7 ms·

H.264 patents are a red herring because WebM is not known to be patent free either. The assumption is that patent holders are waiting for WebM to gain traction

H.264 patents are a red herring because WebM is not known to be patent free either. The assumption is that patent holders are waiting for WebM to gain traction before springing the lawsuits. The devil you know versus the devil you don't.

theBobMcCormick 16y ago
Is there any non trivial piece of software that's known to be patent free? Isn't it probable, even likely, that there are additional patent holders who'll come after H.264 implementations eventually?
- ianhawes 16y ago
  Possible, but not probable. H.264 has been researched extensively prior to it being broadly used. Compare that with WebM, which was not vetted in the same way H.264 was.
haberman 16y ago
> The devil you know versus the devil you don't. You don't know the H.264 devil any better. It's just as likely that some lone patent wolf will come forward and go after H.264. It's simply FUD to say that WebM is somehow more susceptible. Just because MPEG-LA makes you pay for their set of patents doesn't mean they're protecting you against patents they don't hold.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  I'd say you know the H264 devil a little better. Why? Because its spec and patents have been extremely well documented for a decade (or so), commented on, and implemented (there are at least 10 implementations I know of). Whereas WebM's details first came to light less than a year ago. You're right that it is possible that either still violate some patent out in the wild. BUT if you were to weigh the odds -- a nearly decade old open standard technology that has openly solicited and worked to get all potential patent holders in the pool OR a technology closed and proprietary until last year. You really call even money on that?
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    It seems to be widely accepted that WebM is a minor variation on H.264 with changes specifically designed to avoid the H.264 patents, which as you mention have been openly published and well documented for years. Since large segments of H.264 were simply dropped for WebM, apparently there's only about 49 H.264 patents total (out of over a thousand) that could even remotely apply. That seems a reasonable number for On2 to work around, and for Google (and everyone else listed on their supporters page)'s lawyers to double check. So now we are speculating about a random patent troll who happens to hold a patent that doesn't read on H.264 but does read on a simplified version of H.264 with some minor patent avoiding variations. Seems to me that if you're arguing H.264 is clean, then so is WebM.
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      Your interpretation doesn't match those of people who have analyzed it. The problem with WebM is that it may infringe on H264 patents! And its not clear they have done enough to avoid the problems. H264 has come together to form a very strong patent pool. None of the patents can be asserted against H264 (nor can the partner companies in general), but any of them can be asserted against WebM. Read JGG's account, which is still the best account to date at: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 Some quotes: "But as noted in my previous post, merely being published by Google doesn’t guarantee that it is. Microsoft did similar a few years ago with the release of VC-1, which was claimed to be patent-free but within mere months after release, a whole bunch of companies claimed patents on it and soon enough a patent pool was formed." "VP8 is simply way too similar to H.264: a pithy, if slightly inaccurate, description of VP8 would be "H.264 Baseline Profile with a better entropy coder". Even VC-1 differed more from H.264 than VP8 does, and even VC-1 didn’t manage to escape the clutches of software patents." "Most importantly, Google has not released any justifications for why the various parts of VP8 do not violate patents, as Sun did with their OMS standard: such information would certainly cut down on speculation and make it more clear what their position actually is." And not about patents, but the quality of the spec: "The spec consists largely of C code copy-pasted from the VP8 source code up to and including TODOs, optimizations, and even C-specific hacks, such as workarounds for the undefined behavior of signed right shift on negative numbers. In many places it is simply outright opaque. Copy-pasted C code is not a spec. I may have complained about the H.264 spec being overly verbose, but at least it’s precise. The VP8 spec, by comparison, is imprecise, unclear, and overly short, leaving many portions of the format very vaguely explained. Some parts even explicitly refuse to fully explain a particular feature, pointing to highly-optimized, nigh-impossible-to-understand reference code for an explanation. There’s no way in hell anyone could write a decoder solely with this spec alone." But maybe Google will fix it? Ummm think again; "Update: it seems that Google is not open to changing the spec: it is apparently "final", complete with all its flaws." I just don't see how one can feel equally comfortable with WebM.

