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Steve Jobs Hints At Theora Lawsuit
netcrawler writes "Steve Jobs' open letter on Flash has prompted someone at the Free Software Foundation Europe to ask him about his support of proprietary format H.264 over Theora. Jobs' pithy answer (email with headers) suggests Theora might infringe on existing patents and that 'a patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other "open source" codecs now.' Does he know something we don't?"
Update: 05/01 00:38 GMT by T : Monty Montgomery of Xiph (the group behind Theora, as well as Ogg Vorbis, and more) provides a pointed, skeptical response to the implicit legal threat, below.
Monty writes: "Thomson Multimedia made their first veiled patent threats against
Vorbis almost ten years ago. MPEG-LA has been rumbling for the
past few years. Maybe this time it will actually come to
something, but it hasn't yet. I'll get worried when the lawyers advise
me to; i.e., not yet.
The MPEG-LA has insinuated for some time that it is impossible to build any video codec without infringing on at least some of their patents. That is, they assert they have a monopoly on all digital video compression technology, period, and it is illegal to even attempt to compete with them. Of course, they've been careful not to say quite exactly that.
If Jobs's email is genuine, this is a powerful public gaffe ('All video codecs are covered by patents.') He'd be confirming MPEG's assertion in plain language anyone can understand. It would only strengthen the pushback against software patents and add to Apple's increasing PR mess. Macbooks and iPads may be pretty sweet, but creative individuals don't really like to give their business to jackbooted thugs."
The MPEG-LA has insinuated for some time that it is impossible to build any video codec without infringing on at least some of their patents. That is, they assert they have a monopoly on all digital video compression technology, period, and it is illegal to even attempt to compete with them. Of course, they've been careful not to say quite exactly that.
If Jobs's email is genuine, this is a powerful public gaffe ('All video codecs are covered by patents.') He'd be confirming MPEG's assertion in plain language anyone can understand. It would only strengthen the pushback against software patents and add to Apple's increasing PR mess. Macbooks and iPads may be pretty sweet, but creative individuals don't really like to give their business to jackbooted thugs."
Microsoft conspicuously said today that IE9 will only support H.264 for HTML5 video. Add in Apple and you have the two largest consumer OS vendors backing the same codec. I suspect they do know something the public doesn't, even if they themselves will not be a party to this patent challenge.
Theora will just end up becoming collateral damage in the coming war all of the large vendors are about to wage with Google. Follow the breadcrumbs and that's where you eventually end up.
I'm ready to go "all-in" with a bet that says the second Google releases the source to VP8, every company with patents on video compression will begin examining VP8 source code for patents. They have their legal teams and engineers ramped up to start digging ASAP and I do believe that's what Steve Jobs means.
The porn industry chooses its standards. Everyone else follows.
It's interesting how often this myth gets repeated. If anything, the porn industry went with HD DVD in the high definition disc format wars. And we all know how well that worked out:
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/01/8602.ars
I'm about 99% sure that Apple does, indeed, own H.264 patents.
The various *LAs are licensing consortiums. They don't own the patents they license, they're authorized to license them (and then only in limited ways) by the patent holders.
Steve Jobs would indeed know if there was a group assembling a patent pool to "go after" Theora. And from what I've read of Xiph's attitudes to patents, I suspect they have a case. It'll be interesting to see.
(Maybe this'll help Dirac, which in many ways is a more promising codec, and has the advantage that the BBC did quite a bit of work on making it "Free")
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Apple is so much worse than Microsoft now. Maybe worse than Microsoft ever was. A trailblazer in terms of vendor lock-in - they've paved the way for totally closed software environments, a concept that would have seemed so insanely backwards 5-10 years ago that nobody would have believed it would be the trend of the future. Apple is clearly THE primary threat to software freedom these days.
The scary thing is that MS customers always knew they were being screwed and just had to settle, but Apple makes their customers want it. The majority sees nothing at all wrong with what's happening - never mind things like this that they don't know about. They fawn over iPhones and iPads, Average Joes fucking line-camp for this stuff. It's scary as hell, I've only seen otherwise sane people roll over and spread en masse like this for homeowner's associations, I thought it was just because houses are huge investments and people often don't have much of a choice, but I guess I was wrong and people can abandon all sense of freedom for anything they want enough.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Oh wow they have some open source stuff, just like Microsoft, they're totally absolved of all those entirely unrelated things I talked about in my post, oh how wrong I was about them, they're total saints because the core of their OSes and some other doodads are open source.
If robots running OSS destroy humanity I will rejoice, for our death would be righteous.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now
(emphasis mine)
Google recently acquired On2 and plans to Open Source the VP8 codec.
"..."
I'm guessing the AC above isn't interested in disclosing his identity in connection with the slanderous claim above because he knows it to be untrue.
Xiph.org has never taken a "don't tell us" position, nor to the best of my knowledge have any of our contributors in connection to Xiph.org activities. Willful ignorance is not a viable strategy in this field.
We very much want to know about any real patent exposure, especially from someone actually competent enough to raise reasonable concerns (Not likely from a 2L without particular patent training and video coding experience, but still). We have expended considerable effort knowing about, dodging, and helping others review the patent status of our work. After all— this stuff exists for the very purpose of being unencumbered.
--Greg Maxwell (greg@xiph.org)
As a Theora developer, this is news to me. Would you mind mentioning who this buddy is so I can go back through my mail queue and verify that you're just making shit up?
I know you're lying, as regardless of what our response would have been it most certainly would _not_ have been, "ssshhh don't tell anyone".