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Canonical Explains Decision to License H.264 For Ubuntu
tux writes with this snippet from The Register: "Ubuntu's commercial sponsor Canonical has tried to clarify how — if not why — it has licensed a closed-source and patented codec for video on PCs running its Linux. Canonical is the first Linux shop to have agreed to license the codec in question, H.264, from MPEG LA. Even though Red Hat and Novell are also available for use on PCs, they have not licensed H.264."
It's a great move for the Linux community, even if some "pure" free and open source people disagree. You cant get everything at once and expect casual people to put up with "it's proprietary so we dont support it" if they want to do something, or demand them to add some Russian repositories in the apt-get config file so they can get unlicensed, pirated versions of those and break the law. No, they will just get something that works for them. And H.264 has already clearly won this round, so anyone catering for casual people has to support it.
Like TFA notes, Canonical has also previously licensed well done closed source software for Ubuntu. You aren't losing your soul if you take the best from the both worlds. In fact you are still promoting open source software, and probably way more efficiently when people actually like the system and can use it the way they want to. I honestly dont think every software in the world should be open source, but the underlying system should be. But even if you want software and standards to be open too, after getting the open OS out there the next step is to create competitive, better alternatives for the software and standards.
Be focused on one thing, dont try to fight the whole world at once.
-sopssa
Since the general goal of Ubuntu is to reach out to the average computer user, rather than the power user or enterprise as most other distributions aim for, the question of "Why did they license a codec that most major companies are throwing support behind?" shouldn't really need to be asked.
Wine all you want, open-source fanatics. Our HTPCs are getting quite a nice boost in usability.
Living With a Nerd
The writing's on the wall here, kids. H.264 is where web video is going.
Theora's a non-starter, and unless VP8 is stunning as fuck and Google indemnifies everyone and his kid brother against lawsuits, it's not going anywhere either.
Some people are confusing patent issues with closed-sourcedness.
It would be more sustainable and cheaper to invest in patent reform than to license trivial patents of course...
He's willing to compromise on doctrinaire software freedom issues in order to grow his marketshare. I'm impressed he can afford to buy it and give it away even to their OEM vendors. One wonders what terms this was made on, and how sustainable it is. But to be clear - this does not come free with each download of Ubuntu. It's part of a deal where money is getting made through the sale of hardware.
You can look to Android for similar policy, I'm sure.
It might also have the effect of embarrassing some of the folks who had aspirations of hurting Linux adoption by trying to lock the world into a proprietary video codec. It will hurt, but the effect will not be as black and white as it was in the past.
The real endgame here is still getting an open codec in an open standard for web video. I think the commercial interests have finally woken up to how much the proprietary codec world has hurt them, and how much they have to gain by escaping. It's not just a problem for Linux and the FSF - proprietary codecs are a big problem for everyone who produces and consumes video.
In a perfect world, where users could unbundle and pay ala carte for commercial vs. free codecs, they would not buy them (they're not worth much vs. what we can do for free), and producers would not be saddled with encoding for them, and everyone would be quite a lot happier.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
Canonical can focus on keeping the FSF happy, or they can focus on trying to someday turn a profit and brining sustainability to their company.
Why do they need to justify this decision? It seems like a no-brainer to me.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Huh?
H.264 is not "closed source", it's an open standard with open source encoders (famous x264, everything points to it being the best quality encoder available anywhere) and decoders (libavcodec), it's just that a bazillion companies have patents that cover every corner of video coding. It might be "unfree", but it's certainly not "closed source" or "closed standard" or "proprietary".
Open source represents a freedom to use and create derivative works.
If there is a patent legal landmine, then clearly the freedom to use and create derivatives has gone straight out the Window.
If Ubuntu has to worry about being SUED for including something then it really isn't Free Software. It's not the fault of the coders. However, the problem still remains.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
H.264 licensors include fifteen of the biggest names in global manufacturing and tech.
Mitsubishi. NTT. Philips. Samsung. Toshiba....
The 817 licensees include hundreds of other names the geek should recognize.
H.264 support is in the cell phones they make.
Web cams. Camcorders. Video game consoles. Mobile Internet devices and PCs of every description. Industrial and security video. Broadcast, cable and satellite technologies.
Theatrical production and home video. The set-top box. The Internet enabled HDTV.
Mozilla's Firefox can ignore H.264 in the browser.
But Mozilla can't keep Amazon.com from stocking 3,500 flavors of the H.264 HD camcorder, priced from $125-$5,000.
