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That's the "Good News". Now for the rest of the story: The open source part of this is nearly useless, if not completely so, as evidenced by the fact that Fir

That's the "Good News". Now for the rest of the story: The open source part of this is nearly useless, if not completely so, as evidenced by the fact that Firefox won't be using the source code. The "you don't have to pay the MPEG-LA" part only applies to the binary module. If you want to pick up this code and ship it in your own software, you'll still need to pay the MPEG-LA. The reason they are doing this is to put more weight behind H264 in the political battle in the IETF over the MTI video codec for WebRTC. But if they succeed in making H264 the MTI, and you want to write a mobile app that interops with WebRTC for doing some form of realtime video, you'll won't be able to use their source code without paying the MPEG-LA. You'd have to use their binary module, downloaded from their servers, which, as they mention in the Q&A, is impossible on iOS. The announcement seems to try hard to smudge this distinction and push it into the fine print, but there's still a patent "elephant in the room". TL;DR: This doesn't solve the patent issues surrounding h264, and doesn't make it anymore suitable as an MTI for WebRTC.

davidw 13y ago
Here's Monty's "we lost" announcement: http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/61927.html http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/61927.html Which goes into some of the details of the fight for a free web.
- pthatcherg 13y ago
  I sure hope he's wrong. Personally, I think a patent-encumbered MTI codec for WebRTC would be a very bad, especially for the open source community: - You can't have a spec-compliant implementation of WebRTC by compiling and running Firefox yourself. You need to download extra binaries from Cisco. - You can't have a spec-compliant implementation of WebRTC in your Linux distro, without including binaries from Cisco. - You can't write an Android app that uses the library from webrtc.org to interop with WebRTC in the browsers without downloading binaries from Cisco (unless you pay the MPEG-LA). - You can't write an iOS app to interop with WebRTC in the browsers, at all, because you can't download binaries from Cisco (unless you pay the MPEG-LA). - You can't build open source projects that fully interop with WebRTC, without dancing around all the lingering patent issues. In all these situations, having h264 as the MTI is worse than having no MTI at all.
  - wmf 13y ago
    You can't write an Android app ... You can't write an iOS app... Realistically, don't phones provide already-licensed hardware codecs?
    - pygy_ 13y ago
      They do. That's an advantage that H.264 has over the alternatives: it is ubiquitous on phones and tablets.
      - gcb0 13y ago
        because the phone browser is "sold" to you. When you buy a phone, even if you are going to wipe out the OS and install something else, you already paid hundreds of dollars on licensing. Heck microsoft quarter only had a profit because of license fees on android. It is the microsoft taxes on PC all over again. Only this time MPEGLA learned the lesson from MP3 and got their licensing claws sharpened.
        pygy_ 13y ago
        I mean it as "a practical advantage regarding user reach", not a technical or economical advantage. I agree with you that patent encumbered technologies don't have their place in open standards. The current situation sucks.
        wmf 13y ago
        Phones (and virtually any other electronic product) contain dozens of licensed technologies including ARM, Wi-Fi, 3G/4G, etc. Do you object to those as well, or just codecs?
        nitrogen 13y ago
        One step at a time. Fight for open codecs today, and maybe 50 years from now we'll reach a 100% open stack, from hardware to software and wireless protocols, that provides a free baseline available for implementation by any company or individual without royalties.
plorkyeran 13y ago
> You'd have to use their binary module, downloaded from their servers, which, as they mention in the Q&A, is impossible on iOS. Which would be a bit more of an issue if iOS didn't already ship a h264 encoder and decoder.
- pthatcherg 13y ago
  Is it usable for realtime video? Are there any video chat iOS apps that use it? Edit: I mean usable by apps other than Apple-owned apps such as Facetime.
  - Camillo 13y ago
    Apple's own FaceTime.
    - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
      I assume he's asking about 3rd party software, which may be more limited than what Apple's built in software is allowed to do.
      - pthatcherg 13y ago
        That's correct. I updated my comment. By the way, someone else commented further down that Apple doesn't allow third party apps to use it for realtime (video chat). But I can't verify if that's true or not.
        eyesee 13y ago
        Apple doesn't facilitate realtime use through AVFoundation, but there are workarounds. Apple doesn't specifically restrict realtime use and does approve apps using the workarounds.
  - yardie 13y ago
    Skype, oovoo, probably a few others.
ajross 13y ago
