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Microsoft Makes Chrome Play H.264 Video
nk497 writes "Chrome users will be able to play H.264 video — thanks to Microsoft. The software giant today unveiled the Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome, which will let users of the Google browser play H.264 video after it was dropped from Chrome over licensing issues. 'At Microsoft we respect that Windows customers want the best experience of the web including the ability to enjoy the widest range of content available on the internet in H.264 format,' said Claudio Caldato, Microsoft interoperability program manager."
"At Microsoft we respect that Windows customers want the best experience of the web"
Ohhh, right, that's why Ogg Theora isn't natively supported in Internet Explorer. Maybe you could concentrate on improving the support, capabilities and experience in your own browser before bothering to extend other browsers?
My work here is dung.
Microsoft has interesting priorities... "Lets release a plug-in for a third party browser to fix a perceived short coming..." as opposed to "Lets fix the problems and short comings in our products". Slow clap for Microsoft.
For when Chrome did the same for Internet Explorer
Microsoft's H.264 addon for Firefox has a bad memory leak.
See http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/971988-memory-leak-in-html5-extension-for-windows-media-player-firefox-add-on/
So this might be bad for Chrome.
This will make H.264 acceptable again for commercial use, infecting the web with patented video tech all over. Hold on to your Linux horses people, you can expect another round of "possibly illegal in your country" extensions to allow you to view the interweb's content. Just say NO to H.264!!
I still believe that every browser should rely on the codecs installed on the OS. Every platform (and optionally the user) can then choose what they want.
Developers: We can use your help.
"No way are we at Microsoft letting Chrome users off the hook for autoplayed videos with our advertisements in them."
That's not how 'embrace, extend, extinguish' works. They are embracing H.264, but not extending it, are extending Chrome (in a way different from e.e.e. however), and extinguishing neither.
x264 is not a patent trap, its patent implications are well known. WebM, on the other hand, is a patent trap - nobody knows who's going to come out of the woodwork to sue over some small piece of it that someone has a vague patent over.
This is making you sound like you want chrome users to use H264... I wonder why.
I'm sure this is to give the choice, and not because you have interests in H264 yourself.
Good going guys!
[This post brought to you by the Sarcastic Foundation]
I can't help but think I can only benefit from Google and Microsoft fighting.
I eagerly await a wall of text explaining why this is actually an evil move by MS, and how .h264 is the devil's codec that will steal the internet from all of us!
Do you remember this: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/22/1246248/Google-Brings-SVG-Support-To-IE ?
I remember when Google announced the svgweb javascript library to enable SVG support in IE. That sort of reinforced the notion that Microsoft was playing catch-up in the browser technology arena. Microsoft is now, at least trying, I think, to present the appearance that Google is the company that is behind. Not to mention it doesn't hurt MS to have value added to Chrome when it runs on Windows. They're not going to make this happen for Chrome running on GNU/Linux.
most end users don't keep windows up, they close them as soon as their down to avoid 'cluttering their desktops'. So it's not much of an issue.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yay. Now Microsoft can steal Google search results from Chrome too!
x264 is a patent trap whose teeth are so ginormous people are afraid to go near it.
will it report which videos i choose to watch on youtube to microsoft ? so that they can use it to 'improve their results' in any potential video service they may be launching, depending on what youtube shows ?
Read radical news here
Patent risk from submarine patents: neither h.264 nor WebM offers any protection from it.
Patent risk from MPEG-LA for h.264: significant, as it can decide to raise prices / start charging for content at any time. Bait and switch is their strategy.
Patent risk from Google for WebM: none, they offered irrevocable indemnification:
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Microsoft Office is the industry standard. Everyone should have a copy.
h264 is patent encumbered proprietary crap. you get used to it.
Read radical news here
264 IS a patent trap, and one of the trap owners is microsoft. this is why they are being so charitable in this occasion.
Read radical news here
"At Microsoft we respect that Windows customers want the best experience of the web including the ability to enjoy the widest range of content available on the internet in H.264 format"
They don't want Windows customers to have the best experience of the web, they want users to have the best experience of H.264 format content available on the web, a much narrower goal with less actual benefit to any user, not even just Windows customers.
It's important to have all the information and not just pull something out of context, because you will get the wrong idea. MS concentrates just as much on the way they express themselves as they do on the development of their own software.