It can't get shelf space for the non-existent Theora or VP8 product in WalMart.
There are some things a commercially viable OEM Linux PC must deliver at retail. H.264 support is one of them. It needs to be in hardware. it needs to competitive - and it needs to be there today.
...and found nothing superior about H.264 over Theora.
This "H.264 is superior" is a myth, astroturfing at it best.
I have no doubt the main drive for H.264 is political, specially since they are insisting on codec exclusivity. Codec always used to be pluggable but now Apple and Microsoft have decided that they are only going to allow their codec. How am I not to guess this is yet another underhanded stab at open source?
But... the future refused to change.
The OSI disagrees with you, not that it will stop you from trying to bend the definition to where you want it to be...
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
And it is unlikely that either of them makes any money from MPEG-LA - Microsoft's IE manager says that "Microsoft pays into MPEG-LA about twice as much as it receives back for rights to H.264". I'd expect that Apple, which owns just one patent in the H.264 pool, is in a similar position.
A good theory, but not quite so well borne out by facts, at least for Apple. They've managed to do quite well getting iPhone marketshare, despite competition from Android, and look to continue being wildly profitable in that area. And, also, they support a lot of open source projects - they own and maintain CUPS, they're major backers of llvm-clang (which, god willing, will eventually supplant gcc entirely), and you can download the source code for the BSD-derived components of OS X (including the patches they've made, despite not having to do so) as well as their kernel.
Open source and patent-free aren't the same thing. Theora is untested in terms of patent infringement, and the assertions of its developers aren't adequate guarantee that people implementing it won't be hit with lawsuits related to it. That and the fact that has no major corporate backers or IP holders willing to litigate on its behalf, makes it a unnecessary risk for businesses. Note, too, that there is are several open source H.264 implementations, including the excellent, GPL x264 encoding library.
And this is where you're only partially right. Yes, I believe non-technical factors were important in the apparent success of H.264 over theora, but that's not the only reason - there's extensive existing support on mobile devices for H.264 decoding, it's frankly much better quality at lower bitrates than theora, and the default container format isn't the horrible shitty mess that is OGG.
Some people are confusing patent issues with closed-sourcedness.
This is why software freedom is a more useful term, because it doesn't just require the source to be available, but that it not contain any legal encumbrances - copyright, patent, trademark or any others - which prevent end-user modification and redistribution with the same rights as they received.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
If the H.264 code binary can be run in user space, non-root, in a chroot jail, then my issues with it are just philosophical and not enough to prevent me from running it. I prefer open source. But I'm not opposed to running binary code. I'm also not opposed to paying for it.
What I am opposed to is borging my computer by running un-inspectable code as a kernel module, root process, or even an unjailed user process. I do not trust corporations to do things right. I'm not going to give permissions to untrusted code. And if I can't read the source, it's untrusted ... by definition.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
"And they accomplish this by starting with one of the purest open-source distros around -- Debian -- and then pissing all over it."
And why, exactly, does that bother you? It shouldn't, but apparently it does. Did they send someone over to specifically piss on your copy of Debain?
Or are you just assuming you've been wronged somehow in the process? Because I'll bet your life is not one iota different than it would have been had they not started with Debian. Except, of course, for the fact that you can now complain about them.
You realise it's these "kooks" that gave us the OSS legacy we're using now, right?
And now little punks like you are using that legacy, and telling them to bugger off...
I would have thought your parents would have taught you better.
Look, I think Stallman and co are seriously wacky as much as the next person, but it's actually thanks to people like him that the FSF and OSS even got off the ground. So I think we should at least give them credit for that. And it's a real shame when grassroots people like him, or say, all those civil liberties groups, whom us mainstream people love to write off as crazy hippies - we reap all the benefits of all their campaigning and what not, then act like ungrateful brats to them.
It's not to say you can't make fun of them, or say they're a bit loopy, but saying we should "jettison" them? Are you willing to jettison all the work they've done as well, and go back to a Windows and Apple only world? Heck, even Slashdot runs on OSS...willing to give that up?
Cheers, Victor
What ever happened to "Don't feed the patent trolls?"
Ubuntu LIES
Is an h264-enabled web browser a core application? An h264-enabled video player? Etc., etc.
So much for their "philosophy"
I'm sure Ubuntu is happy to call itself "open source". I'm going to call it "Quisling".
Oh, and it's STILL fugly. Can't you get someone who isn't chromatically challenged to at least make this pig look a bit less like a sows' ear?