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The Ambiguity of "Open" and VP8 Vs. H.264

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the devil-in-the-details dept.

An anonymous reader writes "With all the talk about WebM and H.264, how the move might be a step backwards for openness, and Google's intention to add 'plugins' for IE9 and Safari to support WebM, this article attempts to clear misconceptions about the VP8 and H.264 codecs and how browsers render video. Firefox, Opera and Google rely on their own media frameworks to decode video, whereas IE9 and Safari will hand over video processing to the operating system (Windows Media Player or QuickTime), the need for the web to establish a baseline codec for encoding videos, and how the Flash player is proprietary, but implementation and usage remain royalty free."

78 of 493 comments (clear)

  1. Dear Editors by intellitech · · Score: 4, Informative

    Please make it easier to report/flag spammer accounts. That is all.

    --
    vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
  2. FIxed that for you. by basotl · · Score: 2

    "Firefox, Opera and Chrome" Since it appears that sentence was directed at browsers.

    --
    HTC EVO 4G LTE w/ CM 10.2 | NookColor w/ CM 10.2 | Samsung Epic 4G w/ CM 10.1
  3. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Desler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    H.264s development was open? I mean really that is just a bit of a reach.

    Far more so than VP8's development was until last May. At least with H.264 it was being developed between different companies and industry groups whereas VP8 was a closed-source, proprietary codec developed by a two-bit company that almost no consumer before Google's buy out had every heard of.

  4. What I care about by magamiako1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The only thing that concerns me about the web video format is that it needs to be unencumbered by royalties or other licensing. If I want to make a video, encode it, sell it, make ads off of a website, get 100 or 100,000 visitors, I should damn well be able to do that without having to pay a dime to anyone for the ability to make my own god damn videos--unless I optionally choose.

    By using h.264, you pretty much guarantee that *someone* *somewhere* is paying for it. Could you imagine if say, the "David After Dentist" kid had to pay tons and tons of royalties to the MPAA for a video they created simply because they used the h.264 container format? To even conceive such a thing is such bullshit that this should absolutely be a non-issue.

    Though this will never happen, the US government should claim eminent domain on all patents involving the h.264 technology, and then dare the large companies to make a move. After all, we're the ones with the guns.

    1. Re:What I care about by magamiako1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The point is the technology that is used on the internet should be royalty and licensing free. Period. If they want to be grinches about it, they can shove it up their ass.

      Let's think about what you're saying here. Just imagine this world.

      A) Pay per visitor for Ethernet
      B) Pay per visitor for IP
      C) Pay per visitor for TCP
      D) Pay per visitor for HTTP
      E) In addition to that, all vendors across all supply chains pay for rights to use these technologies. Cisco and Juniper pay royalty rights for the aforementioned technologies, end users pay for it in the devices. People and companies paying to run a business off of each of these technologies.

    2. Re:What I care about by magamiako1 · · Score: 2

      If VP8 became the dominant codec used on the internet, the hardware acceleration will follow very quickly.

    3. Re:What I care about by Kilrah_il · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You don't have the right to use a technology developed by someone else (e.g. H.264) without paying. It's nice if you have such an option and I understand why you would prefer it, but there is no inherent right to it.
      Arguments like yours are what sometimes weaken the FOSS movement. People who do not understand what FOSS is all about think it is full of whiny people who want to get everything for free. Guess what? You (me, everybody) don't deserve to get a video codec for free. There are some things that we deserve to get for free, but video codecs are not one of them.

      You could say that as a non-professional creator of videos (like the "David after Dentist" kid), you would be very happy to have a codec unencumbered by patents which you could use royalty-free, and thus you prefer WebM over H.264 due to this reason. You could even extend that to saying that you would support companies that push to more adoption of WebM throughout the Internet, due to the above reason. But "I should damn well..."? Sorry, it doesn't hold water.

      --
      Whenever in an argument, remember this.
    4. Re:What I care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      MPEG-LA has a real quandary here. Imagine, for a moment, that you're running the MPEG-LA business, and think about the devices that code and (more importantly) decode video. Your job is to create as many revenue streams as possible. In order to do this, you want your encoder used by all content producers, but more importantly, the content producers need an audience, so you want your *decoder* used by all consumers.

      Furthermore, you're smart enough to realize that you want royalties on every *hardware* device (think cellphones, DVD players, etc.) that is shipped with h.264, and perhaps every copy of OS X and Windows. You also realize that there is zero money to be made from including h.264 n Firefox/etc, because Firefox generates no revenue. In fact, you *want* h.264 used in Firefox, Chrome, etc., just because it increases the audience size. So you sit down to rewrite the royalty/licensing structures to specifically allow free browsers to implement h.264 for free, but then you stop. Why? Because you've just realized that these little hardware devices (or even DVD players, these days) can incorporate Firefox/Chrome/etc. into their software stack and thereby skirt any royalty structure you've just set up for your hardware devices.

      Maybe it's because I'm not a lawyer, but I can't conceive of any legal language that would allow MPEG-LA to distinguish between browser+h.264 on computer vs. browser+h.264 on cellphones/DVD players/whatever devices comes along in the future.

    5. Re:What I care about by magamiako1 · · Score: 2

      The difference is that taxes (should) go to the betterment of my society and my surroundings so that my family, friends, children, grandchildren, and people I don't know can have at least my life if not better than my life for their future.

      Paying taxes is a completely different beast from being "forced" to pay for the h.264 codec licensing fees.

      And when I say "forced", I'm implying that if every device on the market can *only* encode in h.264, and every player on the market can *only* play h.264, and modifying devices so they play other formats to *give me choice* is illegal, then you don't really have much of a "choice" do you not?

    6. Re:What I care about by magamiako1 · · Score: 2

      Last time I checked, this is a right granted in the US Constitution.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

      In this case, if the US government were to seize the h.264 property and providing just compensation (I would imagine would be somewhat less the cost of what we're spending on these wars) to the creators, then put it into the public use--then we very well can do it.

    7. Re:What I care about by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > You don't have the right to use a technology developed by someone else (e.g. H.264) without paying.

      Well then, put a fork in it because it's done. Google has the right idea.

      h264 should be officially killed as a web standard because it is payware.