Twinstiq, game news
'At Microsoft we respect that Windows customers want the best experience of the web including the ability to enjoy the widest range of content available on the internet in H.264 format,'
No, I'm pretty sure that most Microsoft customers just get confused and glazed-over eyes when someone mentions H.264 or any other numbers.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Ogg Theora is technically highly inferior to H.264. All it has going for it is religion and ideology.
Why should Microsoft support your particular belief system over the beliefs of anyone else? Why, especially, should they want their users to have a much worse experience watching internet video?
How about adopting (or adapting) a belief system that leads to better products instead of worse ones?
I thought it said "Microsoft Makes Crime Pay".
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
de facto standard you mean?
grape - the GNU free, open source rape
You could before.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
LAMP stacks are the standard, everyone should be using Linux.
Well, at least NASA TV works in Chrome now.
That's a plus, if I ever remember to watch it.
popular =/= standard. Standards need to be published in a way that people can implement without being sued. You can't even avoid the patents, since by following the standard, you're implementing the patents.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
If Google wanted to stand behind WebM and end this mess all they need to do is put some type of patent indemnity clause into the WebM license. Because, when all is said and done, that's all it boils down to. Companies like Microsoft pay for H.264 licensing because it is safer for them to do so. If a lawsuit arises then the MGEP LA steps in and takes care of it (ideally through patent-pooling, I guess).
That said, it isn't the *big guys* who are really worrying about it. It's the smaller shops that generally are the first targets in the patent troll "war chest" strategy. Who's going to go to bat for you when your company is the target of a WebM patent troll?
Not really, flash is the standard. Barely nothing uses the video tag out there and the places that do offer currently flash support over it. The biggest provider of video tag content (youtube), while not enabled by default provides the majority of that content in webm only for the video tag.
Thus, I wouldn't even say h.264 is the 'standard' for video tags either.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Maybe they really just want people to install a chrome addon so they can send even more google searches to Bing for optimization!
At least not to the general public, I wouldn't be too surprised if there is an indemnification scheme of some soft behind the broad support Google was able to attract from other companies.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
ISO/IEC 14496-10 - MPEG-4 Part 10, Advanced Video Coding
Sounds like a formal standard to me.
Unlike, say, a spec made by a small company that Google bought.
Actually, you need flash for that, sorry.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Microsoft Makes Chrome Play H.264 Video
Chrome tries to file a police report. Officer replies, "Well, yea. Just look at the way you're dressed."
... I hope Youtube will remove h.264 encoding from their videos as soon as most Firefox and Chrome users migrated to a version that supports WebM ...
And wouldn't the followup to that be h.264 advocates promoting a different video sharing site? Such a site may get critical mass merely by Apple replacing the Mac Safari built-in YouTube link and the iPhone/iPad built-in YouTube app. Apple might even do such a site themselves, they have that new data center. It would be a textbook retaliatory attack on a competitor's core asset. Microsoft might join in.
Basically Google could start a chain of events that seriously undermine a core asset. YouTube is probably more easily replaced than MySpace and Google is probably smart enough to know this. Dropping h.264 from chrome is a minor thing, unlikely to prompt serious retaliation, doing so with YouTube would be quite different.
We have seen in the past how well the .net for Firefox stuff went over. It caused all sorts of uproar, confusion and problems.
Will Microsoft be releasing the source code for this plug-in so that we can properly trust it? I doubt it. And will there be a 3 mile long EULA attached to it? Almost certainly! Will it be hard to remove? Probably. I make these assumptions because we have seen this from Microsoft before. So unless they explicitly say they will do this any other way, we can presume they will do it the way they always have... and no, they will not support a Linux version of the plugin and not likely MacOSX.
So in summary:
1. It will be incomplete
2. It will be closed
3. It will be hard to remove
4. It may not be "optional"
5. It will cause problems with the browser and maybe the OS.
And of course this would be relevant aside from the definite article used. "The Standard" does not mean the same thing as "A Standard". And therefore saying "H.264 is the standard. Browsers should play it." implies that H.264 is somehow special. Which is why of course I asked for clarification on her point. English can be complicated :(
grape - the GNU free, open source rape
Except when they can't because the developers can't afford a license ?
who would want WMP in any browser?
VLC ftw
Microsoft has an interoperability manager ??
It's really much simpler. Windows 7 and OS X has already licensed the codec, Microsoft has absolutely nothing to lose by pushing it. Firefox has problems with it, Linux has problems with it. When there's so few competitors, pushing them down is as good as lifting yourself up. Not to mention in public perception they don't want it to look like Google is leading the pack and Microsoft tagging along. There's so many political and strategical reasons to do it that far outweigh the minimal patent royalties they get.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If a lawsuit arises then the MGEP LA steps in and takes care of it (ideally through patent-pooling, I guess).
