this decision taken after the urge of FSF or they had it in their plans? I think the lobbying and urging by FSF to a corporate like Google seems somewhat undignified, at least to me. This act seems of higher quality and nature, be whatever its motivations are.
But yeah, I would be curious to know from the Google Insiders as how much of FSF urging help?
Senthil
that's all.
But can Google get Safari and IE on board?
I suspect that IE will come on board once it starts loosing enough market share to browsers that support it. Since Google owns YouTube, it's a pretty safe bet that YouTube will migrate over to it. When that happens, IE won't have much choice or much reason not to support it.
Where it gets interesting is with Safari. Apple has been very bullish as of late about only supporting what it wants to support, not what customers want. If it sticks to its guns and refuses to support HTML5 video, there will be a lot of pissed iPhone/iPad users that can't get YouTube video anymore (they already have to live without Flash video). Since it's beginning to look like Opera may not get approved for the iPhone (20 days and counting since its submission - no big surprise if Apple turns them down), iPhone/iPad users will be S.O.L. when it comes to video.
I wonder how "cool" Apple will look when all all the Android & WinME Mobile devices are showing off their HTML5 video support and Apples devices can no longer do video?
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
But can Google get Safari and IE on board?
What?
Just make it the default format for Youtube, and everyone will include it, just to get rid of Flash. Apple hates Adobe, and Microsoft merely dislikes it, so no tears are going to be shed.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
H.264 rules the universe guys. Stop living your little pipe dream that anything else will survive. Hardware encoders and decoders are out there in the millions. That single fact alone will make it stay.
MPEG4/AAC audio took over the world, and no one looked back.
H.264 has taken over the web, and you should never look back.
Video is quickly becoming an commodity. It is ridiculous that html5 took so longer to get here.
Who gives a damn what the file format is anymore at the end user level. The only possible place for giving a care is at the high end ( 2K, 4K video + ) a new algorithm there could get some traction.
H.264 is going on 5 years now. Yeah their licensing terms could change, but do you really think all these hardware and software vendors will tolerate that? The market will take care of itself.
Has everyone forgotten who is responsible for the Web browser ballot in Windows 7 in the European Union? Opera! The point is, Opera gets results for the benefit of everyone. If only they patented tabbed browsing...
Most mobile devices have support for hardware h264 decoding these days. The iPhone and Nexus One, for example, both have hardware h.264 decoding support, and many netbooks have video hardware that accelerates the decoding.
I'm not defending the codec here, just pointing out that you're wrong.
then everyone will support it.
Anyhow who says this doesn't know anything about flash or what it is used for. Also FLV was one of the first containers to support on2.
I thought one of the problems with Ogg (vs the competition) was that its decoding process is floating point intensive and thus unworkable on cheap/portable/limited hardware. Am I imagining that? If not, does VP8 suffer that same flaw?
With more quality webcams on hand held, desktop and portable devices how does this google/codec news relate to webcams?
UVC lets many free/nonfree OS see the cam and offers a way to broadcast 1 on 1 or 1 on 1000's via flash and free (ad supported) websites.
So my question is where is webcam broadcast support at with html5 and the new codecs?
Thanks
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The GPL is not the only reason that Firefox would decline to place an encumbered technology in their browser. However, you are incorrect in stating that GPL2 would allow this. Under the terms of GPL2 section 7, the only allowable patent license would be one that licenses all GPL software used by anyone, because the patent license you take may not restrict any of the GPL terms - like modification, and of course you can modify any GPL program into another GPL program.
Bruce Perens.
I wonder how On2 shareholders will react to open sourcing of VP8. Seems that the increase of $26.5 million to the offer was a major victory for them. Any activists willing to comment?
That is, in case your device/computer doesn't have a real chip to do h264 decoding or there isn't any CPU acceleration (SSE/Altivec) in the decoder software. In some cases, like Adobe's situation with Apple, the chip (GPU) is there, they just can't reach it using any official/hack API so there we have 100% CPU using Flash on Apple with Apple user/fans bitching about Adobe instead.
I have problem believing Google will spend time and money hardware accelerating VP8 on, lets say PowerPC. They didn't even bother to release a browser. What about Symbian? They got some great software up and running on Symbian but not something really complex like a video player.
> Sure, Chrome and Firefox will support it. But can Google get Safari and IE on board?"
They don't have to- they just need to convince Adobe to get on board and they are set. Web Developers will be able to have a Flash fallback without needing to re-encode their videos
Do you really want that hack inside your browser? If I were a IE user, I wouldn't. IE isn't designed to do such things and there is enough trouble already with it. People who aren't allowed to install any other browser can't already install some deep level activex anyway.
