4 ms·
> Based on the examples shown, BPG certainly has the makings of a useful image format. The catch, however, is that it is derived from HEVC, which is patent-encu
by mmirate 9y ago
> Based on the examples shown, BPG certainly has the makings of a useful image format. The catch, however, is that it is derived from HEVC, which is patent-encumbered and royalty-bearing. That poses a major problem for free-software projects in any jurisdiction that recognizes the patents—meaning most of them.[1]
I hadn't heard of this format before; after some cursory research, I believe the above quote provides a likely explanation.
[1]: https://lwn.net/Articles/625535/ https://lwn.net/Articles/625535/
- nkkollaw 9y agoI see. It's truly amazing, though. With 50k of JavaScript you can save your visitors megabytes.
- technion 9y agoThis came up a while back and I remember thinking... If you were Google or Cloudflare, and you were paying for transit on petabytes of traffic associated with images, at what point would a strategy of "buy the patent, release it, encourage people to use it" pay for itself many times over?
- nkkollaw 9y agoI thought the same thing and I can't figure it out.