But if the troll refuses to play ball you get sued all the same.
MPEG isn't required to help you in such a case BTW.
I can't see how YouTube would outright drop support for H.264. IE still makes up 56% across all versions (source: http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0). Google would be fools to dissuade that many customers away from YouTube as well as any sites that embed YouTube videos. As one reply says in this regard, they might use another site.
That would be fine if there wasn't a bunch of hardware out there with dedicated h264 support and no WebM support.
-]Phreak Out[-
Title is wrong....should appear
Microsoft makes their H264 format available to those who did not want to pay royalties and be tied down to yet another M$ format.
In all seriousness, I wonder how many of the stories posted are actually M$ paying off bloggers and forums alike to run their
"look at this, we did this, and now you will see us in a better light" stories.
Had M$ played by the book to begin with , with HTML5, then there would have been no issues...
x264 is not a patent trap, its patent implications are well known. WebM, on the other hand, is a patent trap - nobody knows who's going to come out of the woodwork to sue over some small piece of it that someone has a vague patent over.
"This hallway contains a series of traps. You will have spinning blades firing at your neck, boiling lava poured in, spiked walls crushing you, pillars crashing down from the ceiling to flatten you against the floor, angry poisonous snakes shot at you slingshot-style, sheer 500-foot dropoffs after blind turns, and a group of moody natives at the end who, at their whim, will force you back through the hallway once in a while for their own personal amusement and profit. Most of your popular friends chose this hallway, and you haven't heard from many of them in a while.
This other hallway is kinda empty. But, it might contain a few armed bear traps. *pause* We had a few inspectors look through it and they said it was safe, but those guys are total dweebs, y'know? I hate 'em. I mean, look at them, they're a bunch of ugly nerds. *pause* And this hallway's all boring and unpopular and nobody goes down it so what are you some kind of stupid nerd? *looks around cagily for a couple seconds* Ooo, scaaaaaary hallwaaaaaaay! What, do you want to live forever? Now, make your choice!"
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
Google has irrevocably released all of its patents on VP8 as a royalty-free format - and while the "lead developer of the H.264 encoder x264, raised concerns about the similarity between VP8 and H.264", "other researchers cite evidence that On2 made a particular effort to avoid any MPEG LA patents"
"Patent indemnity" is a smokescreen, of course. Why won't MICROSOFT offer patent indemnity after all? Who's going to go to bat for you when your company is the target of a H.264 patent troll?
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
I can't seem to find any debs.
I guess they mean windows chrome users only.
Youtube won't remove h.264 encoding until the majority of mobile browsers (I'm looking at you, Mobile Safari) support WebM.
This will make H.264 acceptable again for commercial use.
Badly in need of an update, I suspect, but still suggestive is this list from the Wikipedia:
List of video services using H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
There are 951 H.64 licensees, of which a breath-taking number are Asian - global giants in industry, tech and broadcasting. AVC/H.264 Licensees
Google is big. But not that big.
Bullshit, h264 is a huge risk. There could well be other unknown patents out there for it. The MPEG-LA does not indemnify you at all.
Well then it is good that this is not the case. That hardware is generic stuff, it could easily do WebM.
H.264 is the standard. Browsers should play it.
Yeah, you're right: the W3C says video elements should be H.264. Oh, wait, no it doesn't.
I have to laugh. From the original post:
Ogg Theora is technically highly inferior to H.264. All it has going for it is religion and ideology.
Way to prove the point, Mr. AC, with your teeny-bopper hasn't-yet-woken-up-to-the-real-world-of-practicality bitter-and-completely-out-of-touch "my way is the only way, forget whether something works, everyone has to support it because it fits in with my religion and ideology" parade.
Moron.
Dubious that the release of a Windows-only plugin will have any direct effect on your system's ability to stream Netflix. As for indirect effects, if any, I think this should give you slightly less hope, as Netflix now has even less motivation to support a codec you can legally use (at least if you're in the US--I have no idea how this might impact Canadian Netflix users).
Microsoft has an interoperability manager ??
they have a long history of "managing" interoperability between Windows and products that compete(d) with Microsoft Office, for example...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Do online petitions really work? I don't think the people who 'need' to see them even see these to begin with.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Then why didn't they step in with the latest H.264 patent troll?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Am I the only one that laughed when I saw that Microsoft did the same to Google that Google did to Microsoft? It's like the 5th grade school yard.
