[Gllug] [Fwd: [piksel] Outrageous disaster: Ogg/Vorbis spec taken out of HTML-5]

[Alain Williams]

On Tue, Dec 18, 2007 at 05:16:11PM +0000, Chris Jones wrote:
> Hi
> 
> salsaman at xs4all.nl wrote:
> > i  urge you  to take  act against  the exclusion  of Ogg/Vorbis/Theora
> > audio/video streaming  technology from the  HTML-5 specification: this
> 
> As I understand it, the only reasonable thing anyone could really do to
> stop this is to indemnify everyone against patent lawsuits arising from
> vorbis and theora.
> I think it's fair enough that Nokia and Apple don't want to expose
> themselves to unknown risk by using the technologies. I really don't
> think they object to free codecs in principle (well Apple might, but I
> couldn't care less about Apple ;)

The trouble seems to be submarine patents. There is no way of saying out loud:

	We are going to be using this technology, if you have a patent
	speak now or forever hold your peace.

The onus is on a s/ware developer/... to dig through all patents, and then
wait for the one that hasn't been made public to come & hit him.

-- 
Alain Williams
Linux Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256  http://www.phcomp.co.uk/
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