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MPEG Founder Says the MPEG Business Model Is Broken (chiariglione.org)
theweatherelectric writes: Leonardo Chiariglione, the founder and chairman of MPEG, argues on his blog that the current MPEG business model is broken. He writes, "Thanks to [MPEG's] 'business model' that can be simply described as: produce standards having the best performance as a goal, irrespective of the IPR involved. Because MPEG standards are the best in the market and have an international standard status, manufacturers/service providers get a global market of digital media products, services and applications, and end users can seamless communicate with billions of people and access millions of services. Patent holders who allow use of their patents get hefty royalties with which they can develop new technologies for the next generation of MPEG standards. A virtuous cycle everybody benefits from." But, he argues, the MPEG model is now in crisis because the forthcoming AV1 video format from the Alliance for Open Media means that "everybody realizes that the old MPEG business model is broke, all the investments (collectively hundreds of millions USD) made by the industry for the new video codec [HEVC] will go up in smoke and AOM's royalty free model will spread to other business segments as well." Chiariglione goes on to explain what can be done: "The first action is to introduce what I call 'fractional options.' ISO envisages two forms of licensing: Option 1, i.e. royalty free and Option 2, i.e. FRAND, which is taken to mean 'with undetermined license.' We could introduce fractional options in the sense that a proposer could indicate that the technology be assigned to a specifically identified profile with an 'industry license' (defined outside MPEG) that does not contain monetary values. For instance, one such license could be 'no charge' (i.e. Option 1), another could be targeted to the OTT market etc."
"The second action, not meant to be alternative to the first, is to streamline the MPEG standard development process. Within this a first goal is to develop coding tools with 'clear ownership,' unlike today's tools which are often the result of contributions with possibly very different weights. A second goal is not to define profiles in MPEG. A third goal could be to embed in the standard the capability to switch coding tools on and off."
"The second action, not meant to be alternative to the first, is to streamline the MPEG standard development process. Within this a first goal is to develop coding tools with 'clear ownership,' unlike today's tools which are often the result of contributions with possibly very different weights. A second goal is not to define profiles in MPEG. A third goal could be to embed in the standard the capability to switch coding tools on and off."
"it made sense" is not the term I'd use.
"paying rent to the MPEG patent trolls was unavoidable" is more accurate.
Nobody should shed a tear for these trolls. They don't deserve any sympathy. They benefited from being parasites for far too long as it is. Now, they can go die in a fucking fire. And piss on them after the fire has gone out, not before.
Wow. That's basically a declaration of surrender by the chairman of MPEG. This is a great day for free software. It's been a long time coming.
Research into codecs will not stop because nobody is paying for codecs. For example, our research into the digital voice codec "Codec2" has progressed to the point that our fully Open Source codec can encode clear voice into a 700 bit per second bitstream. It is an improvement over previously available commercial codecs, and our software modems, when used with SDR radios, yield about a 10 dB improvement over the modulation all vendors were previously using for digital voice two-way radios.
The problem with MPEG is that many entities, from individual researchers to large, deep-pockets companies, were willing to put in effort to make software just as good or better, but under Open Source terms. MPEG made itself the poster boy for its own elimination, as has every other entity that has attempted to push a royalty-based technology as a web standard. Many people want an open web, and are willing to pay for the research without then monetizing it.
Bruce Perens.
There is really a relatively small group of researchers working on all of these codecs. For example, Jean-Marc Valin is a big contributor to Opus, also contributed to Codec2. A lot of them are radio hams too, and I run into them at conferences devoted to SDR.
Bruce Perens.