      Find something else to standardize on or get the relevant patents nullified.

      The whole lot of them should be emminent domained over this sort of rambus nonsense.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    8. Re:What I care about by magamiako1 · · Score: 2

      MPEG-LA has pledged to "never" charge for serving "free of charge" content over the web right now. That doesn't mean they're not going to charge for it in the future, they revisit the question over and over.

      But the question comes down to what constitutes as "free view" over the web? If you look at major hits such as RayWilliamJohnson, people like that "profit" off of making videos on the internet. He's got t-shirt deals that now have his stuff being sold in Hot Topic stores across the country. He's a pretty big Youtube phenomenon as a result of videos being posted on the internet "for free".

      You're right that everything "costs money" and some things have direct and indirect costs. The difference is that to ensure the internet remains open and competitive for everyone, we need to make sure that as much driving force behind the technology standards used by the vast majority of it are for the public good.

      In layman's terms, we call what the MPEG-LA doing as a "bait and switch".

    9. Re:What I care about by cgenman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think you missed the part where he said "unless I optionally choose." When someone buys a camera, and buys a software system that supports it, they expect that they own the chain and what they create with it. Since we're talking about the standardization of the tag in HTML 5 to H.264, we are talking about essentially forcing people into a royalty-based production chain. Already, there is the problem of H.264 being standard on many video cameras, and requiring undisclosed (at the time of purchase) royalty payments for wedding videographers, garage music video makers, and other semi-pro video producers.

      It's an unexpected tax. If we're creating a web standard for an open and widely available internet, it should also be as unexpected-tax free as possible.

      --
      The ______ Agenda
    10. Re:What I care about by debrain · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You don't have the right to use a technology developed by someone else (e.g. H.264) without paying. It's nice if you have such an option and I understand why you would prefer it, but there is no inherent right to it.
      Arguments like yours are what sometimes weaken the FOSS movement. People who do not understand what FOSS is all about think it is full of whiny people who want to get everything for free. Guess what? You (me, everybody) don't deserve to get a video codec for free. There are some things that we deserve to get for free, but video codecs are not one of them.

      Sir —

      To preface, I suggest you may wish to read Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity, which I believe supports the following statements.

      With respect, your statements that one does not have an inherent right to use a technology as the starting point for an analysis is not correct, from a legal and policy perspective, in a free and democratic society.

      In a free culture everyone has an inherent right to do anything, subject to the restrictions imposed and enforced by way of the rule of law. "Anything" includes using video codecs. This is the starting point of the analysis of rights in a free society.

      In the case of video codecs, namely source code and executable binaries, an inherent right granting anyone use over it may be limited by intellectual property laws that define, identify, and restrict the use of certain creations under threat of civil and criminal penalty, on the basis that society deems these creations to be of value and therefore encourages this creation by granting over them a limited monopoly that can be traded for compensation. The types of intellectual properties typically recognized is short: copyright, trademark, patent and trade secrets. Any and all of these may apply to an a video codec, circumstances depending.

      In general, patents and copyright are going to be the protections most relied upon to restrict a video codec from the inherent right to free usage. These are temporary protections, meaning that the law reverts to the inherent state of a free right to usage after the applicable copyrights and patents have expired.

      All to say, everyone has an inherent right to use the intellectual creations of others, such as video codes. There may be temporary limitations on that inherent right of free use, but these limitations are neither inherent to nor permanent over the intellectual creation. They are, rather, artificial impositions made by the rule of law in an effort to advance economic and social benefits.

      While this may come across as pedantic, and I'm not endorsing the grandparent post, I feel is important to understand the analysis that underlies this particular question of rights and freedoms, and in particular the purpose of those protections – a consideration often distant from the argument.

      Thank you for the opportunity to make this response.

    11. Re:What I care about by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You don't have the right to use a technology developed by someone else (e.g. H.264) without paying. It's nice if you have such an option and I understand why you would prefer it, but there is no inherent right to it.

      No, actually, it is the other way around: there is no inherent right to demand payment for your ideas. Patents are nothing more than a legal construct designed to encourage innovation, and patents expire for that very reason: they are artificial and deprive people of the natural right to implement what they know (i.e. the patented the material, which they may read). Furthermore, mathematics cannot be patented, and the legal basis for software patents (which amount to patents on mathematics, like it or not) is extremely shaky, and yes, you do have a right to use someone's mathematical discoveries without paying them (unless they call it an algorithm and get a patent on it, in which case you cannot exercise your right for 20 years).

      Seriously, this bizarre notion that you have a natural right to forbid other people from using your ideas needs to be dropped. Patents are not a natural right; if they were, they could not expire, any more than your rights to live or speak freely can expire.

      --
      Palm trees and 8
    12. Re:What I care about by Kilrah_il · · Score: 2

      Sir,
      Thank you very much for your enlightening response. I do not think your point was pedantic, and I very much enjoyed reading what you bothered to write.
      I agree that in a way, I have mixed up the concepts. Yes, we have a right to do whatever we want, with those liberties restricted by laws enacted by our ruling body (be it a dictatorship, an elected congress or whatnot).
      Perhaps my opinion should have been better phrased this way: By joining a society (e.g. USA), we have agreed to relinquish several rights, one of them is the use of technologies which have been given legal protection, whether by copyright or patents. We may not agree about the fairness of those laws, but while they are in force, we must abide by them.

      Again thank you for you insightful reply, and I hope the Gods of Moderation will mod you correctly.

      --
      Whenever in an argument, remember this.
  5. Re:Ambiguity by Desler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    H.264 is closed. VP8 is open.

    How is H.264 closed? The spec is available for any one to buy and implement. If H.264 is "closed" than so can be said for the vast majority of ISO standards.

  6. Shocking: Apple and MS are doing the right thing by Dynedain · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's frustrating that only the OS-provided solutions (Safari and IE) are doing this right by handing it off to the OS. The notion that your browser needs to reimplement everything, including video rendering, is what leads to the bloatware we have today. The whole point of having an OS is to have a common framework and API layer that all applications hosted on it can access. Instead, Firefox, Chrome and Opera are all re-developing their own video rendering, for each platform they exist on, AND each one needs to write its own video-card accelerator layers for each platform it exists on.