It's also just a software implementation AFAICT. This does nothing for people wanting to ship open source drivers for all the various hardware codecs (some of which have open source implementations already) on device SoCs. It doesn't even allow shipping the identical codec on platforms that Cisco didn't build for (e.g. no OpenBSD or uclibc for you!). Basically this sucks. Opposition to H.264 was being driven more or less exclusively by open source browsers, and Cisco crafted a compromise that was (just barely) acceptable to the people leading the fight, and did nothing for anyone else.
- hsivonen 13y ago
  You should try sending OpenBSD-targetin cross-compilation scripts to Cisco.
  - ams6110 13y ago
    May not really help, since OpenBSD doesn't distribute binary blobs.
gillianseed 13y ago
Yes this sucks, it's obviously MPEGLA's (of which Cisco is a member as a h264 patent holder) move to prevent WebRTC from standardizing around VP8/VP9 (which is already supported in Firefox and Chrome), so instead we are to rely on a binary blob from Cisco for royalty free WebRTC (Flash all over again). The big stink is how Firefox is supporting this, it's like a huge betrayal of the principles of an open web which is what I directly associate Mozilla with. As a long time Firefox user and promoter I feel betrayed.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- BrendanEich 13y ago
  We "betrayed" by not doing what, exactly? H.264 won the HTML5 video battle, as noted at http://brendaneich.com/2012/03/video-mobile-and-the-open-web/ http://brendaneich.com/2012/03/video-mobile-and-the-open-web.... If anyone betrayed someone then, it was Google for not doing as they explicitly blogged they would by removing H.264 support from HTML5 video in Chrome. (But I understand why they didn't; they're realists.) For WebRTC where there is no extant/legacy content reason for us (not speaking for Cisco) to require H.264, we prefer VP8 over baseline H.264, but do not at this point want to rule out either. And on mobile devices, especially at the low end, the h/w codec advantage for H.264 is material. Even next-year-announced chipsets with VP9 support tend to have only h/w VP9 decoding and at best s/w encoding (perhaps on an extra ARM core!). Your fancy camera with video short-take capabality has boiled H.264 encoding as well as decoding into even low-end SoCs. How much this means for battery life, we are still digging into, but it's not trivial for long WebRTC calls. Instead of dramatic talk about betrayal, where you seem to expect Mozilla to fall on the nearest sword stood up and aimed at our gut (probably by a competitor), and die a glorious but pointless death, think about the long run. H.264's price ceiling is now $0. This matters for future codecs. Between our work on Daala, and downloadable codecs such as OTOY's ORBX.js, there is a better and unrestricted future to invent. Join us, if you can be realistic about H.264 h/w advantages. /be
  - gillianseed 13y ago
    You already knew about how much more/better support h264 had long before you embarked on what now comes across as nothing but a charade as you turn coat ONE WEEK before the WebRTC future is being voted on, you KNEW this so what has changed? Oh, what has changed is that now you, Mozilla, can use h264 royalty free, that is what has changed. So suddenly open source royalty free standards aren't that important anymore. I threw up a little in my mouth when I read -'we lost the fight' from Monty, you didn't fight! Instead you switched sides one week before the vote because MPEGLA threw you a bone. And if all it boils down to in the end is 'hardware advantages' then you can just drop the pretense of Dalaa right now, it will NEVER be anything but much less supported than the latest offering from the MPEGLA cartel, so from that very perspective it's nothing but vaporware. MPEGLA was terrified of WebRTC and HTML5 standardising under a truly royalty free open source codec which could be used anywhere by anyone, so they gave you the 'flash'-style binary plugin for 'free' and you swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. This was the chance to break the royalty-laden video technology monopoly of MPEGLA by getting a truly free codec standarised, and despite you having made a show of 'carrying the torch' for royalty free open source web standards you sold out one week before showdown when Cisco called with an offer. They got you cheap.
devx 13y ago
Which is exactly why I don't understand why Mozilla would support this, instead of backing VP8? They just end up making MPEG-LA stronger, which is bad news for Daala, too, for whenever it will arrive. For Daala to succeed, MPEG-LA better not have a 99 percent monopoly by then.
- maxst 13y ago
  Mozilla is not removing VP8 support.
e12e 13y ago
> which (...) is impossible on iOS. But surely h.264 is provided by Apple for iOS/OS X? I'm not familiar with either platform (as a developer) -- but with Apple's investment in h.264 on iTunes and via Quicktime -- I would've thought this was one of the benefits of the walled garden? Please enlighten me if I'm wrong.
omgtehlion 13y ago
> and you want to write a mobile app that interops with WebRTC for doing some form of realtime video, you'll won't be able to use their source code without paying the MPEG-LA You won’t be using software implementation in a mobile app. Hardware decoding is the way to go, if you don’t want to drain the battery.