Stop lying. h.264 certainly has some protection from submarine patents - namely a huge body of patents held for it. You know who has the patents, and they will sue the living shit out of anyone who tries to bring forth a patent for it. You have someone on your side, and that someone has very big guns.
WebM? Not so much... Google isn't offering wide indemnification, only for their own patents no?
Stop being silly. It's more like you can go down the trapped hallway with a free pass that disables all the traps (by licensing it), or you can wander down the dark WebM hallway where it's likely there are traps.
Microsoft has interesting priorities... "Lets release a plug-in for a third party browser to fix a perceived short coming..." as opposed to "Lets fix the problems and short comings in our products". Slow clap for Microsoft.
One of them did something good and increased choice (at least on Windows).
Reward good behavior, I always say.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I thought "interactive" advertisements was Adobe's ballpark?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Google hereby grants to you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to...
"irrevocable.. 'cept for those cases where we reserve the right to revoke..."
"His name was James Damore."
Well then it is good that this is not the case. That hardware is generic stuff, it could easily do WebM.
Yet nobody is doing it. There isnt a single device doing hardware accelerated WebM right now, but plenty of plans to add hardware acceleration to future devices. Nobody is adding hardware acceleration to existing devices, which tells me that in spite of your claim it "could easily" be done.. it is either not easy, or can't be done.
"His name was James Damore."
I replied to the wrong comment. My comment is totally irrelevant to the parent.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Incorrect since most content providers will be expecting a browser that supports the video tag will also support h.264.
Microsoft just fixed something Google broke.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"irrevocable.. 'cept for those cases where we reserve the right to revoke..."
Rockoon, I am wondering what your axe to grind is here. I've seen you write insightful stuff here on Slashdot, but not today.
Google hasn't reserved any right to revoke. They did specify one condition where you can forfeit your rights under the patent grant: if you sue to attack the patents, you lose your grant to use the patents. That's unusual (maybe even never seen before?) and it's sort of odd. But it doesn't leave Google with the power to say "We have decided we don't like you and we are taking away your patent grant."
So it really comes down to arguing over what "irrevocable" means. If it means "no third party has the ability to take away the grant" then this grant is "irrevocable". If it means "nothing will ever, ever, ever take away the grant", then this grant is not "irrevocable".
Personally, I think the fact that no third party can take away your patent grant rights means it really is "irrevocable". Google can't revoke your rights; nobody can; that's "irrevocable" enough for me. The fact that there is one, clearly spelled out, way that you can forfeit your patent grant does not cause any hidden dangers or uncertainty around the patent grant.
Compare with the H.264 patent holders, who have decided that if you use a camera that records in H.264 format, you have to dance to their tune, even if you immediately convert the H.264 video to some other format. Engadget asked MPEG-LA if the license agreement means what it says, and received official word that the license agreement doesn't mean what it says; that even though the license says you will need to pay extra if you used an H.264 camera for a "commercial" purpose, that you won't have to pay extra. But as I understand it, the patent laws give them the power to start enforcing that clause any time before the patents run out.
I'll take a format with an irrevocable patent grant (even if there is a way I could forfeit the grant) any day, over H.264. If you build a business on H.264, you have no idea how much you will have to pay to use it later; with WebM you know exactly how much you will have to pay, and that is zero.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Did you read the article at all? The lack of indemnification is EXACTLY what MS is complaining about with respect to WebM.
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. - B.F. Skinner
They offered patent indemnification from patents that 'Google' holds. That's nice, but that doesn't protect you from the patents that anyone else holds. H.264 has been around long enough that it is unlikely their are anymore submarine patents out there (or if there are, it is likely they can brought into the patent pool). Also, Microsoft has agreed to indemnify any user using H.264 on their platform. Google refuses to do the same for WebM.
Software patents are evil, but they are also very painful if you are the one sued. Personally, I would rather deal with the devil I know than the devil I don't.
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. - B.F. Skinner
From the link in TFS
The Extension is based on a Firefox Add-on that parses HTML5 pages and replaces Video tags with a call to the Windows Media Player plug-in so that the content can be played in the browser.
What we need is that add-on, but with calls to VLC instead of WMP. That would make the add-on multiplatform.
It may not be the politically correct thing to wish for, but I'll take anything that replaces crappy Flash video on the OS X version of Firefox.
