> Yes it is. It is owned by a consortium, and that consortium wants money off me if I write and distribute software (my own software, that I have written, for f

> Yes it is. It is owned by a consortium, and that consortium wants money off me if I write and distribute software (my own software, that I have written, for fucks sake, not their software that they have written) that implements it. Proprietary means "manufactured exclusively by the owner of intellectual property rights (IPR), as with a patent or trade secret." So, no, it's not proprietary. The fact you can write your own version of the standard without reverse engineering proves that. H.264 wasn't trivial to create. It involved a lot of work to both meet the quality requirements and the technical requirements for supporting all the various ways in which it can be used. MPEG-LA isn't imposing a fee for your work, they're only imposing it for the costs associated with defining the standard. You're not charged more if you write a more complex implementation of the standard. That being said, I still think it's dumb to charge for the standard. But it's perfectly within their reason and we have OSS alternatives to fall back on.