    --
    I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
  7. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by gbjbaanb · · Score: 3, Informative

    Unfortunately, that means you don't get H.264 on Linux as its a proprietary codec that requires some form of (paid) licencing.

    I mean, Firefox doesn't support H.264, but Microsoft will happily provide you with the capability of playing H.264 in firefox using a driver that leverages the OS capability... as long as you're running it on Windows.

    I think you're partly right though, all the codecs should be implemented as drivers (or similar) and then you are technically using the OS-provided capability, once the correct codec is installed. But its not like the OS is providing the drivers directly, you'll haver to go get them from somewhere. As WebM is free, codecs for it will be freely available for all OSs.

    I guess the problem comes for those OSs that are locked down, but then you'er always on to a loser - if Apple only supports H.264 on iPhone and Microsoft only supports (say) H.265 on WP7, and neither allows you to upgrade the video support, then you will never get a video to play universally.

    At least there's no excuse for not supporting WebM by all manufacturers, and any who try to give one will quickly be found out by consumers.

    As an analogy - look at the non-free 'internets', Microsoft tried to lock you into MSN, and AOL tried similarly. Look where they are now.

  8. Re:Ambiguity by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If H.264 is "closed" than so can be said for the vast majority of ISO standards.

    Not sure if it's a vast majority, but a lot of ISO standards are closed. Even so closed that you cannot read them without paying a shitload of money.

  9. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Desler · · Score: 2

    Microsoft only supports (say) H.265 on WP7, and neither allows you to upgrade the video support, then you will never get a video to play universally.

    Wrong. IE9 natively supports only H.264 but will support playing back videos using other codecs by using the OS multimedia framework and installed codecs. This will allow it to play VP8, Theora, etc.

  10. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Really? Can you contribute code to H.264? Can you use the spec in your own software and publish it with out a large amount of jumping through hoops?
    Really H.264 may have been public but I would not call it open. WebM is now what I would consider to be open as is Theora and Dirac http://diracvideo.org/ .
    So no I do not feel that H.254 meets the definition of open as far as development goes.
    So yes it really is a bit of a reach IMHO.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  11. Re:Ambiguity by Desler · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's not free for anyone to buy and implement.

    So then ODF or C++ are not "open" either, right? One has to pay to get a copy of the spec for those technologies. Secondly, you can freely implement H.264 and release it in source form. MPEGLA has applied an exemption to source code for quite some time which is why, for example, the XviD or x264 people face no problems.

    Secondly, even if you are distrbuting binary encoders/decoders you don't pay anything until you hit about 50,000 units shipped.

    I can't for example buy and implement it in my app which is released under gpl

    And yet there are plenty of apps released as GPL using the GPLed x264 encoder.

    And just the thought that I should have to pay each time I publish a video, just because it is encoded with h.264 is insane**.

    If you are streaming videos for free you have never paid royalties, and even if you are doing so for pay you have a pretty big threshold to hit before you even start paying royalties.

    **This may have been postponed a few years for most people, but still.

    Actually back in August the MPEGLA said they will NEVER charge royalties for freely streamed H.264 videos.

  12. Open Standards != Open Source by mbone · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are open standards, and open source, and they are not the same. The IETF, for example (subject to yesterdays Birthday Article) deals with open standards. Linux, by contrast, is open source.

    An open standard means that no one party controls the generation of the standard, and that the standard is openly available. Generally, open standards are developed by SDOs (Standards Defining Organizations, such as the IETF or the W3C). As a general rule "anyone" can participate in their creation (but this may require that you or your company be a member of some organization or have some other qualifications). Many open standards have patent encumbrances. Typically, SDOs seek RAND (Reasonable and NonDiscriminatory) licensing terms; some even require a particular patent licensing policy as a condition for participation. The IETF, however, requires disclosure and seeks, but does not strictly require, RAND terms. While an open standard may have some code associated with it, typically the entire point of an open standard is to allow you to go off and write your own code, generally under whatever code license you want. This is how the Internet was developed.

    Open source means that the source is licensed by GPL or BSD> or some similar licensing. Now, generally open source means that the code is available, but in practice many open source projects are more or less closed to outside participation, and they frequently do not provide documentation sufficient to replicate what they are doing.

    1. Re:Open Standards != Open Source by ceeam · · Score: 2

      And generally speaking Open Standards are even more important than Open Source. Especially in the long run.

    2. Re:Open Standards != Open Source by spinkham · · Score: 2

      Most web server software has always been gratis.

      The first major web server was the public domain httpd by NCSA.

      It was later supplanted by apache, which is a play on words of the patches layered on top of httpd.

      http://httpd.apache.org/ABOUT_APACHE.html

      According to Wikipedia:

      Since April 1996 Apache has been the most popular HTTP server software in use.

      Before April 1996, that title belonged to NCSA httpd.

      Mosiac and lynx were free and available before Netscape. Even IE and IIS were gratis after a fashion, if you used Windows (which most did) they were bundled with the OS. If you didn't use Windows, you couldn't use IE or IIS anyway, and there were free browsers for other systems.

      If you look at a time line of web browsers, you will see there was never a time when there weren't multiple, competing gratis browsers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_web_browsers

      Yes, there were a few years when Mozilla(the old pay version) and IE (which is only sort of gratis) dominated as the best browsers, but there were always other options.

      The innovation on the server side is just as if not more important to the growth of the ecosystem, and for all the history that matters, web servers have been gratis.

      The web was NOT built on commercial software. There was a very limited time when commercial, non graits software dominated desktop graphical viewing software, but that was a limited subset of the ecosystem, after the creation of the system, and only lasted for a very short period of time.

      H.264 patents expire 2028. There has never been a royalty baring standard that has survived on the web for that amount of time, and to allow one now will limit innovation on the web for years to come.

      --
      Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
  13. Re:Ambiguity by Americano · · Score: 3, Insightful

    H.264 is an open standard, governed by standards bodies (ISO & ITU). It is not, however, a 'free' standard, in either the "beer" or "freedom" sense.