Stop lying. h.264 certainly has some protection from submarine patents - namely a huge body of patents held for it. You know who has the patents, and they will sue the living shit out of anyone who tries to bring forth a patent for it. You have someone on your side, and that someone has very big guns.
WebM? Not so much... Google isn't offering wide indemnification, only for their own patents no?
Patents don't work like that you can't sue someone for having a patent, you have to pay them for using it...or they sue you. Which is why I am I am concerned about Microsoft suing ME for using a codec.
There isnt a single device doing hardware accelerated WebM right now
Google is paying people to develop reference code for hardware acceleration of WebM on existing DSP chips. WebM is close enough to H.264 in basic ways (e.g. both are based on discrete cosine transform) that hardware to accelerate H.264 can likely be used to accelerate WebM. So, it is very possible that a simple software upgrade will enable hardware accelerated WebM on existing devices; and Google is paying to make it happen.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1946532&cid=34846252
It's not done yet, so you are correct that there is currently no hardware acceleration of WebM on current mobile devices.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The Internet Explorer team said, "WTF?"
A license grants you rights to make use of technology that Google owns. That is not the same thing as indemnification against submarine patents of which Google is not aware. In other words if a submarine patent surfaces and you get sued, Google is not going to bring their legal team in to defend you.
That is important because WebM does not have a patent pool and has not been litigated. At least H.264 has a patent pool, which means some patents are "surfaced", and if a submarine pops there will be a lot of very big players fighting alongside you.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Let's sum up:
Microsoft has the world's most popular OS, and bundles a browser, making it still the most popular browser.
They're both buggy, crash a lot, and not open, so Firefox makes an open source competing browser.
That browser sees explosive and sustained growth, until by some metrics it is approaching the MS browser popularity.
This touches off a bit of a freedom rally, and open source codecs and standards and even OSes gain popularity, mind share, and quality code.
Enter mega corp B (Google), releasing yet another browser, which is faster than either of the old ones, but lacking in open licensing and extensions (compared to Firefox). Then hey presto they buy YouTube the single most popular online video source, and also release an open source codec and announce that soon YouTube will be all de facto on that open source codec.
Immediately almost everybody besides Microsoft and Apple get behind that codec.
Meanwhile Apple and Adobe have a spat, and Apple unincludes flash from it's ipad.
Apple announces that they are sticking with the closed source h264. Shunning Adobe AND open source.
Then Microsoft releases a plugin for both Firefox AND Chrome (teh Goog) that allows h264 playback in the "open" browsers.
I'm reminded once again by the large commercial projects vs. open source of Princess Leia's famous line:
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers!"
I for one cannot WAIT for Apple and MS to be relics of a bygone era, when the world is using almost universally open source products, hardware, and infrastructure. If only there was a way to speed this process up.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
>"Chrome users will be able to play H.264 video â" thanks to Microsoft."
WRONG! Here it is corrected:
MS-Windows Chrome users will be able to play H.264 video -- thanks to Microsoft.
Unless, of course, Microsoft has suddenly decided to port their software to the other operating systems (Linux, MacOS) on which Chrome runs (like zero chance there). Picky- yes. But there is a difference between the two; especially when you are not an MS-Windows user.
No sane legal team is going to let their corporation offer open-ended indemnification to all end users of a technology--especially in a heavily patent-encumbered space like video compression.
Under such an agreement, Google's potential liability would scale with the success of whoever is using WebM. That aggregate value could exceed Google's entire market cap. What if a suit is filed? Google would be liable for more than they are worth.
That's obviously a worst-case scenario, and perhaps Google has negotiated limited indemnification with a few key partners like Adobe. But they're never going to offer blanket indemnification.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
To be fair, Google has done that (in a much bigger way) for IE.
Except that there's a critical difference between the two plugins. Chrome Frame was an attempt to bring standards-compliant CSS and fast Javascript to websites that still have IE6 users. Even if it became ubiquitous, it would only relieve Web developers from having to support IE's broken rendering engine. On the other hand, Microsoft's plugin exists to shift the de-facto meaning of the <video> element in the HTML5 draft to support only the H.264 format instead of WebM. Microsoft's plugin is insidious if you care about the freedom to implement Web browsers and tools.