It is just like Input Manager hacks on OS X Safari. They just can't admit the browser isn't designed to be hacked that way and it is way more viable to use a browser that allows extensions by architectural design.
MPEG-LA is protecting the rights of the real patent owners which I bet, may even include some open source heroes. MPEG-LA isn't some large, evil company. It is just an organization to protect the rights of the codec owners. For example, if you want to have VC-1, you contact them too.
Google did the best decision which most already predicted when they acquired On2, great for them to open the codec but it doesn't make MPEG-LA or any codec companies "evil". They either can't afford to give away their all rights or they simply can't do it.
Once you air to millions of set top boxes, offer mpeg4 files to millions of devices and go up space with mpeg2 or h264, things look different to you and no, nothing goes away.
H.264 is in *everything*, even Flash. It's in all the hardware, from smartphones to PC GPU's. Camcorders make it. It's on Blu-Ray and iTunes and YouTube.
This move with VP8 is likely to keep MPEG licensing free from 2016 through the expiration of the patents. It's not going to displace H.264, though. Even if everyone in the world agreed to replace H.264, it would take a decade or more. Even if you don't know it, most of the post-DVD video you've watched was H.264.
I hope Google fails.
I really hope Google does this.
I doubt they'll get Apple with Safari onboard. I mean, they been trying to lock develops in on the iPhones so they can't cross-platform stuff...
This is one of those things which gets me fuming more than the video tag being the most poorly thought out design issue ever on the web.
.NET in the past, but nothing with as much complexity as VP8. H.261 works with minimal CPU consumption on .NET. I've also implemented much of H.262 with little additional overhead. With the exception of the more expensive prediction methods which are definitely points where highly optimized code is beneficial, CODECs with the complexity of H.264 and VP8 should be doable.
.NET and I know it's supposedly scheduled, but cross platform vectorization frameworks are EXTREMELY complex. And to avoid them ending up with a piece of crap VM design like Java's, I'm truly hoping they'll delay the feature until they get it right.
Apple delivers video through the Quicktime architecture and Microsoft delivers video either through DirectShow or MediaFoundation. These frameworks are pluggable and CODECs can be easily installed on these platforms.
What is missing is a method of delivering the CODECs to the users. Google can make the CODEC part of Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Earth, etc... there are countless ways in which Google can proliferate the CODEC to the consumer. The real issue comes in mobile devices. Delivering to the Microsoft and Apple phones. On the desktop, the CODEC issue is already taken care of.
As for supporting the VP8 CODEC on iPhone, I don't recall seeing anything that specifically bans third party CODECs on the phone itself. In fact, given that the hardware encoder in slingbox appears to be either WMV9 or VC-1 (I haven't verified it, but I read it somewhere), SlingPlayer for iPhone almost certainly is delivering a 3rd party CODEC to the device. It might simply be an issue of making a new player that triggers on VP8 media.
As for the Microsoft phone, it's both easier and harder. I have implemented low complexity CODECs in
My greatest dreams at the moment is Microsoft implementing vectorization extensions in
All said and done, VP8 can be proliferated pretty easily. At least for a company like Google who has both the means to implement it as well as the means to deploy it.
http://www.on2.com/index.php?603 I found them on on2's site. I assume those VP8s are at maximum quality, but if those are real, and this is fully open sourced, Theora AND H264 are in for a beating. I imagine that this will replace a lot of the internet... video if it's really that good.
Ethernet won out over BNC years ago
Quibble: I think you meant "twisted pair" with RJ45 connectors won out over coax with BNC connectors. Ethernet was used over both, just as it it used over fiber today. In fact, I also recall the old thickwire with MAU boxes and AUI connectors; those yellow hoses were a real pain to install, but they carried ethernet before thinwire with BNC connectors had been invented.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
If that becomes true that's so far the best technology related news from me so far this year.
I doubt Apple would embrace that with pleasure, but I hope at least Opera will add support.
It's about time for open video on the Web !
Thanks in advance Google, please don't disapoint us, if done right that's huge !
Daniel
Great news that Google is releasing VP8! Perhaps we can finally have a video codec that is both free of patent gotchas and competitive with H.264 quality-wise.
