5 ms·

I don't think it's fair to blame Google here -- after all, Chrome supports Theora and Vorbis natively. If they want to pay for licenses, that's their decision.

I don't think it's fair to blame Google here -- after all, Chrome supports Theora and Vorbis natively. If they want to pay for licenses, that's their decision. The problem is when a browser doesn't support Theora/Vorbis at all, such as Safari or current news regarding IE9. I'm personally hoping that the released version of IE9 will support Theora/Vorbis -- very unlikely, but a man can dream.

reconbot 17y ago
I'm really confused why chrome (and now IE9) doesn't support Theora/Vorbis when it's FREE and USEFUL for them to do so. I think I'm missing something. I do know if you build your own Chromium you can use a non neutered library of ffmpeg and play every codec it supports instead of just mp4.
- kinetik 17y ago
  Chrome (and Chromium) ship with support for Ogg Theora and Vorbis. I'm not sure where this misconception comes from.
  - spatulon 17y ago
    The misconception comes from Google not wanting to use Theora on Youtube.
- jmillikin 17y ago
  (I think the "chrome" in your post is a typo, do you mean Safari?) Apple doesn't support Theora in Safari because the iPhone doesn't have a Theora hardware decoder. They bluster a bit about submarine patents, but really, their refusal boils down to the iPhone. If desktop Safari supports Theora and the iPhone doesn't, users will complain. If playing some videos on the iPhone uses the battery faster than advertised, users will complain. Microsoft, of course, has a long-lasting and well-documented dislike towards open formats. Whether IE9 supports Theora and Vorbis will depend on internal company politics -- "Free Is Bad" vs. "Lets Not Fuck Up IE Again".
  - buster 17y ago
    It's funny how one can see that you are a mac/iPhone user.. You are, aren't you? ;) No, Apple stated that they don't support Theora "claiming that the lack of known patents on Theora doesn't rule out the threat of submarine patents that could eventually be used against adopters." http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the-html-5-video-codec-debate.ars http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the... They also said that they have no hardwaredecoder, but this is just an excuse, imo. Video decoding is done by DSPs and DSP are designed to be programmable quite flexible. Apple/Whoever just would have to do that. All in all, the whole situation is very clear when you look at it with the "patent view" ;) MS: -has Windows Media Player, WMV, pays MPEG Patent fees anyway -> H.264 Apple: -has Quicktime, pays MPEG Patent fees anyway -> H.264 Mozilla: -no license -> Theora Opera: -no license -> Theora Goole: -no Codecs but youtube is in mpeg, but can easily switch to theora -> H.264+theora MS and Apple have reasons to use the H.264 format: they already pay those fees, have expertise with the format, can "supress" the competition with it. Because MS could build in theora support, but what Mozila can't is to build in h.264 format (without paying). Mozilla can only lose this battle and MS&Apple are quite happy about it. There goes the competition. Typical stupid, "selfish", proprieatry bullshit-decission.
    - blasdel 17y ago
      It's not 'just an excuse' — the fosstards+Nokia only started working on a DSP decoder in the last year, and haven't shipped anything yet. Before that there were ZERO independent efforts at implementing Theora decoders — there was the original On2 code dump, and a transliteration of that to Java called Cortado (used in an applet player by Wikimedia). There are no independent encoders, just the original code dump and a deshittifying refactoring (v1.1, Thusnelda) that was just released a few months ago. Before it was tied as an anchor around the necks of the FOSS partisans, Theora was a really awful totally proprietary (in the original sense) codec. It was open sourced because it was never once licensed to a customer, and On2 only pushed one codec at a time (they never improved them, just forked off a new one). As for the patents, MS has been shipping h.264 decoders with their OSes for a while now (they always left MPEG2 decoding the OEMs to bundle until recently too). Apple actually has patents in the h.264 licensing pool!
- timthorn 17y ago
  Supporting Theora is not free. There may be no licensing costs, but every feature costs developer time, testing time, increases the surface area for bugs and so on. In a hobby project there may be no financial cost - but in commercial software there certainly is.
  - DrJokepu 17y ago
    None the less, Chrome _does_ support Theora (and Vorbis).
docgnome 17y ago
Right, I think my original comment was worded badly. I'm not trying to say that Google deserves blame for the choice they made. It's not what I would have chosen but they can chose anything they want. I don't like that a lot of people seem to be mad at Mozilla for not being willing to support H.26whateverhtheeheckitis.

