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You missed the most critical point, which is "This license is fundamentally incompatible with software freedom. It requires developers to restrict how their so

You missed the most critical point, which is "This license is fundamentally incompatible with software freedom. It requires developers to restrict how their software can be used, and to collect royalties in many situations." And that is what it is all about. H.264 imposes end-user licenses and if it gets entrenched, freely redistributable browsers would lose. The argument against dropping H.264 is basically "why switch formats when what we have works?". H.264 does not work for free software. It's as simple as that. If HTML5 video suffers in the short term, that's the price we'll pay - at least that's the FSF's position. >Everyone points to the GIF fiasco. The net result? PNG was born. If the screws are ever put to us on H.264, you'll see exactly the same thing, only quicker. Why wait until a fiasco? > Computing power being what it is today, the effort of re-encoding every video that exists on the Web is actually not that hard of a problem, and is certainly in the realm of what Google can do today, let alone 5-10 years from now. Seriously, you're arguing against yourself here. Besides, what of the omnipresent 'hardware decoders' we keep hearing about?

rimantas 16y ago
Let's not forget that PNG is superior format compared to GIF. Also, let's not forget, that browsers were not dropping support for GIF's meanwhile adopting PNG. Sure, issue with GIF helped PNG, but I'd say it was destined to "win" anyway.
- spiffworks 16y ago
  H.264 is probably superior to webm. I don't understand video codecs, but it's the consensus opinion among people who know this stuff. However, I fail to see how its relevant in any way. The tegra2 can already decode 1080p vp8 in hardware, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't notice the difference between a 720p video in webm and another in H.264 in terms of performance on your x86 cpu. The inefficiency, if any, would be negligible.
  - patrickaljord 16y ago
    H.264 baseline codec is similar to vp8, not superior. And baseline is what is used on mobile and all hardware encoders, so the highest versions of H.264 don't even matter.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - pohl 16y ago
      ...baseline is what is used on mobile... That's the market segment that the baseline profile was conceived for, but the phone in my pocket and the tablet on my nightstand both support the main profile. Sure, most content that I view on it is probably encoded in baseline, but there are 17 million iPads in the wild that support the main profile. Edit: it's not just iOS devices, either. The Playstation Portable supports the main profile too. There are around 62 million of them out there. VP8 needs to skate to where the puck is going to be, as it were.
      - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
        The iPad really should have supported High Profile. No-one's going to encode a 3rd version for the iPad when everyone else jumped straight from Baseline to High, which means it's effectively Baseline. Seems strange that the iPhone 4 got better specs so shortly after (much like the 256MB memory). I'm sure they'll fix it in the next rev though, which just increases the chance that rev. 1 devices will be served Baseline. edit: I just checked and the iPhone's only 720p Main Profile too? I'm confused now, I was sure iPhone 4 went to High Profile.
        pohl 16y ago
        when everyone else jumped straight from Baseline to High Interesting. Which mobile device(s) did that, and what decoder chip(s) did they use?
        vetinari 16y ago
        He is talking about content providers, not devices. It is really diificult to find main@ bitsreams in the wild.
cletus 16y ago
> "This license is fundamentally incompatible with software freedom. It requires developers to restrict how their software can be used, and to collect royalties in many situations." According to the FSF's definition of software freedom. The FSF has quite a radical view in this regard. A Microsoft exec once described the GPL as "viral' [1] and it's a fair point. Many view licenses like MIT and Apache as being more free simply because they're not as restrictive. This ambiguity is more pronounced when you use words like "open" because it means different things to different people. So it would be more accurate to say that H.264 is incompatible with the FSF's idea of software freedom. > if it gets entrenched What do you mean "if"? It already has. > Why wait until a fiasco? Because anyone who writes software knows that writing code to solve problems you may never have is a recipe for wasted effort if not outright disaster. It's a bit like the standoff between the (former) Soviet Union and the USA: not a single shot was ever (directly) fired between the two but the threat of escalating conflict kept them in check (resulting in proxy conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc but I digress). Think about it this way: MPEG-LA could announce tomorrow that licenses now cost $1 trillion. The result? Obviously no one would pay and a new standard would arise pretty quickly. What if it was $1 billion? $100 million? The point here it is simply a question of degree. So what keeps (and will keep) MPEG-LA in check is market forces, the limits of what people can and will pay and the threat of a free or cheaper alternative... much like any market. Switching formats is a process that can be automated so the transition cost isn't really that high. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Viral_Nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Vira...
- spiffworks 16y ago
  Ok, here is how I define minimal software freedom - I give you a piece of software, along with source code, you are free to use it in anyway you please, or make your modifications and distribute it to as many people as you like. With H.264 bundled with a piece of software, that is not possible. > This ambiguity is more pronounced when you use words like "open" because it means different things to different people. I never once used the word in my post. >What do you mean "if"? It already has. You're arguing for the status quo. Everything seems entrenched until an alternative comes along. You seem to completely ignore that the H.264 license is directly opposed to free software. There's a reason Chromium never supported H.264, while only Chrome did. Nobody except the patent holders benefits from a de facto patent-encumbered codec.

