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I don't claim that W3C or IETF should standardise on H.264. I think it is perfectly sensible for them to hold the line but the practical reality for implementer

I don't claim that W3C or IETF should standardise on H.264. I think it is perfectly sensible for them to hold the line but the practical reality for implementers is that H.264 is a commercial requirement. Note that I said "greater risk" not that there was no risk for H.264 or that it is a massive showstopper for VP8. I stand by my statement although this really isn't critical EXCEPT for the fact that due to FRAND commitments potential claims are limited (as the Motorola/Google case is showing). If you have made no FRAND commitments you can get injunctions or ask for outrageous (hundreds of millions of dollars or even billions) licensing fees but if FRAND commitments have been made you cannot do this as the courts are educating Google/Motorola. The obvious baseline for W3C to adopt would in my view be MPEG1 allowing a fallback to a safe free codec and modern non free codecs to be used otherwise.

shmerl 13y ago
Quality is important. Using poor quality common denominator is a bad idea. Once Nokia attack is cleared, VPx would be good to use again as a base available open codec. FRAND or non FRAND can affect damages, but as I said above it doesn't change the non redistributable nature of anything that depends on it.
- josephlord 13y ago
  I'm not convinced Nokia will lose. Even if Nokia lose and no-one else comes forward the Google licence is non-redistributable anyway so for many purposes is no better than the AVC one. Freedom, zero cost, quality, low legal risk. Choose two.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    Anything can happen, but On2 was diligent in evaluating public patents related to video. So it looks like Nokia is spoofing things up. Time will tell of course. One of the benefits of the IETF process is the requirement to disclose all the patents, so they can be evaluated and refuted if possible. I'm sure WebM project is busy with reviewing this. Freedom, zero cost, quality, low legal risk. Where did you find freedom and zero cost there? Low legal risk is a myth in the land of patent minefields. the Google license is non-redistributable anyway Again wrong. VPx content as well as encoders and decoders are redistributable under the current license which is fully open source compatible.
    - josephlord 13y ago
      >> Freedom, zero cost, quality, low legal risk. > Where did you find freedom and zero cost there? Low legal risk is a myth in the land of patent minefields. I made it up, couldn't narrow it down to three. MPEG1 is low risk, free and Free now. AVC is low risk now it has been a juicy target for long enough to draw out trolls and it is high quality. VP8 is high quality and zero cost. The license that Google has from the MPEG-LA doesn't seem to allow for those who accept the license to sub license. If this is incorrect please send a reference. You seem to be of the view that the pool contents are either invalid or non-essential. Until I see a detailed study of them that indicates this with claim by claim explanations I will assume that at least some may be valid. Now Google has taken the license it is highly unlikely they will challenge the pool patents (and they may be contractually obliged not to). This means there is no big player likely to fight the patents and make the status clearly open source compatible.
      - shmerl 13y ago
        Ah, I see, I thought you meant all 3 as related to H.264. > The license that Google has from the MPEG-LA doesn't seem to allow for those who accept the license to sub license. The license is a FUD reduction tool. You can simply ignore it in the context of the open source license of the codec itself - it's not part of that license at all. > You seem to be of the view that the pool contents are either invalid or non-essential. Until I see a detailed study of them that indicates this with claim by claim explanations I will assume that at least some may be valid. Now Google has taken the license it is highly unlikely they will challenge the pool patents (and they may be contractually obliged not to). This means there is no big player likely to fight the patents and make the status clearly open source compatible. I'm not sure what you are talking about - patents that MPEG-LA supposedly has against VP8, or the patents that Nokia presented against it? If the former, those contents can as well be simply non existent and their potential existence used as a tool to spread FUD. Until anything is publicly presented (like Nokia did), there is no reason to pay attention to that "pool". Note that Google didn't license any patents that are known to be affecting VP8. Nothing like that. They just licensed "something", so that MPEG-LA would stop making statements like "what a good codec you have here, a pity if something would happen to it if and when we find some patents against it". I.e. Google bribed them to stop spreading FUD. In no way does it demonstrate that MPEG-LA has any actual patents against VP8. If the later - the list is published, and now in the process of being reviewed / refuted. Let's see how that works out.

shmerl 13y ago

Quality is important. Using poor quality common denominator is a bad idea. Once Nokia attack is cleared, VPx would be good to use again as a base available open codec. FRAND or non FRAND can affect damages, but as I said above it doesn't change the non redistributable nature of anything that depends on it.

josephlord 13y ago
I'm not convinced Nokia will lose. Even if Nokia lose and no-one else comes forward the Google licence is non-redistributable anyway so for many purposes is no better than the AVC one. Freedom, zero cost, quality, low legal risk. Choose two.
- shmerl 13y ago
  Anything can happen, but On2 was diligent in evaluating public patents related to video. So it looks like Nokia is spoofing things up. Time will tell of course. One of the benefits of the IETF process is the requirement to disclose all the patents, so they can be evaluated and refuted if possible. I'm sure WebM project is busy with reviewing this. Freedom, zero cost, quality, low legal risk. Where did you find freedom and zero cost there? Low legal risk is a myth in the land of patent minefields. the Google license is non-redistributable anyway Again wrong. VPx content as well as encoders and decoders are redistributable under the current license which is fully open source compatible.
  - josephlord 13y ago
    >> Freedom, zero cost, quality, low legal risk. > Where did you find freedom and zero cost there? Low legal risk is a myth in the land of patent minefields. I made it up, couldn't narrow it down to three. MPEG1 is low risk, free and Free now. AVC is low risk now it has been a juicy target for long enough to draw out trolls and it is high quality. VP8 is high quality and zero cost. The license that Google has from the MPEG-LA doesn't seem to allow for those who accept the license to sub license. If this is incorrect please send a reference. You seem to be of the view that the pool contents are either invalid or non-essential. Until I see a detailed study of them that indicates this with claim by claim explanations I will assume that at least some may be valid. Now Google has taken the license it is highly unlikely they will challenge the pool patents (and they may be contractually obliged not to). This means there is no big player likely to fight the patents and make the status clearly open source compatible.
    - shmerl 13y ago
      Ah, I see, I thought you meant all 3 as related to H.264. > The license that Google has from the MPEG-LA doesn't seem to allow for those who accept the license to sub license. The license is a FUD reduction tool. You can simply ignore it in the context of the open source license of the codec itself - it's not part of that license at all. > You seem to be of the view that the pool contents are either invalid or non-essential. Until I see a detailed study of them that indicates this with claim by claim explanations I will assume that at least some may be valid. Now Google has taken the license it is highly unlikely they will challenge the pool patents (and they may be contractually obliged not to). This means there is no big player likely to fight the patents and make the status clearly open source compatible. I'm not sure what you are talking about - patents that MPEG-LA supposedly has against VP8, or the patents that Nokia presented against it? If the former, those contents can as well be simply non existent and their potential existence used as a tool to spread FUD. Until anything is publicly presented (like Nokia did), there is no reason to pay attention to that "pool". Note that Google didn't license any patents that are known to be affecting VP8. Nothing like that. They just licensed "something", so that MPEG-LA would stop making statements like "what a good codec you have here, a pity if something would happen to it if and when we find some patents against it". I.e. Google bribed them to stop spreading FUD. In no way does it demonstrate that MPEG-LA has any actual patents against VP8. If the later - the list is published, and now in the process of being reviewed / refuted. Let's see how that works out.