The real question, of course, is if it will take off. I can imagine a couple of H.264 stakeholders not being happy about having a rival codec challenge their reign, and trying to block any open codec's adoption if they can manage it.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
At any rate, kudos to Google for this move!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Just because movies use s format, doesn't mean computers care. After all DVDs have been MPEG-2 forever, yet MPEG-2 playback has been something many systems didn't ship with, and next to nothing online is encoded in MPEG-2.
One thing VP has going for it is Flash video. A large amount of Flash video is VP6. Presuming the VP8 implementation they release is able to play older VP6 encoded files, which seems reasonably likely, then that makes it a real winner to integrate. You can now play Flash videos on your device.
Like it or no, Flash is the current Internet video standard, and a big amount of Flash videos are VP6 (they can also be Spark for older ones, or H.264 for newer ones).
So maybe movies go H.264, but computers go VP8. For that matter movies aren't necessarily consistent. Blu-ray supports H.264, VP-1, and MPEG-2. If you sniff around you find which is used varies.
There isn't a compelling reason to gravitate towards a single video standard since different devices have different requirements. You don't want to take an HD movie on a computer and load it on a portable device. Even assuming the portable had the power to decode it (it doesn't) you'd be wasting a ton of limited storage space. You'd still be recoding to go from HD to portable, even if you were using the same codec.
We'll see what happens, but VP8 has a good chance if it is royalty free and has Google backing it. They are a big name. They also have the ability to develop the code for whatever application needed. If they provide versions of the VP8 decode that work without floating point math (for the integer only CPUs often found on mobiles) and can be implemented in a cheap ASIC (for low power dedicated devices) they may well find it gets picked up all over the place.
Think about it: Google releases a software framework and works with TI to release a cheap ASIC that plays VP6-8 video. Using this your device can directly play and accelerate VP Flash video, without having the Flash plugin. I think device manufacturers might be rather interested in that.
This 50% advantage is now down to 20% only.
150%/130% = 115.38%
There's no bigger software patent problem than the video situation, and Google's track record is good. They stockpile software patents, but I haven't found any cases of them using their patents aggressively. 29 patent holders are claiming to have a total of over 900 patent on h.264! There's just no way to invalidate them all.
The only way we can win this is by abolishing software patents (I'm working on it, but it won't happen tomorrow :-), convince everyone to move to Theora, or convince everyone to move to some super new format.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
I don't understand the emphasis on mobile devices, who cares if some dork can't watch the latest episode of Heroes on his 2" phone screen?
We had news about the iPad when no one had ever seen it, and a story about Courier "prototype". This is news, and I dare say it's much more important to most /.ers.
Dilbert RSS feed
Remind me again why everyone has to agree a codec before it can be used? Last I checked, the img tag supported multiple image formats. So why can't the video tag? And what happens when technology moves on and better codecs are around? Surely they can't be suggesting that there will be one, and only one, video standard, now and for all time?
And I still can't watch Netflix in Linux.
Fuck IE and Safari! They are of no use! FireFox, Opera and Chrome are the best!
To hell with H.264 and its hardware support. Change will never happen if all we do is sit there and whine that it's inconvienient. If you don't like it, then ignore it. But for christ's sake, shut up already.
Firstly, the codec issue is not one of open source but of patents, and there is no guarantee that VP8 is patent free just because it is open source. In fact, it is probably not.
Secondly, we are getting to the point where nothing can become a standard unless Apple endorses it, since Apple are making a number of locked up devices that web sites want to target. So unless someone convinces Apple that this is a good thing, H264 is still a more likely winner.
As you say, the only thing that the release of VP8 might do is make it harder for patent holders to collect licenses. To my mind, this draws attention to "what was Google thinking?" Considering the very deep pockets of Google, Google has to have consulted legal counsel regarding this release. They had to have weighed their exposure to lawsuits over the release of this codec. And surely, they have cleared the title to ensure that there are no patents or other encumbrances that could vitiate their action.
One other element sitting in the sidelines is the current and pending Bilski decisions. Google is demonstrating an awful lot of confidence in their release that others will be precluded from initiating patent infringement suits based on previous and the potential outcome of the Bilski cases (among many others, but this being the current focus of patent law).
I also agree with your comments on the role of FOSS. FOSS seems more like a source of inspiration rather than a threat.
I applaud Google for helping to set a foundation for free and open video codecs. I hope this works out for everyone, too. Google seems to be inspired by FOSS.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
h.264 has won, give it a rest.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I don't think you really want to use any codec on a battery powered device which isn't hardware accelerated by the built-in GPU, do you? Won't that kill battery life? I'm not sure, but it really seems like, for phones, you *really* want a power efficient decoder in silicon?