The underlying question is, should a company or open-source project be able to implement a Web browser from scratch without having to purchase patent licenses? The academics at the W3C think the answer is emphatically yes. This goes back to the beginning, when Tim Berners-Lee and CERN decided not to demand royalties for HTTP and HTML. But commercial OS vendors such as Microsoft and Apple would prefer <video>s in H.264, since forcing H.264 would give their OSes an advantage over open-source OSes and other underdogs that can't afford the licenses.
Except that there's a critical difference between the two plugins. Chrome Frame was an attempt to bring standards-compliant CSS and fast Javascript to websites that still have IE6 users.
Right. Chrome Frame was built to fix what was, from Google's perspecitve and in terms of Google's business strategy, a problem with IE.
Microsoft's H.264 plugin for Chrome was built to fix what was, from Microsoft's perspective and in terms of Microsoft's business strategy, a problem with Chrome.
Google's preferences in this area might be more in line with mine or yours, to be sure.
The w3c don't offer patent indemnity. No one offers patent indemnity for linux, mysql and lots of other royalty free stuff. - Get over the fud.
I think this issue will cause more damage to the internet community then any one realized. Its going to cause a major split between the Free source hard line fanatics (which I think should all be rounded up and shoot) and the rest of us who still grasp common sense and can live in a world with both free and non free recognizing there is a place for both. Theora is clearly crappy in every way and the only thing to support it on is that it MAYBE is free which its most likely not. Hard line fanatics don't give a dam about how crappy it is except that its free. The rest of us will argue to the bitter end how its not wanted or needed. This could be the tipping point that really creates a split between the internet community as a whole.
Did you read what I said? MS is in with us in the general public lounge here, we don't know what Google did to persuade, for example, AMD and Nvidia. If lack of indemnification was MS's real problem then why don't they apply it to H.264 as well?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Microsoft has finally "embraced" HTML5. Now, they are extending the element in ways that F/OSS can't support due to inflexible patent licenses. They're not attacking Chrome on Windows, they're attacking open-source browsers on open-source operating systems.
Not exactly true. MPEG-LA would have a vested interest in defending their patent pool, and thus could countersue.
Users of Ogg/Thedora have no such protection.
The whole reason that MPEG-LA came into existence was exactly to allow companies to use each other's tech without the specter of lawsuits.
Yet MPEG certainly has a vested interest, as after all they were founded to allow companies to use each other's tech without the threat of lawsuits. They would certainly countersue using their pool of patents.
Dear Microsoft: Please die in a fire
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
How have they extended HTML5 outside of the W3C/WHATWG? And assuming you mean H.264, what part of H.264 is a proprietary MS extension to it?
It's silly to claim that F/OSS software can't support H.264, when both Safari (WebKit) and Chrome (browser + WebKit both), in their open source incarnations, support it just fine. In fact, what MS is doing is providing that very thing to Chrome!
Also, what open source operating system cannot encode/decode H.264? Do you not know that MPEG-LA distributes H.264 as open source?
"You'll play 264, and you'll LIKE IT!"
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Kind of depends if they have anything to sue.
If it's a "make nothing" patent troll there would be nothing to counter-sue over.
As with the firefox extension, this only works on Windows 7. So it in no way makes H.264 universally available.
Dear Microsoft, Can you please make Netflix streaming work in Chromium and/or Firefox in Ubuntu next? kthxbye, :-Dustin
I read this a while back and found it thought provoking.
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/01/googles-dropping-h264-from-chrome-a-step-backward-for-openness.ars
Ogg Theora is technically highly inferior to H.264. All it has going for it is religion and ideology... Why should Microsoft support your particular belief system over the beliefs of anyone else?
Because it's not just an arbitrary or personal belief system. It's one of the important qualities that made the Web a wildly successful medium. When you've got protocols and formats that anyone can freely implement -- when authoring and rendering tools are unencumbered by rentiers who would extract tools -- then anybody who wants to has nearly no barriers to creating value-adding services around the "edges" of this agreement.
Imagine for a minute how well things would have gone for the WWW if tolls were required for anybody who implemented a browser, a server, an authoring tool. It might have been somewhat successful anyway, but it likely would have been a lot more like AOL or eWorld instead of what it is today.
Tweet, tweet.
I don't know why people are so stuck up on software patents. It's mostly just math.
> You know who has the patents, and they will sue the living shit out of anyone who tries to bring forth a patent for it.
Sigh, you're mistaken:do you know what 'patent troll' are?
They don't make products only registers patents, so a patent troll could certainly sue h.264 users for patents violation without risk of being sued in return for patent violation as they *don't* make products..