    VP8 is a proprietary standard, governed by Google, and developed by a single company. It is, allegedly, a 'free' standard in both the beer and freedom sense - and it's worth noting that there are some concerns as to whether or not this standard would survive an IP infringement claim, making it less "free" than we're asked to assume.

    You're right, the definitions are quite clear. I'm just not sure why you seem to think it's opposite day when labelling H.264 as closed and VP8 as open. Until Google submits VP8 to ISO or some other standards body, it's not an "open" standard, it's a "Google says it's cool so I guess that's what we should do," standard. It would seem that you're conflating "royalty-free" with "open."

  14. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Desler · · Score: 4, Informative

    Really?

    Yes, really. Before Google opened the code in May of last year, On2 was developing VP8 as a closed-source proprietary codec since 2008. H.264 on the other hand was developed by the ISO standards board and a whole host of companies in it's development. Like all ISO standards one could get access to the full spec. Such a thing was impossible for the first 2.5 years of VP8's life.

    Really H.264 may have been public but I would not call it open.

    Can you use the spec in your own software and publish it with out a large amount of jumping through hoops?

    Sure, x264 developers have been doing so for the better part of 6 years.

    It's no less open than most of the other standards which are called "open".

    So no I do not feel that H.254 meets the definition of open as far as development goes.

    And neither was VP8 until 7 months ago when it was a completely closed-source codec.

  15. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "And neither was VP8 until 7 months ago when it was a completely closed-source codec."
    Well then this post would have been right 7 months ago. But that was seven months ago and this is now.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  16. Re:Shocking: Apple and MS are doing the right thin by mccalli · · Score: 5, Informative

    So the Right Thing is to force everyone to buy an OS from Microsoft or Apple? Do you know there are some crazy people developing free operating systems? And even using them! How dare they ask for a royalty free baseline codec for encoding video for the web?

    You're missing what the GP said - no-one's suggesting forcing anyone to buy an OS, the suggestion is to hand off video playback to the OS. In this case, the right thing to do would be to release it to a video decoding layer for Linux and then call it from Firefox/Chrome.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  17. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Desler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And that's why I said:

    Far more so than VP8's development was until last May

    Secondly, H.264 is no more "closed" than the supposed "open" standards such as ISO C++ with statements like:

    Can you contribute code to H.264?

    To turn it around, can YOU contribute to the C++ ISO standard? Highly unlikely just like it's highly unlikely that most people could contribute to the H.264 ISO standard. So by this logic C++ is also a "closed" standard, no?

  18. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Carewolf · · Score: 2

    Far more so than VP8's development

    It is just another example of doublespeak. You are redefining words but focusing on an irrelevant part of the definition.

    You might as well argue that Monarchy is more open than Democracy, because how the "election" is made is more open in how public and predicable it is, everyone can access the result in advance, where the the democratic process is done in secret in small boxes and is unpredictable.

    While you could technically be right, you are still distorting the truth, and that, to me, is bad part of lying.

  19. Re:Ambiguity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    OpenDocument Specification: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office#odf11

  20. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Desler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't think it stands up to any of the FOSS definitions of "open".

    And the same could be said about the C++ and ODF standards yet those are called "open" standards by the same people talking about how H.264 is "closed".

    VP8 - maybe it wasn't open 7 months ago, but it is now.

    Is it really? Can any individual really have any meaningful say in the direction of how the VP8 codec is developed unless you work at Google? Sure they've given the source out but you'll have no more say in how the spec develops than you would for the H.264 standard.

  21. Re:Shocking: Apple and MS are doing the right thin by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A good point here - Google has a lot of "green" initiatives (reduced-power computing, huge solar cell farms on their roof, etc.)

    This approach is NOT a "green" approach - a "green" approach is one that makes use of the large amount of hardware acceleration infrastructure now deployed for the existing standard codecs.

    WebM/VP8 will force a non-accelerated CPU-only rendering path on ALL existing hardware. This eats power compared to hardware acceleration. (Look at how well most Android devices handle H.264 thanks to hardware accelerated decoding.)

    Google is being hypocritical and inconsistent here. Great summary at http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions - Key here is, HTML5 was supposed to at least partially break Adobe's stranglehold on the web by moving some content away from Flash. Google just killed any hope of that - They talk about supporting open codecs, but they still bundle Adobe Flash (which includes H.264 support) with Chrome?

    As a result of this mess, content providers are starting to shy away from HTML5 and stick with what "just works" (for the most part) - SmugMug was starting to consider HTML5, but Google's latest decision has them moving back to Flash.

    --
    retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  22. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Desler · · Score: 2

    It is just another example of doublespeak. You are redefining words but focusing on an irrelevant part of the definition.

    I'm not redefining anything. You've just quote mined my post to attack it. Up until Google open source VP8 it was a proprietary, closed sourced standard. H.264 was an "open" ISO standard in the same vein as how C++ is an "open" ISO standard.

    While you could technically be right, you are still distorting the truth, and that, to me, is bad part of lying.

    What part of the truth am I distorting? H.264 was developed during the ISO process by the input of lots of companies and industry people and had an openly published spec. VP8 had no public spec, was completely closed source and had all development driven by one company. As I said, until 7 months ago the former, H.264, was far more "open" than VP8 ever was until May of last year.

  23. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Can you contribute code to H.264?

    The question does not make sense. It's like asking 'can you contribute code to HTML?' H.264 is a standard, not an implementation. The license of various implementations is independent of the way in which the standard was developed.

    H.264 was developed jointly the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). These groups solicited contributions from anyone. If you wanted to contribute something to the spec, you could. There was a lot of political stuff as well, with a few things being added to the spec just so that companies could get one of their patents in.

    In contrast, VP8 was developed in private by On2 and dumped on the public by Google. The x.264 developers raised some issues with the spec, but were told that the format was frozen and would not be modified. Theora and Dirac are both frozen now, but they had an open development process and modified the bitstream format several times based on feedback from external groups.

    So, when you are talking about the process for developing the spec, Theora, Dirac, and H.264 were all open. When you are talking about using the spec, Theora, Dirac, and VP8 are all open.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  24. User codecs vs. system-wide codecs by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In this case, the right thing to do would be to release it to a video decoding layer for Linux

    Which would end up supporting only MPEG-1, Theora, and VP8 given the patent policies of many GNU/Linux distributors. And for each operating system, how should the browser direct the user to find and install appropriate codecs? Do video decoding layers for Linux even support codecs installed by one user for that user as opposed to codecs installed by root for all users? Most of the tutorials I found were for .deb installation on Ubuntu, which is always system-wide.