davidw 13y ago

Here's Monty's "we lost" announcement: http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/61927.html http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/61927.html Which goes into some of the details of the fight for a free web.

pthatcherg 13y ago
I sure hope he's wrong. Personally, I think a patent-encumbered MTI codec for WebRTC would be a very bad, especially for the open source community: - You can't have a spec-compliant implementation of WebRTC by compiling and running Firefox yourself. You need to download extra binaries from Cisco. - You can't have a spec-compliant implementation of WebRTC in your Linux distro, without including binaries from Cisco. - You can't write an Android app that uses the library from webrtc.org to interop with WebRTC in the browsers without downloading binaries from Cisco (unless you pay the MPEG-LA). - You can't write an iOS app to interop with WebRTC in the browsers, at all, because you can't download binaries from Cisco (unless you pay the MPEG-LA). - You can't build open source projects that fully interop with WebRTC, without dancing around all the lingering patent issues. In all these situations, having h264 as the MTI is worse than having no MTI at all.
- wmf 13y ago
  You can't write an Android app ... You can't write an iOS app... Realistically, don't phones provide already-licensed hardware codecs?
  - pygy_ 13y ago
    They do. That's an advantage that H.264 has over the alternatives: it is ubiquitous on phones and tablets.
    - gcb0 13y ago
      because the phone browser is "sold" to you. When you buy a phone, even if you are going to wipe out the OS and install something else, you already paid hundreds of dollars on licensing. Heck microsoft quarter only had a profit because of license fees on android. It is the microsoft taxes on PC all over again. Only this time MPEGLA learned the lesson from MP3 and got their licensing claws sharpened.
      - pygy_ 13y ago
        I mean it as "a practical advantage regarding user reach", not a technical or economical advantage. I agree with you that patent encumbered technologies don't have their place in open standards. The current situation sucks.
      - wmf 13y ago
        Phones (and virtually any other electronic product) contain dozens of licensed technologies including ARM, Wi-Fi, 3G/4G, etc. Do you object to those as well, or just codecs?
        nitrogen 13y ago
        One step at a time. Fight for open codecs today, and maybe 50 years from now we'll reach a 100% open stack, from hardware to software and wireless protocols, that provides a free baseline available for implementation by any company or individual without royalties.

plorkyeran 13y ago

> You'd have to use their binary module, downloaded from their servers, which, as they mention in the Q&A, is impossible on iOS. Which would be a bit more of an issue if iOS didn't already ship a h264 encoder and decoder.

pthatcherg 13y ago
Is it usable for realtime video? Are there any video chat iOS apps that use it? Edit: I mean usable by apps other than Apple-owned apps such as Facetime.
- Camillo 13y ago
  Apple's own FaceTime.
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
    I assume he's asking about 3rd party software, which may be more limited than what Apple's built in software is allowed to do.
    - pthatcherg 13y ago
      That's correct. I updated my comment. By the way, someone else commented further down that Apple doesn't allow third party apps to use it for realtime (video chat). But I can't verify if that's true or not.
      - eyesee 13y ago
        Apple doesn't facilitate realtime use through AVFoundation, but there are workarounds. Apple doesn't specifically restrict realtime use and does approve apps using the workarounds.
- yardie 13y ago
  Skype, oovoo, probably a few others.

ajross 13y ago

It's also just a software implementation AFAICT. This does nothing for people wanting to ship open source drivers for all the various hardware codecs (some of which have open source implementations already) on device SoCs. It doesn't even allow shipping the identical codec on platforms that Cisco didn't build for (e.g. no OpenBSD or uclibc for you!). Basically this sucks. Opposition to H.264 was being driven more or less exclusively by open source browsers, and Cisco crafted a compromise that was (just barely) acceptable to the people leading the fight, and did nothing for anyone else.