reconbot 17y ago

I'm really confused why chrome (and now IE9) doesn't support Theora/Vorbis when it's FREE and USEFUL for them to do so. I think I'm missing something. I do know if you build your own Chromium you can use a non neutered library of ffmpeg and play every codec it supports instead of just mp4.

kinetik 17y ago
Chrome (and Chromium) ship with support for Ogg Theora and Vorbis. I'm not sure where this misconception comes from.
- spatulon 17y ago
  The misconception comes from Google not wanting to use Theora on Youtube.
jmillikin 17y ago
(I think the "chrome" in your post is a typo, do you mean Safari?) Apple doesn't support Theora in Safari because the iPhone doesn't have a Theora hardware decoder. They bluster a bit about submarine patents, but really, their refusal boils down to the iPhone. If desktop Safari supports Theora and the iPhone doesn't, users will complain. If playing some videos on the iPhone uses the battery faster than advertised, users will complain. Microsoft, of course, has a long-lasting and well-documented dislike towards open formats. Whether IE9 supports Theora and Vorbis will depend on internal company politics -- "Free Is Bad" vs. "Lets Not Fuck Up IE Again".
- buster 17y ago
  It's funny how one can see that you are a mac/iPhone user.. You are, aren't you? ;) No, Apple stated that they don't support Theora "claiming that the lack of known patents on Theora doesn't rule out the threat of submarine patents that could eventually be used against adopters." http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the-html-5-video-codec-debate.ars http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the... They also said that they have no hardwaredecoder, but this is just an excuse, imo. Video decoding is done by DSPs and DSP are designed to be programmable quite flexible. Apple/Whoever just would have to do that. All in all, the whole situation is very clear when you look at it with the "patent view" ;) MS: -has Windows Media Player, WMV, pays MPEG Patent fees anyway -> H.264 Apple: -has Quicktime, pays MPEG Patent fees anyway -> H.264 Mozilla: -no license -> Theora Opera: -no license -> Theora Goole: -no Codecs but youtube is in mpeg, but can easily switch to theora -> H.264+theora MS and Apple have reasons to use the H.264 format: they already pay those fees, have expertise with the format, can "supress" the competition with it. Because MS could build in theora support, but what Mozila can't is to build in h.264 format (without paying). Mozilla can only lose this battle and MS&Apple are quite happy about it. There goes the competition. Typical stupid, "selfish", proprieatry bullshit-decission.
  - blasdel 17y ago
    It's not 'just an excuse' — the fosstards+Nokia only started working on a DSP decoder in the last year, and haven't shipped anything yet. Before that there were ZERO independent efforts at implementing Theora decoders — there was the original On2 code dump, and a transliteration of that to Java called Cortado (used in an applet player by Wikimedia). There are no independent encoders, just the original code dump and a deshittifying refactoring (v1.1, Thusnelda) that was just released a few months ago. Before it was tied as an anchor around the necks of the FOSS partisans, Theora was a really awful totally proprietary (in the original sense) codec. It was open sourced because it was never once licensed to a customer, and On2 only pushed one codec at a time (they never improved them, just forked off a new one). As for the patents, MS has been shipping h.264 decoders with their OSes for a while now (they always left MPEG2 decoding the OEMs to bundle until recently too). Apple actually has patents in the h.264 licensing pool!
timthorn 17y ago
Supporting Theora is not free. There may be no licensing costs, but every feature costs developer time, testing time, increases the surface area for bugs and so on. In a hobby project there may be no financial cost - but in commercial software there certainly is.
- DrJokepu 17y ago
  None the less, Chrome _does_ support Theora (and Vorbis).

docgnome 17y ago

Right, I think my original comment was worded badly. I'm not trying to say that Google deserves blame for the choice they made. It's not what I would have chosen but they can chose anything they want. I don't like that a lot of people seem to be mad at Mozilla for not being willing to support H.26whateverhtheeheckitis.