    1. Re:User codecs vs. system-wide codecs by jedidiah · · Score: 2

      > Do video decoding layers for Linux even support codecs installed by one user
      > for that user as opposed to codecs installed by root for all users?

      Why does it matter? It "just works".

      That's why as an Ubuntu user I see the whining about codec "chaos" to be such a joke. The video player is just like a web browser when it comes to plugins.

      Funnier still is the fact that "simple and easy" plugin management for web browsers on the other platforms has existed pretty much forever.

      So the problem of "how do I play this" should really be a total non issue.

      If Apple users are having fits over an MPEG2 or divx file then that is a failure of Apple, not a genuine technology issue.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  25. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Desler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thank you. Someone finally understands what I'm saying. The problem is that so many other standards that work in the exact same way that H.264 did are referred to as "open" yet H.264 is demonized as being "closed" despite there being little to no difference in the way both standards were developed.

  26. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Carewolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But that is in the past, by focusing on it now, you are making it look like (in fact making the argument) that H.264 is more open, through focus on and old irrelevant fact, but ignoring another definition of the word open where WebM is much more open than H.264 will ever be.

    Let's take this:
    * According to one aspect H.264 was once more open, but this aspect applies to the past.
    * According to another aspect WebM is much more open, and this applies today.

    I am not saying you are wrong, you are in fact right, but you are distorting the debate through pedantic and irrelevant details.

    Now you didn't start this doublespeak, but I can only think the person who did, was either doing so deliberately or is in serious denial.

  27. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by m50d · · Score: 3, Informative

    Even if you had a time machine, you still couldn't contribute anything to the VP8 "standard" - it was developed entirely by that single company, and now the bitstream has been fixed and google are not accepting improvements or even obvious bugfixes. Wheras h264 was a real ISO standard - everyone was welcome to speak (though of course not necessarily be listened to) in the standardization discussions, and every country got to vote.

    --
    I am trolling
  28. Re:Ambiguity by wile_e8 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Secondly, even if you are distrbuting binary encoders/decoders you don't pay anything until you hit about 50,000 units shipped.

    This is the problem with x264. If x264 becomes the de facto standard, two guys in a garage will never be able to develop their own browser that competes with all the current market leaders, because the second it starts to gain widespread acceptance it becomes subject to royalty fees that two guys in a garage will never be able to afford. The x264 standard may be open, but you can't do anything useful with that standard without paying up.

  29. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Nemyst · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We are talking about now, though. I agree that H.264 is an open standard and VP8 was a closed one, but WebM is an open standard now and this is what should really matter at this point.

    The critical difference between the two formats now is that one is royalty free and one is temporarily royalty free - in other words, we have no idea how H.264 could evolve. Maybe it'll stay royalty free forever, which would make it an interesting alternative. Maybe it will not, though, and that could be a potential disaster for video on the web - or just a thorn in the side of Google and other big video sites.

    The big debate therefore is: do we stay with a widely adopted, high performance format that may behave like a Damocles sword, or do we switch now for what is currently an inferior but safer alternative?

  30. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The C++ standard I can make a compiler for without paying anyone. It is not a burden to entry like h.264 is.

    The ISO stopped meaning anything the minute they approved the MS "open" formats.

  31. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Desler · · Score: 2

    But that is in the past, by focusing on it now, you are making it look like (in fact making the argument) that H.264 is more open,

    In many ways it still is. H.264 is an ISO standard in which more than one company has say in how the spec is managed. VP8 is still highly controlled by Google.

    through focus on and old irrelevant fact, but ignoring another definition of the word open where WebM is much more open than H.264 will ever be.

    It's not all that irrelevant since if one is to call H.264 "closed" by the very same standard one has to call C++ "closed" as well.

    * According to one aspect H.264 was once more open, but this aspect applies to the past.

    No, H.264 is still an open ISO standard. This has not changed.

    * According to another aspect WebM is much more open, and this applies today.

    It's more "open" with respects to patents, but the development is still highly centralized within Google so in many cases it is still far more "closed".

    I am not saying you are wrong, you are in fact right, but you are distorting the debate through pedantic and irrelevant details.

    I'm not distorting anything. I'm pointing out the fact that if you call H.264 a "closed" standard than you have to call pretty much any other standard that is being held up as "open" as closed as well.

  32. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by HermMunster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He was being rhetorical when he asked "really?".

    I think h.264 has done a great job for the web. It's provided us with high quality video on demand. It's helped ensure our hardware also has high quality video.

    VP8 on the other hand, regardless of its' roots is meant to help break a lock on the industry, a lock that h.264 has gained. It's a lock that must be broken. Having choice is really all that matters even if it sets things back once in a while. Often times industries take 2 steps forward and 1 step back.

    Technically, this is not a huge change. It isn't an instant change. If the industry can implement this in the web and other software products, as well as hardware, then so be it. If both need to be supported then so be it. It's not unheard of and not altogether uncommon.

    The goal is to give choice and to ensure that the consumer isn't locked into one product, that, in being so, denies them choice and increases their costs.

    So, so be it. Nothing we do here in debate will change the reality of the situation. Google's made a choice that it feels is best to ensure that things are open and inexpensive.

    Time to move forward.

    --
    You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
  33. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by deathguppie · · Score: 2

    Far more so than VP8's development was until last May. At least with H.264 it was being developed between different companies and industry groups whereas VP8 was a closed-source, proprietary codec developed by a two-bit company that almost no consumer before Google's buy out had every heard of.

    I beg to differ.. On2 Technologies was at the very least an 8bit company and probably even a 16 and 32 bit company at times.. thank you very much..

    --
    once more into the breach
  34. Re:Shocking: Apple and MS are doing the right thin by FreonTrip · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Um, x264 is released under the GPL, and I've seen it included in recent Linux distributions.

  35. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by aristotle-dude · · Score: 2

    Really? Can you contribute code to H.264?

