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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."
Does anybody still remember the days before Apple turned into a patent troll?
Actually I believe it is you who don't understand the difference between opinion and veiled threat. There is no difference if the threat is expressed as an opinion. Dealing with your competitors FUD is the price of doing business, can't stand the heat get off the firing line.
Why bother
It's the likes of Mozille, Xiph and the FSF that are putting the breaks on HTML5, to the great benefit of Adobe's Flash... Others have offered their support for HTML5 with H.264 video, and without the attempts to frustrate it's use, it would be a widely accepted standard by now. Apple in particular is heavily pushing H.264, in lieu of Flash, which is decidedly a good thing for open source.
H.264 may not be ideal for open source advocates, but it's vastly better than Flash which only BARELY works on Linux, and doesn't work at all on other open source operating systems, or other CPU architectures... The extra hoops to get around patent licenses, like distributing binaries from outside the US, or distributing source code only, are manageable, and have been dealt with just fine for many years with LAME, XMMS, ffmpeg, MPlayer, VLC, Xine, FAAD/FAAC, liba52, MPEG4IP, MP4Box, etc., etc. Sure, it's not ideal, but it's light-years better than the web's current dependence on Flash.
The FSF prefers to be anti-pragmatic, they would rather have things get worse, rather than let a not quite entirely free option get adopted, no matter how unrealistic their alternative is... Xiph are just kids upset their lousy codecs aren't taking over the world... Mozilla, meanwhile, refuses to depend on any other operating system function, and insist on the browser being it's own OS.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Everything that weakens Apple's monopoly and their grip on "their" devices (which people pay for and therefore mistakenly believed to be owned by them) is hurting Apple.
Apple has tasted the fruit of monopoly ROIs just like Microsoft did in the 1980s.
They have a CEO that is highly intelligent, equally paranoid and known to have left the reasonable limits of ethical behavior towards employees, customers and enemies. They have an army of rabid lawyers, worse than SCO's. They have an incredibly large and unbelievably loyal customer base, supplying them with endless amounts of cash and defense-in-depth.
Like Grizzly bears that have tasted human flesh, they will not hold back, not take any advice and not be stopped and let go of it, not as long as Steve Jobs is alive. This will get worse.
How can you honestly compare them to Microsoft? Maybe I've lost my "sanity", but Apple reserves every moral and legal right to do what they want with their platform. This isn't stopping you from using a generic Win7 tablet where you can have your "freedom" and code in VB all day long.
/sarcasm
Hey, on a related note, I'm going to start trolling because they don't let me install my own apps on my refrigerator.
Just because it doesn't fit your Stallman-esque future of computing doesn't mean that it isn't going to happen. People just want stuff it to work. Your average non-technical computer user isn't stupid for wanting this! In-fact, I think they're smarter in a zen-like "I don't want to mess with this stuff -- I have work to do" sort of way.
Technology should adapt to us, not the other way around.