Actually, thinking about this a little bit - most of the newer generation GPU's have some API's for coding and running special code right on the GPU (CUDA, FireStream, ,OpenCL). Are those at all useful for 'adding' accellerated codecs to the GPU after manufacturing?
There is no such thing as "Hardware Decoders". There are DSP's that support various large int/large float matrix calculations etc (ala GPU's) and firmware written for them to do the decoding. Such firmware can be written for any codec.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Good read from....
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=292
VP8 solves the compression problem: while still probably not as good as x264 (see the Addendum at the end for more details on this prediction), the gap is far smaller than with Theora, enough so that compression is far less of an issue. But it also brings up a host of new problems.
1. A few years ago, Microsoft re-released the proprietary WMV9 as the open VC-1, which they claimed to be royalty-free. Only months later, dozens of companies had come out of the woodwork claiming patents on VC-1. Within a year, a VC-1 licensing company was set up, and the “patent-free” was no more. Any assumption that VP8 is completely free of patents is likely a bit premature. Even if this does not immediately happen, many companies will not want to blindly include VP8 decoders in their software until they are confident that it isn’t infringing. Theora has been around for 6 years and there are still many companies (notably Nokia and Apple) who still refuse to include it! Of course this attitude may seem absurd, but one must understand who one is marketing to. One cannot get rid of businesspeople scared of patents by ignoring them.
2. VP8 is proprietary, and thus even if opened, would still have many of the problems of a proprietary format. There may be bugs in the format that were never uncovered because only one implementation was ever written (see RealVideo for an atrocious example of this). There will be only one implementation for quite some time; Theora has been around for 6 years now and there’s still only one encoder. Lack of competing implementations breeds complacency and stagnates progress. And given the quality of On2’s source releases in the past, I don’t have much hope for the actual source code of VP8; it will likely have to be completely rewritten to get a top-quality free software implementation.
3. It does nothing to solve the problems of hardware compatibility: most mobile devices uses ASICs for video decoding, most of which probably cannot be easily repurposed for VP8. This might be less of a problem if they’re targeting software implementations though; while it would eat more battery and be limited to mobile devices with powerful CPUs, it would not be unreasonable to play back VP8 on a fast ARM chip (see the Addendum for more on this).
The big advantage of VP8 is that it solves a problem that is unsolvable for Theora: Theora is forever crippled by its outdated technology and weak feature set. With state-of-the-art RD and psy optimization, as in x264, Theora can likely become competitive with Xvid or even maybe WMV9, but probably not x264. The only way to fix this would be a “Theora 2, and attempting to ensure Theora’s “patent-free” status while adding new features would be extraordinarily difficult in today’s software patent environment. VP8, on the other hand, offers an immediate jump to what is hopefully an H.264-comparable level of compression.
But now for the big question: why would Google want to open VP8, and if they did, how would they do it? Google probably doesn’t pay a cent in license fees for Youtube; H.264 is free until at least 2016 for internet distribution and encoder fees only apply if you have more than 100,000 encoding servers. The cost of the license fees for Chrome are minimal (a few million dollars a year, capped). But despite that, there are actually some very good reasons.
1. Control. Google may view the control of other companies over H.264 as a threat: even though H.264 is licensed under RAND terms (Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory, they legally cannot be anti-competitive), there are many reasons for Google to want more control. If they push VP8, they not only compete with Flash via HTML5, but they also prevent Flash from playing their video streams. As it is unlikely (for the reasons mentioned at the start of the article) that Adobe will im
How do you all know that VP8 is any good? Nobody outside of On2 or Google has ever seen a spec, or an implementation, or an encoded video. Except for that demo video on their site that reeks of BS with all those artifacts in the alleged H.264 half.
So close, but so wrong. The real key word is "interoperability", not "infrastructure." We don't need operating systems standardized at all, for example, we just need their APIs standardized. Compilers?! No way we need that standardized -- we just need the languages they compile to be standardized.
Codecs? Well, at least the bitstreams need standardization. The software patent system has been abused to essentially patent those bitstreams and prevent interoperability, though, so release of a codec (with permission to use the math behind it) is useful for standardization.
When you use OSes and compilers as your examples, I think what you're really talking about are commodities. And yes, that's where Free Software kicks major ass, by giving people a way to do what other people are doing, without going to anyone and begging permission.