    H.264 is a standard, not a specific code base. You are free to contribute code to any implementation of that standard which accepts code contributions.

    Can you use the spec in your own software and publish it with out a large amount of jumping through hoops?

    Sure, you just have to pay a license fee. No hoop jumping required.

    Really H.264 may have been public but I would not call it open.

    Open source software is not necessarily free. In the same way, you are free to implement H264 but you have to pay a license. This is really no different than the requirement of the GPL to publish source code of any changes you make to a GPL'ed codebase. You pay back in the form of source code rather than a fee and that source is a product of your efforts and time (time == money).

    WebM is now what I would consider to be open as is Theora and Dirac http://diracvideo.org/.

    I would consider WebM to now be open source but that does not necessarily make it an open standard. Where is the specification? Do I have to use the GPL'ed code base in order to implement it or use clean room techniques to reverse engineer a spec.

    So no I do not feel that H.254 meets the definition of open as far as development goes.
    So yes it really is a bit of a reach IMHO.

    Well, I don't consider WebM to be open as far as a standard goes and there is no hardware support for it. For end users, WebM is seen as yet another proprietary format that no hardware or commercial software supports.

    --
    Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
  36. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Fiduciary · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would say the difference between them is patent encumbrance. Sure you can use h.264 if you're a smelly basement dwelling open source fanatic, but commercial usage is limited by patent licensing and royalties.

  37. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by hicham · · Score: 2

    Really? Can you contribute code to H.264?

    Can you contribute code to IEEE802.3? E.164?

    Really H.264 may have been public but I would not call it open. ... So no I do not feel that H.254 meets the definition of open as far as development goes.

    It was open in the sense that the major implementers and users collaborated under ISO stewardship to create it. Basically, everybody that mattered had a chance to collaborate. The fact that nobody came knocking on every basement-dwelling opensource evangelist's door asking "hey dude, wanna create a new video format? or do you just wanna rewrite a networking stack or reinvent the wheel or something?" does not make the process any more closed. Had it not been Google and pie-in-the-sky HTML5 guys creating a buzz over it, none of you dweebs would be the wiser. Nobody would even care, apart from the ones that have a video-based business to conduct (hey, what a coincidence - the ones that participated in the ISO process!). But now that sugar-daddy Google is troubled, every binary-faced "evangelist" feels the need to jump in and start fencing away "teh attakers of teh 0pen g00gle" not even understanding what it takes to create stuff like this. I mean, before sugardaddy released VP8+Vorbis+Matroska as gSpot..err...webm, everybody was howling about theora and its next incomplete version ptlaragtrewloa which was oh-that-great and should be standardized for ever and ever. Where is all this theora-praising now?

  38. Re:Shocking: Apple and MS are doing the right thin by Rockoon · · Score: 2

    Why are you lying?

    FFMPeg is GPL
    x264 is also GPL

    Do I need to go on and list a few more, or is two enough to snub your ignorance?

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  39. Re:Doesn't matter what Google chooses... by amliebsch · · Score: 2

    What does it give you? A formalized and participatory process for advancement and further development of the specification.

    --
    If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
  40. Re:Ambiguity by Americano · · Score: 2

    No, they are not both "open standards". That term means something. H.264 is an open standard - it went through the standardization process, with all the feedback solicitation and ratification that that implies. VP8 is a "proprietary standard" that was developed by one company, and then dumped into the public domain by another.

    I would think that readers of a site that roundly derided Microsoft's OOXML "standard" would understand the difference between an "open standard" and a "proprietary standard that's been dropped into the public domain but which has seen no significant attempts at standardization," but then, I guess when Google gets involved, all logic goes out the window.

  41. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by CastrTroy · · Score: 2

    I think the only problem with H.264 is that I even though I can access the open spec, I can't go and write my own encoder/decoder and sell it without paying royalties to someone. The same can't be said for HTML, C++ and all the other examples mentioned in the comments. Sure, there are some open source implementation of H.264, but they are either illegal (in some jurisdictions), or in a legal grey area, depending on who you talk to. I personally would prefer to be using H.264, because it is a superior format. Two things could happen. A better (completely) open source video format comes out which will replace H.264, and I as well as everyone else will gladly switch. Or, a better format never arises (because nobody finds a better algorithm), and we are still using H.264 when the patents run out, in which case it's completely open anyway.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  42. Re:Ambiguity by deathguppie · · Score: 2

    Secondly, even if you are distrbuting binary encoders/decoders you don't pay anything until you hit about 50,000 units shipped.

    That pretty much makes the x.264 decoder illegal.

    No one is saying that you can't pay as much money as you want to use a specific video codec. All we are saying is that if I want to do an html5 cloud based video app (editing encoding etc.) or website for my business or for the general public, then I should be able to use the basic tag without having to worry about getting the pants sued off me.

    Actually back in August the MPEGLA said they will NEVER charge royalties for freely streamed H.264 videos.

    Actually back in August they also announced that with the exception of free end user viewing all other licensing can change every 5 years. That means they could stick everyone for massive licensing costs when they feel they have enough users invested to force people to pay it.

    --
    once more into the breach
  43. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Kalriath · · Score: 2, Informative

    The critical difference between the two formats now is that one is royalty free and one is temporarily royalty free - in other words, we have no idea how H.264 could evolve. Maybe it'll stay royalty free forever, which would make it an interesting alternative. Maybe it will not, though, and that could be a potential disaster for video on the web - or just a thorn in the side of Google and other big video sites.

    The problem, of course, is we don't know whether VP8 will stay royalty free either with the patent threats hanging over it. And with Google refusing to indemnify users of the spec, and refusing to take legal action to get a legal opinion (from a court - what are those called?) that it violates no patents, one can't be sure whether MPEG-LA's rumbling has any basis in fact.

    --
    For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
  44. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by segedunum · · Score: 2

    Secondly, H.264 is no more "closed" than the supposed "open" standards such as ISO C++ with statements like:

    I fail to understand the comparison, unless my C++ program is going to be royalty encumbered because I've used it?

    I can't believe people are being this thick after all the dicussion on the matter.

  45. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Xtifr · · Score: 2

    And the same could be said about the C++ and ODF standards yet those are called "open" standards by the same people talking about how H.264 is "closed".

