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FSF Announces Support For WebM

Posted by timothy on from the in-good-company dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Free Software Foundation has signed up as a supporter of the WebM Project. They write, 'Last week, Google announced that it plans to remove support for the H.264 video codec from its browsers, in favor of the WebM codec that they recently made free. Since then, there's been a lot of discussion about how this change will affect the Web going forward, as HTML5 standards like the video tag mature. We applaud Google for this change; it's a positive step for free software, its users, and everyone who uses the Web.' The FSF's PlayOgg campaign will be revamped to become PlayFreedom."

3 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Riding coattails! by cgenman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The choir may be the WC3 over here at MIT. The FSF putting a stamp of approval on WebM helps allay one of the big hurdles for making it the HTML 5 video standard: questions of quality. While the average consumer may not care, if WebM gets baked into the standard, that would have a large effect on how we get video on the web (and how free it is).

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    The ______ Agenda
  2. Re:Misguided by dangitman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The day youtube stops serving flash and requires WebM will be the day Flash dies.

    That depends on when that happens. If it is at a time when there is little support for WebM, or little interest in Youtube, it might be the day that Youtube dies.

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    ... and then they built the supercollider.
  3. Re:Riding coattails! by DrXym · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I also don't believe Google are doing this for altruistic reasons. They have massive data centres filled with hardware expressly designed to stream content in H264 in realtime. Their investment must be enormous..

    It seems more likely to me that is some kind of power play. They want to piss on Apple & Microsoft's parade by forcing them to dance to a tune played by Google. Google will be stewards of this codec and if it becomes a web standard they may force their competitors to support it (e.g. in their browsers & desktop / phone operating systems) or risk looking "non standard". It diminishes their competitors offerings just like supporting Flash in Android did.

    Secondly, if Google have such an enormous ongoing investment in H264 then they must be paying a pretty penny to MPEG-LA and possibly a lot more when certain web moratoriums are up. I would not be surprised if they are waving this codec around to threaten MPEG-LA to either drop or modify their existing licensing agreement.

    So I don't think Google are doing this for reasons for altruism and I don't believe they'll never support H264. WebM is just a stick and they may well do an about face when it serves its purpose.