hsivonen 13y ago
You should try sending OpenBSD-targetin cross-compilation scripts to Cisco.
- ams6110 13y ago
  May not really help, since OpenBSD doesn't distribute binary blobs.

gillianseed 13y ago

Yes this sucks, it's obviously MPEGLA's (of which Cisco is a member as a h264 patent holder) move to prevent WebRTC from standardizing around VP8/VP9 (which is already supported in Firefox and Chrome), so instead we are to rely on a binary blob from Cisco for royalty free WebRTC (Flash all over again). The big stink is how Firefox is supporting this, it's like a huge betrayal of the principles of an open web which is what I directly associate Mozilla with. As a long time Firefox user and promoter I feel betrayed.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
BrendanEich 13y ago
We "betrayed" by not doing what, exactly? H.264 won the HTML5 video battle, as noted at http://brendaneich.com/2012/03/video-mobile-and-the-open-web/ http://brendaneich.com/2012/03/video-mobile-and-the-open-web.... If anyone betrayed someone then, it was Google for not doing as they explicitly blogged they would by removing H.264 support from HTML5 video in Chrome. (But I understand why they didn't; they're realists.) For WebRTC where there is no extant/legacy content reason for us (not speaking for Cisco) to require H.264, we prefer VP8 over baseline H.264, but do not at this point want to rule out either. And on mobile devices, especially at the low end, the h/w codec advantage for H.264 is material. Even next-year-announced chipsets with VP9 support tend to have only h/w VP9 decoding and at best s/w encoding (perhaps on an extra ARM core!). Your fancy camera with video short-take capabality has boiled H.264 encoding as well as decoding into even low-end SoCs. How much this means for battery life, we are still digging into, but it's not trivial for long WebRTC calls. Instead of dramatic talk about betrayal, where you seem to expect Mozilla to fall on the nearest sword stood up and aimed at our gut (probably by a competitor), and die a glorious but pointless death, think about the long run. H.264's price ceiling is now $0. This matters for future codecs. Between our work on Daala, and downloadable codecs such as OTOY's ORBX.js, there is a better and unrestricted future to invent. Join us, if you can be realistic about H.264 h/w advantages. /be
- gillianseed 13y ago
  You already knew about how much more/better support h264 had long before you embarked on what now comes across as nothing but a charade as you turn coat ONE WEEK before the WebRTC future is being voted on, you KNEW this so what has changed? Oh, what has changed is that now you, Mozilla, can use h264 royalty free, that is what has changed. So suddenly open source royalty free standards aren't that important anymore. I threw up a little in my mouth when I read -'we lost the fight' from Monty, you didn't fight! Instead you switched sides one week before the vote because MPEGLA threw you a bone. And if all it boils down to in the end is 'hardware advantages' then you can just drop the pretense of Dalaa right now, it will NEVER be anything but much less supported than the latest offering from the MPEGLA cartel, so from that very perspective it's nothing but vaporware. MPEGLA was terrified of WebRTC and HTML5 standardising under a truly royalty free open source codec which could be used anywhere by anyone, so they gave you the 'flash'-style binary plugin for 'free' and you swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. This was the chance to break the royalty-laden video technology monopoly of MPEGLA by getting a truly free codec standarised, and despite you having made a show of 'carrying the torch' for royalty free open source web standards you sold out one week before showdown when Cisco called with an offer. They got you cheap.

devx 13y ago

Which is exactly why I don't understand why Mozilla would support this, instead of backing VP8? They just end up making MPEG-LA stronger, which is bad news for Daala, too, for whenever it will arrive. For Daala to succeed, MPEG-LA better not have a 99 percent monopoly by then.

maxst 13y ago
Mozilla is not removing VP8 support.

e12e 13y ago

> which (...) is impossible on iOS. But surely h.264 is provided by Apple for iOS/OS X? I'm not familiar with either platform (as a developer) -- but with Apple's investment in h.264 on iTunes and via Quicktime -- I would've thought this was one of the benefits of the walled garden? Please enlighten me if I'm wrong.

omgtehlion 13y ago

> and you want to write a mobile app that interops with WebRTC for doing some form of realtime video, you'll won't be able to use their source code without paying the MPEG-LA You won’t be using software implementation in a mobile app. Hardware decoding is the way to go, if you don’t want to drain the battery.