4 ms·
> How about a Google monopoly? At least h.264 is owned by a number of different companies. It's amazing to me. In the 90s Microsoft's overt policy was "embrac
by haberman 16y ago
> How about a Google monopoly? At least h.264 is owned by a number of different companies.
It's amazing to me. In the 90s Microsoft's overt policy was "embrace, extend, extinguish," and it called the GPL a "cancer," the MPAA was launching war against DeCSS, and Amazon.com was flexing its one-click patent against competitors. Open source developers had no powerful allies.
Now you have a powerful company like Google that releases millions of lines of open source, sponsors college students to work on open source, fights for openness standards in wireless spectrum auctions, fights for open standards like HTML5, open sources its entire mobile operating system, and in its latest move, buys a video codec company for $106 million and promptly pledges all of the patents for use by anybody.
And yet some people would prefer the codec whose rights are effectively owned by a known patent troll (MPEG-LA) because "at least [it] is owned by a number of different companies."
It goes to show that you can never please everyone.
- Locke1689 16y agoI don't know what kind of fantasy world you live in where the only reason you could like H264 is because it's patented. I like H264 because VP8 is an inferior technology.
- recoiledsnake 16y agoWhy doesn't Google release the source code of the flavor of Linux that it uses after earning tens of billions basically leveraging Linux code? Google open sources things that are not central to it's business, just like every other company out there. MPEG-LA cannot be a patent troll let alone a known one, because it's a loose organization of companies that agree on a standard to prevent fragmentation of video and let people deal with one entity instead of a thousand. Those individual companies could be trolls. >fights for open standards like HTML5 Really? Then this move to remove support for H.264 will get Flash even more entrenched because it would be the easiest way for content providers to get WebM video working on IE9 and Safari. Flash has already announced upcoming support for WebM.
- irons 16y agoMPEG-LA cannot be a patent troll let alone a known one, because it's a loose organization of companies that agree on a standard to prevent fragmentation of video and let people deal with one entity instead of a thousand. Also, the licensing terms are fixed at a maximum 10% rise per five-year renewal. Given the lifespan of patents, that's a low ceiling.
- jokermatt999 16y agoAlso, the licensing terms are fixed at a maximum 10% rise per five-year renewal. Given the lifespan of patents, that's a low ceiling. This is the first I've heard of this. Since one of the main concerns I've heard is that MPEG-LA could raise fees to unacceptable levels, do you mind providing a source for this? I'm still less comfortable with H264 being the standard rather than WebM, but this makes me less worried. (Anti-FUD?)
- jammur 16y agoHe's probably referring to the last paragraph of this: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/AVC_TermsS...
- alanfalcon 16y agoConsidering how the large corporations easily reach the annual cap (currently $6.5 Million per year until at least 2015), the footnote that the 10% maximum increase in royalties does not apply to the cap is a bit disconcerting.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoAh, that explains how the cap has managed to go from $5 to $6.5 million (a 30% rise) since the last time I looked at it, which certainly wasn't 15 years ago.
- 16y ago
- OpieCunningham 16y agoIn the 90s It was also around that time that all the geeks hated Flash. How quickly we forget.