I actually agree with you that this might decrease codec development a bit (although there are always nerds out there trying to make better things, whether there's market demand for it or not). But blame Google? Sorry, no. Blame the system that made them do this. Patents are preventing interoperability by making it so that there can't be a video standard. (Assuming you count out Theora, and if people are saying "it has to be as good as h264" then that means we're 20 years(!) away from having a video standard that people will accept.) Freeing a fairly new h264-competitive codec is a solution to that problem. So blame patents for reducing inventors' incentives. If we didn't have patent laws that prohibited people from making their own codecs compatible with h264 bitstreams -- i.e. laws to prevent competition and innovation -- then this wouldn't be happening.
Don't like it? Then pass an amendment that repeals the part of the constitution that says "Congress shall have the power .. to inhibit the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to inventors the exclusive right to interoperability and compatibility with their inventions."
Thank you, Google.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
First I read an article in my local newspaper about piracy, both anti- and pro-piracy supporters got equal column-space.
Then I read in another newspaper that Richard Dawkins is planning to sue the Pope
And now Google is open sourcing a codec that could be a game-changer in open standards?
I want more of these days, please. Hats off to Google for doing the right thing. Or in the words of a famous clown: "I...LOVE...THIS...COMPANY YEEEEEAAARH!"
Why does the FSF always bitch and moan about things, or always begs or threatens instead of actually doing something about the situations they perceive as "wrong"?
Here's an idea: take a problem that involves hard-earned engineering (= mathematics) expertise, such as being designing and coding performant audio/video codecs - i.e., things you *know* the self-delusional unixhead who likes to call himself a "free software developer" (meaning: he installs Debian on PCs) is *not* ever gonna be able to handle and, instead of begging or nagging others to release the source of their clearly superior and proprietary products, actually take money from the FSF, Canonical, or the Linux Foundation and give grants to qualified (e.g., graduate students) programmers who have a background on the field.
Too much money for the Linux Foundation? For the FSF? I think not. I'm pretty sure a lowly 2k grant would make a lot of people happy in, say, India or Brazil. But hey, pay more if you can.
But please, stop with the begging. I once used to give money to the FSF. Not anymore. Because, when you think about it, all the FSF has ever done is piggyback on proprietary software or government (i.e., tax payer's) money (ever since Stallmand invented Unix, just like when Al Gore invented the intertubes).
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Ars has a story about Google funding the TheorARM project. One huge weakness with Theora (technicals aside) is the dearth of support on mobile devices.
This, and the open release of VP8, are very much welcome news to the FOSS community.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
Unless Microsoft and Apple switch their directions, HTML5 video is going to turn into a case of same shit, different pile for web developers when it comes to cross-browser compatibility. Even if Google does open source VP8, Microsoft and Apple have already implemented support for h.264 in their browsers. Are they really going to change it to make my life easier? Past history tells me that no they won't, at least not for a long time.
Bandwidth problems mostly go away if multicast or peer to peer video becomes viable.
And until you think of a way for ISPs to bill one another for multicast transit, multicast traffic won't get routed on the public Internet. Besides, multicast isn't so helpful for video on demand because it depends on lots of people starting the video at nearly the same time.
Google is funding Vorbis playback in hardware,
why are they pushing two formats?
I didn't RTFA, or most of the comments, but the majority of the ones I bothered to look at, just don't get it. It has almost nothing to do with quality, bandwidth, or open source evangelism, it's all about money. Note the timing of Google's purchase of On2 - right before MPEG LA makes the decision of whether to charge licensing fees for on-line video distribution: Charge fees = YouTube moves to VP8, and h.264 dies; no fees till 2016 = people still use h.264, because it is designed in to every mobile device, and MPEG LA can gain fees from device manufactures. As a developer for a regional university, I recently backed off supporting HTML 5 video, for many reasons. Practically all of them can be summed up in the following statement: We have hundreds of terabytes of video, and not enough machines, people or storage to have video in two formats, let alone three. In addition to this, practically every modern mobile device will play h.264/3gp; the codec of choice is obvious, unless there is a licensing fee for broadcast across "the tubes". If there is a viable alternative, as soon as there is a fee for h.264, my university, and I'd be willing to bet that many others as well, will run away. The bean counters at MPEG LA know this. If YouTube migrates to VP8 mobile devices will almost HAVE to support VP8, AND if Google releases the codec every cash-strapped university (and business) on the planet will run to VP8. MPEG LA's licensing fees dry up, and they are used by some little niche industry producing video discs for old timey TV boxes. Honestly, I'd love to see VP8 released, but I think the current "threat" will be enough to stay the hands of MPEG LA's money grubbing bean counters from charging Interweb broadcast fees.
Theora is Patent Free!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.