    That's because those standards aren't patent-encumbered. I mean, duh!

    Is it really? Can any individual really have any meaningful say in the direction of how the VP8 codec is developed unless you work at Google?

    Probably. Why not? You might as well complain that Apache is under the control of the Apache Foundation or GCC is under the control of the Free Software Foundation. Or X11 under the control of Xfree86--oh wait.... Try contributing to Linux without the help and stewardship of the current maintainers and see how far you get.

    At the moment, everyone (including, e.g. Debian) uses Google's implementation, but if Google stumbles, there's absolutely nothing stopping the rest of the world from continuing with their own fork, as with EGCS (when the FSF stumbled) or Xorg (when XFree86 stumbled).

  46. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Nyeerrmm · · Score: 2

    Yes, distribute it by source or distribute it outside the US.

    H.264 is an open standard, but patent-encumbered (different things). If you sidestep the patent issue the concerns disappear, and you're free to use it, comfortable in the fact that the definition is well-defined, stable, and supported by players across the industry. This is what open standards imply, not that it's royalty free.

    Really we need something that is both open (in the standards sense) and royalty free. Sadly, at present we are presented with a choice between one or the other.

  47. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by rtfa-troll · · Score: 2

    The fact that you don't like OOXML [..] doesn't make it not open.

    Nor does the fact that it was written in English, nor the fact that it is sometimes printed on white paper. Why bother mentioning these things?

    What makes it not open is that

    • nobody has implemented it yet and it's really not clear if impementing it is possible.
    • the main body of work for OOXML, the output of MS Word, is incompatible with the standard version.
    • the standardization body seems to have been openly corrupt and stuffed with single vendor supporting companies
    • it contains terms like "do this as it is done in MS word '95" which give no detailed implementation.
    • etc.. the details have been vastly documented if you just look on google.

    Looking at H.264 it's not as bad as OOXML in many ways, but the patent problem is much worse. It badly needs to die.

    --
    =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
  48. Re:Shocking: Apple and MS are doing the right thin by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why are you lying?

    FFMPeg is GPL
    x264 is also GPL

    Do I need to go on and list a few more, or is two enough to snub your ignorance?

    He's not lying, he's just over-simplfying.
    So far, software patents have not been legally applied to source code because source code has been clearly defined as "speech" as it is a means for people to express ideas.
    So it is legal to write and distribute source code.
    But, in most countries with software patents, it is illegal to actually use a binary built from that source code.
    Its just the compiling it yourself or downloading it from a country without software patents makes it pretty much impossible to get caught.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  49. Re:kapach by HermMunster · · Score: 2

    Breaking that lock is very important. It means a lot. It's a must. H.264 will survive. VP8 will be a cost effective alternative. Nothing keeps it from being incorporated into hardware.

    Google won't lock us in with their alternative. When you have no choice you will be locked. when you have a choice it is hard to lock. But the alternative must be viable and gain enough market penetration to make a difference (and the pre-existing lock can't be so entrenched that no one can compete with it).

    --
    You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
  50. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by narrowhouse · · Score: 2

    Can you implement the H.264 spec in hardware or software and sell the result without paying fees or being a member of a license pool? Because I think you can use C++ or ODF without additional requirements/costs. Is a spec open if you can't use it without doing something beside implementing the spec correctly?

    --


    Insert pithy comment here.
  51. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Dahamma · · Score: 5, Informative

    You are confusing the standards with their implementations.

    All of these standards are now frozen, so no one can contribute to them. H.264 was open during its design, and VP8 was closed (and suggestions for improvement were ignored when the spec and reference implementation was made available). Since they are both frozen, I'd say H.264 spec was and is more open *as a standard*.

    Now, as far as implementations go, it's a different story (though still not as cut and dried as people claim). VP8/WebM is now open source, great And x264 is a GPL implementation of H.264, so it is just as "open". The difference all comes down to licensing - a number of patents are required to implement the H.264 standard, so anyone who implements it and wants to use it in a country that recognizes those patents has to pay licensing fees or risk being sued.

    That last bit definitely makes VP8 more attractive to people who don't want to pay license fees. So, call it "more expensive to use", "patent encumbered", or some other more descriptive term. But just throwing around the vague concept of "open" without the real context doesn't help the discussion...

  52. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by msauve · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Likewise, there's no assurance that if you license H.264, you won't have to pay additional patent royalties in the future. And, you get no patent indemnification from MPEG-LA, either. Would you rather pay to take a risk, or not pay to take a risk?

    Q: Are all AVC essential patents included?
    A: No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential patent. The purpose of the License is to offer a convenient licensing alternative to everyone on the same terms and to include as much essential intellectual property as possible for their convenience. Participation in the License is voluntary on the part of essential patent holders, however.

    - AVC/H.264 FAQ

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  53. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by rtfa-troll · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The problem, of course, is we don't know whether VP8 will stay royalty free either with the patent threats hanging over it.

    Which specific patent threats? I'm not talking bullshit random "there might be a patent threat somewhere hiding under the wardrobe" patent threats. I'm talking threats with a patent number and a "you are infringing, pay up or else" letter attached to them.

    Let me make a patent "threat". There might be a secret H.264 patent that which I might have heard of which which will maybe suddenly come to life next year. If you don't pay me a million Euros for every device you have I might not use my (possibly existing or possibly not existing) influence to divert this threat that may (or may not) appear later.

    Anybody can do that. If you fail to specifically notify someone who has put a public implementation out for free, what they have done wrong you aren't fulfilling your duties as a patent holder wanting to collect royalties.

    And with Google refusing to indemnify users of the spec, and refusing to take legal action to get a legal opinion (from a court - what are those called?) that it violates no patents, one can't be sure whether MPEG-LA's rumbling has any basis in fact.

    Strangely enough the MPEG-LA also provides no indemnification and has failed to "legal action to get a legal opinion". What Google provides, for free, is a license for all patents known to be used in the WebM standard, exactly the same as the MPEG-LA charges for.

