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Ars Thinks Google Takes a Step Backwards For Openness
An anonymous reader writes "Over at Ars Technica, Peter (not so) Bright gives a long-winded four pages of FUD about how Chrome dropping support for H.264 is a slight against openness. 'The promise of HTML5's video tag was a simple one: to allow web pages to contain embedded video without the need for plugins. With the decision to remove support for the widespread H.264 codec from future versions of Chrome, Google has undermined this widely-anticipated feature. The company is claiming that it wants to support "open codecs" instead, and so from now on will support only two formats: its own WebM codec, and Theora. ... The reason Google has given for this change is that WebM (which pairs VP8 video with Vorbis audio) and Theora are "open codecs" and H.264 apparently isn't. ... H.264 is unambiguously open.'"
The standard is open, and there are open source encoders and decoders. So in that sense, it's open: Everything is fully and publicly documented. However, it is also covered by hundreds of patents, which means you can't actually use any of that information without getting a licence from the patent holders. One of whome is Microsoft, who stands to make a lot of money from it. Others include Sony and Apple, who stand to make a lot too. So far the consortium that administers the patent pool has been quite reasonable about terms - free for noncommercial use, low costs even for commercial - but there is a fear that if x264 were to become so established it were impossible to do without it then there would be a temptation for them to start milking more money from those patents.
WebM and Chrome are both open sourced under public licenses. To say Google "owns" them is to not understand how these open licenses work. Also, the patents behind VP8 have been released, irrevocably, to the public.
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cut bullshit. a standard that is not open, and subject to licensing fees, is NOT open. you cant redefine open.
Well then perhaps you should stop trying to do so. Open means documented and interoperable, it does not mean patent-unencumbered. It means you can see what is happening and make changes, but it doesn't guarantee you the right to redistribute those changes, which is why we need a distinction between Open and Free software and why the OSI is the enemy of Free Software; it attempts to conflate the two by redefinition of the term "Open" to mean something almost-but-not-actually like Free Software and dilutes it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You're completely missing the point.
Nobody cares about a single codec. Someone makes a good proprietary codec ? Good for them !
The problem arises when it becomes a required base part of the web.
Remember the GIF debacle ? Remember that many open source image editor did not have the capability to save gif images ? That's exactly what is at stake here.
Have one company control a base standard of the web makes it control who can or cannot create the tools to create web content. Of course big players like Google or Mozilla have the funds to pay royalties, but what about that guy who made a simple command line tool to split/merge h264 videos ?
You can argue that the MPEG-LA has made the codec royalty free but truth is they can instantly make it illegal to open source any software using h264.
That's what the fuss is all about, not just throwing two bucks at a video codec.