theBobMcCormick 16y ago

Is there any non trivial piece of software that's known to be patent free? Isn't it probable, even likely, that there are additional patent holders who'll come after H.264 implementations eventually?

ianhawes 16y ago
Possible, but not probable. H.264 has been researched extensively prior to it being broadly used. Compare that with WebM, which was not vetted in the same way H.264 was.

haberman 16y ago

> The devil you know versus the devil you don't. You don't know the H.264 devil any better. It's just as likely that some lone patent wolf will come forward and go after H.264. It's simply FUD to say that WebM is somehow more susceptible. Just because MPEG-LA makes you pay for their set of patents doesn't mean they're protecting you against patents they don't hold.

kenjackson 16y ago
I'd say you know the H264 devil a little better. Why? Because its spec and patents have been extremely well documented for a decade (or so), commented on, and implemented (there are at least 10 implementations I know of). Whereas WebM's details first came to light less than a year ago. You're right that it is possible that either still violate some patent out in the wild. BUT if you were to weigh the odds -- a nearly decade old open standard technology that has openly solicited and worked to get all potential patent holders in the pool OR a technology closed and proprietary until last year. You really call even money on that?
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  It seems to be widely accepted that WebM is a minor variation on H.264 with changes specifically designed to avoid the H.264 patents, which as you mention have been openly published and well documented for years. Since large segments of H.264 were simply dropped for WebM, apparently there's only about 49 H.264 patents total (out of over a thousand) that could even remotely apply. That seems a reasonable number for On2 to work around, and for Google (and everyone else listed on their supporters page)'s lawyers to double check. So now we are speculating about a random patent troll who happens to hold a patent that doesn't read on H.264 but does read on a simplified version of H.264 with some minor patent avoiding variations. Seems to me that if you're arguing H.264 is clean, then so is WebM.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    Your interpretation doesn't match those of people who have analyzed it. The problem with WebM is that it may infringe on H264 patents! And its not clear they have done enough to avoid the problems. H264 has come together to form a very strong patent pool. None of the patents can be asserted against H264 (nor can the partner companies in general), but any of them can be asserted against WebM. Read JGG's account, which is still the best account to date at: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 Some quotes: "But as noted in my previous post, merely being published by Google doesn’t guarantee that it is. Microsoft did similar a few years ago with the release of VC-1, which was claimed to be patent-free but within mere months after release, a whole bunch of companies claimed patents on it and soon enough a patent pool was formed." "VP8 is simply way too similar to H.264: a pithy, if slightly inaccurate, description of VP8 would be "H.264 Baseline Profile with a better entropy coder". Even VC-1 differed more from H.264 than VP8 does, and even VC-1 didn’t manage to escape the clutches of software patents." "Most importantly, Google has not released any justifications for why the various parts of VP8 do not violate patents, as Sun did with their OMS standard: such information would certainly cut down on speculation and make it more clear what their position actually is." And not about patents, but the quality of the spec: "The spec consists largely of C code copy-pasted from the VP8 source code up to and including TODOs, optimizations, and even C-specific hacks, such as workarounds for the undefined behavior of signed right shift on negative numbers. In many places it is simply outright opaque. Copy-pasted C code is not a spec. I may have complained about the H.264 spec being overly verbose, but at least it’s precise. The VP8 spec, by comparison, is imprecise, unclear, and overly short, leaving many portions of the format very vaguely explained. Some parts even explicitly refuse to fully explain a particular feature, pointing to highly-optimized, nigh-impossible-to-understand reference code for an explanation. There’s no way in hell anyone could write a decoder solely with this spec alone." But maybe Google will fix it? Ummm think again; "Update: it seems that Google is not open to changing the spec: it is apparently "final", complete with all its flaws." I just don't see how one can feel equally comfortable with WebM.