    What is interesting is; what is the source for your ideas? Where did you even get the idea that Google is "refusing to take legal action"? It's impossible to prove a negative and it's impossible to take action against widespread innuenduo. No judge will grant an open statement that "no patents are infringed". At best they could act to say "patent number XYZ was not infringed. You should look over that source agan and see if it's not trying to mislead you over a bunch of other things.

    --
    =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
  54. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by BZ · · Score: 2

    > Yes, distribute it by source or distribute it outside the US.

    It's not quite that simple. You have to be not just outside the US, but outside most of Europe, a good bit of East Asia, outside North America period, and outside Australia. See http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/bz/archives/020400.html

    It could probably be done, but it would take some work.

  55. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by Lehk228 · · Score: 2

    h.264 is open as in "open your damn wallet"

    --
    Snowden and Manning are heroes.
  56. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But with WebM VS H.264 everyone seems to be happily ignoring the elephant in the room...WebM sucks. I'm sorry, but it does. You are pretty much gonna have to toss every mobile device or watch the battery go dead so fast you might as well just drag a very long extension cord with you and call that mobile. H.264 hardware acceleration is built into just about EVERYTHING, desktops, laptops, pads, phones, TVs, PMPs, etc. Are we gonna throw every single one of those devices out now? Wow that will do wonders for the environment.

    The facts are these: Even if everyone started work right this second you are probably looking at around 2 years before WebM support trickles down to the chips in our everyday devices. And of course every device already out built in the last four years or so, plus everything coming down the pipe for the 2 years it will take to add support for WebM? They will all run H.264 great and WebM like ass. So I really hate to burst Google's bubble but it's a little too little, a little too late when it comes to WebM. Like Vorbis by the time it got to the party the world had decided on something else (in that case a likewise encumbered MP3) but you know what? It is only geeks and FOSS advocates that give a flying crap about "free as in freedom man, yeah!" and the rest of the world just throws a few pennies to MPEG-LA or whomever and doesn't give a fuck.

    So if Google wants to pull a MSFT and shoot itself in the foot, go right ahead! it still won't make flash or H.264 go anywhere, as a matter of fact I predict this will further entrench flash as one will only have to leave a "raw" H.264 file for iDevice users and drop the same file in a flash container for everybody else, thus making their lives easier. What Google is attempting is to make another tower of Babble like we had with RMV VS WMV VS QT back in the 90s, but the common man just isn't gonna put up with that shit anymore. If Youtube doesn't work on their iDevice or it sucks their new Droid deader than Dixie when they use it? Well screw Youtube then, it isn't like there aren't a bazillion sites where they can see funny cat videos out there and they sure as hell ain't giving up their new iShiny toys for stupid Youtube clips, now are they?

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  57. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by vijayiyer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yet, oddly, it is the smelly basement dwelling open source fanatics who are complaining most about H.264. The others out there who really have a product to sell realize the licensing fees are really minimal.

  58. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by toriver · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Patents also encumber USB and HDMI, I haven't seen Google on the barricades against those technologies used in Android phones and Google TVs respectively.

  59. They're comming by pavon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Over 20 hardware manufacturers are working on WebM hardware implementations, including Broadcom and Qualcomm, the two biggest chipset makers for mobile devices. When H.264 was standardized, all computer implementations were done in software as well. The hardware acceleration came later. Three years ago, HD-DVD and BluRay war was still undecided, and smartphones that played streaming video all but non-existent. Who knows how much inroads WebM could make in the next three years.

    SmugMug was starting to consider HTML5, but Google's latest decision has them moving back to Flash.

    Firefox and Opera don't support H.264 either, and they have much greater market share than Google. So if this announcement changes anyone's plans, they obviously hadn't thought them through very well to begin with. Either you support two formats for the next several years until everything is sorted out, or you exclude a large portion of your audience. This is a draft standard we are talking about. You should expect early adopter issues.

  60. Sure they can by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is the problem with x264. If x264 becomes the de facto standard, two guys in a garage will never be able to develop their own browser that competes with all the current market leaders

    Any browser writer could implement the video tag in such a way they fall back to system supported codecs. Then they need not pay anyone even though on all platforms you would support h.264 playback.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  61. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by butlerm · · Score: 2

    Patents also encumber USB and HDMI

    No software patents, apparently. Is USB support in the Linux kernel patent encumbered? Is Intel or any other USB Implementers Forum member threatening to sue?

    Hardware patents, while perhaps counterproductive, are a much less serious threat to open standards than software patents are. For one thing, they tend to be orders of magnitude less vague. For another, hardware cannot economically be distributed for free. Third, the entire structure of the open Internet does not depend on whether people can produce and use something like USB without royalties. If USB required computer users to pay royalties on anything they produced with a USB device, it would be dead in the water.

    H.264 would be much more viable if the MPEG-LA made an unconditional, non-expiring license grant to open source software implementations, and dropped the ridiculous idea of requiring royalties of any kind on content distribution. As it is H.264 is more like an "evil empire" standard than anything I have ever seen.

  62. Re:Shocking: Apple and MS are doing the right thin by butlerm · · Score: 2

    WebM/VP8 will force a non-accelerated CPU-only rendering path on ALL existing hardware

    So what? Tomorrow this will change. The future of the open Internet is of somewhat more consequence than battery usage over the next thirty six months, especially considering we are talking about a HTML tag for which support isn't yet widely deployed in the first place.

    If battery usage is such a consideration, just stick with "evil empire" codecs like H.264 and pseudo standards like Flash in the interim. As has been mentioned elsewhere, all the DRM people apparently need to stick with something like Flash indefinitely, so there is nothing stopping paid video distributors like NetFlix from sticking with H.264.

    It is the H.264 uber alles movement that is the enemy of the Internet as we know it. On a limited basis in proprietary sandboxes, it is just fine.

  63. Re:Wow this is a bit onesided. by bryonak · · Score: 2

    The problem is exactly that h264 was owned by some market actors. The solution is a codec that isn't owned by anyone.

    What can Google do except maintain their version of VP8 and offer it to the world? They can't demand royalties (like MPEG LA with h264), they can't dictate who is allowed to implement it (like MPEG LA with h264), they can't threaten competition with pooled patents (like MPEG LA with h264) and they can't stop forks (like MPEG LA with h264) in case enough people think they do a bad job of stewarding VP8.