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

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Tue, Dec 18, 2007 at 05:20:27PM +0000, Alain Williams wrote:
> 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.

The worry about submarine patents can apply to basically *any* software
these days given the crazy stuff approved by the USPTO. So if this is
their big worry, Apple & Nokia should just get out of the software
business.  The submarine patent issue just sounds like a convenient
excuse

Dan.
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