rimantas 16y ago

Let's not forget that PNG is superior format compared to GIF. Also, let's not forget, that browsers were not dropping support for GIF's meanwhile adopting PNG. Sure, issue with GIF helped PNG, but I'd say it was destined to "win" anyway.

spiffworks 16y ago
H.264 is probably superior to webm. I don't understand video codecs, but it's the consensus opinion among people who know this stuff. However, I fail to see how its relevant in any way. The tegra2 can already decode 1080p vp8 in hardware, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't notice the difference between a 720p video in webm and another in H.264 in terms of performance on your x86 cpu. The inefficiency, if any, would be negligible.
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  H.264 baseline codec is similar to vp8, not superior. And baseline is what is used on mobile and all hardware encoders, so the highest versions of H.264 don't even matter.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - pohl 16y ago
    ...baseline is what is used on mobile... That's the market segment that the baseline profile was conceived for, but the phone in my pocket and the tablet on my nightstand both support the main profile. Sure, most content that I view on it is probably encoded in baseline, but there are 17 million iPads in the wild that support the main profile. Edit: it's not just iOS devices, either. The Playstation Portable supports the main profile too. There are around 62 million of them out there. VP8 needs to skate to where the puck is going to be, as it were.
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      The iPad really should have supported High Profile. No-one's going to encode a 3rd version for the iPad when everyone else jumped straight from Baseline to High, which means it's effectively Baseline. Seems strange that the iPhone 4 got better specs so shortly after (much like the 256MB memory). I'm sure they'll fix it in the next rev though, which just increases the chance that rev. 1 devices will be served Baseline. edit: I just checked and the iPhone's only 720p Main Profile too? I'm confused now, I was sure iPhone 4 went to High Profile.
      - pohl 16y ago
        when everyone else jumped straight from Baseline to High Interesting. Which mobile device(s) did that, and what decoder chip(s) did they use?
        vetinari 16y ago
        He is talking about content providers, not devices. It is really diificult to find main@ bitsreams in the wild.

cletus 16y ago

> "This license is fundamentally incompatible with software freedom. It requires developers to restrict how their software can be used, and to collect royalties in many situations." According to the FSF's definition of software freedom. The FSF has quite a radical view in this regard. A Microsoft exec once described the GPL as "viral' [1] and it's a fair point. Many view licenses like MIT and Apache as being more free simply because they're not as restrictive. This ambiguity is more pronounced when you use words like "open" because it means different things to different people. So it would be more accurate to say that H.264 is incompatible with the FSF's idea of software freedom. > if it gets entrenched What do you mean "if"? It already has. > Why wait until a fiasco? Because anyone who writes software knows that writing code to solve problems you may never have is a recipe for wasted effort if not outright disaster. It's a bit like the standoff between the (former) Soviet Union and the USA: not a single shot was ever (directly) fired between the two but the threat of escalating conflict kept them in check (resulting in proxy conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc but I digress). Think about it this way: MPEG-LA could announce tomorrow that licenses now cost $1 trillion. The result? Obviously no one would pay and a new standard would arise pretty quickly. What if it was $1 billion? $100 million? The point here it is simply a question of degree. So what keeps (and will keep) MPEG-LA in check is market forces, the limits of what people can and will pay and the threat of a free or cheaper alternative... much like any market. Switching formats is a process that can be automated so the transition cost isn't really that high. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Viral_Nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Vira...

spiffworks 16y ago
Ok, here is how I define minimal software freedom - I give you a piece of software, along with source code, you are free to use it in anyway you please, or make your modifications and distribute it to as many people as you like. With H.264 bundled with a piece of software, that is not possible. > This ambiguity is more pronounced when you use words like "open" because it means different things to different people. I never once used the word in my post. >What do you mean "if"? It already has. You're arguing for the status quo. Everything seems entrenched until an alternative comes along. You seem to completely ignore that the H.264 license is directly opposed to free software. There's a reason Chromium never supported H.264, while only Chrome did. Nobody except the patent holders benefits from a de facto patent-encumbered codec.