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

[salsaman at xs4all.nl]

On Tue, December 18, 2007 21:00, Richard Huxton wrote:
> salsaman at xs4all.nl wrote:
>> On Tue, December 18, 2007 19:10, Richard Huxton wrote:
>>> The thing is, I've not seen anyone come up with a good reason why Apple
>>> & Nokia *should* back Ogg/etc. It's not easy for me to see what they
>>> (or
>>> for that matter anyone outside of the "free from patents" community)
>>> get
>>> from it.
>>
>> Because they are supposedly helping to create the HTML standard, a
>> standard which exists for the benefit of the world, not for the benefit
>> of
>> one or two software companies.
>
> And they're providing their viewpoint, which (presumably) differs from
> yours. The HTML standards are there to help interoperability rather than
> benefit the world (we're not talking about keeping Aids drugs expensive
> here). They're building browsers and I'm not, which is why they get a
> vote.

I'm also building browsers (at least in the sense that I help with the
Mozilla project), unfortunately I don't get a vote.

I fail to see how pushing a patented technology helps interopability - a
world without Free browsers is not exactly what I would term
"interoperable".


>
> The problem is that you and I can see the value in free codecs, but if
> you round down to the nearest 1% then there are *no* users of
> Ogg/Vorbis.

At one point, there were a very few percent using Netscape, then Netscape
freed the code and it was transformed slowly into Firefox/Mozilla.

> There are no compelling technical advantages of the format
> over (already implemented, supported and widely used) rivals. There is
> no guarantee that that format is patent-free, and per-unit it costs
> these companies next to nothing to licence MP3 (which would be the
> logical audio standard).

There is no guarantee that any codec is free of unknown (i.e. submarine)
patents. At least the vorbis/theora formats have been under scrutiny
worldwide for several years, and there has yet to be found one case of
patent infringement.


>
> So what would Apple and Nokia gain by implementing, supporting (and
> possibly defending in court) these codecs?
>

Again, it's not about what they would gain. These companies sit on the
board of the w3c, a comittee whose aim is to design standards for the
entire world.


Just suppose h264 becomes an HTML standard, then what would happen ?

1) Many browsers would not be able to support this due to the patents on
it. Thus they would not be able to be compliant with the standard.

2) The license holders could shut down any browser implementing the
standard, simply by witholding the license or charging a huge fee. No more
free (as in beer) browsers. You gotta pay the licensing fee. Of course,
Microsoft could add it in as part of the price of Windows - IE would be
free, but you'd have to pay for Firefox.

3) The license holders are planning to charge websites to host video
content in h264 standard (it's part of the licensing terms). Thus they
could shut down any non-commercial video hosting site (no more youtubes).

You may not care about this, but I certainly do.


Gabriel.


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