3 ms·

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 WEE

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.

BrendanEich 13y ago
You are not making any sense. First, MTI votes in IETF are tricky to predict, but here is a safe bet: VPx was never going to win sole MTI. Not ever. Second, if we had not been fighting -- and holding to only WebM for HTML5 video until last year -- while our competition was shipping H.264 for HTML video, you might be able to say that we didn't fight. If we had not tried to make s/w VP8 perform on lower-end mobile phones ahead of others including Google, you might make that charge. But we did those things and failed. We learned from those negative results. What have you done? What have you learned? Where is your skin in the game? Third, MPEG LA has not thrown us a bone. Cisco != MPEG LA. Taking H.264 to zero price is a net public good and a prerequisite for getting RF licensing of part or all of H.264 for all desktop systems (since rents there, as opposed to on mobile devices, are running low). When we do that in the next year (or sooner) based on taking the price to zero, and gain free as in speech licensing, will you thank us? Not likely. Fourth, MPEG LA was not terrified of HTML5 standardizing on a truly RF codec, because HTML5 was never going to do any such thing. Now you're just confabulating. Again, read http://brendaneich.com/2012/03/video-mobile-and-the-open-web/ http://brendaneich.com/2012/03/video-mobile-and-the-open-web... and wake up and smell last year's coffee. As for "they got you cheap", if I were about money, I would have gone to Google ages ago. If Mozilla were about money we would have sold out in any number of ways. This is not about money, it is about interoperation and zero-price ceiling for H.264 now, and RF licensing for desktop next -- and after that, better codecs that are defensibly unencumbered and/or downloadable in JS and WebGL2 or better (probably both). None of this is easy to pull off. Rejecting interoperation is a sure way to die fast for no good end. Shouting about betrayal on HN is cheap and easy by comparison. Try doing something productive for a change. /be
- nitrogen 13y ago
  Is it possible to have VP8 as a mandatory baseline on platforms that support it, so at least all desktop users could rely on having VP8 support in WebRTC, even if Firefox still has to support H.264 for WebRTC calls to/from mobile devices?
  - BrendanEich 13y ago
    Yes, that is possible (technically), but again, in the view of people on the scene whom I trust, VP8 was never -- meaning extremely unlokely -- going to win MTI. Likely outcomes: no MTI or H.264 MTI. No MTI would let peers negotiate, and VP8 does win against baseline h.264 on quality. Then the question becomes: will all the bigs support it? We do, and will.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  > Taking H.264 to zero price is a net public good and a prerequisite for getting RF licensing of part or all of H.264 for all desktop systems (since rents there, as opposed to on mobile devices, are running low). More realistically, this just lets them have an escape valve for the one area that was likely to rock the boat, while not impacting their revenue at all (likely increasing it in fact). It's a standard cartel move, which they already used by charging TV networks, and pay TV on the web, but carving out exceptions for video porn ("any paid video under 12 minutes") and the web. How exactly this gets sold as "non-discriminatory" I don't know, but then I don't understand how moving a file across a network can trigger payments for patents on the encoder used to produce it either. It's a tricky subject, but I don't think allowing monopolies to price discriminate can be described as a "net public good" in the same that say, not allowing monopolies could be. I understand the compromise, I'd prefer it if Mozilla fully understood it too. edit: I just realised that by "a prerequisite for getting RF licensing of part or all of H.264" you're probably referring to the ongoing effort (started before H.264 was even begun) to get H.264 Baseline under proper RF terms, rather than "getting the blob for free" which is how I first took it. It would certainly be nice, but it seems to have failed repeatedly over the years.
  - BrendanEich 13y ago

BrendanEich 13y ago

You are not making any sense. First, MTI votes in IETF are tricky to predict, but here is a safe bet: VPx was never going to win sole MTI. Not ever. Second, if we had not been fighting -- and holding to only WebM for HTML5 video until last year -- while our competition was shipping H.264 for HTML video, you might be able to say that we didn't fight. If we had not tried to make s/w VP8 perform on lower-end mobile phones ahead of others including Google, you might make that charge. But we did those things and failed. We learned from those negative results. What have you done? What have you learned? Where is your skin in the game? Third, MPEG LA has not thrown us a bone. Cisco != MPEG LA. Taking H.264 to zero price is a net public good and a prerequisite for getting RF licensing of part or all of H.264 for all desktop systems (since rents there, as opposed to on mobile devices, are running low). When we do that in the next year (or sooner) based on taking the price to zero, and gain free as in speech licensing, will you thank us? Not likely. Fourth, MPEG LA was not terrified of HTML5 standardizing on a truly RF codec, because HTML5 was never going to do any such thing. Now you're just confabulating. Again, read http://brendaneich.com/2012/03/video-mobile-and-the-open-web/ http://brendaneich.com/2012/03/video-mobile-and-the-open-web... and wake up and smell last year's coffee. As for "they got you cheap", if I were about money, I would have gone to Google ages ago. If Mozilla were about money we would have sold out in any number of ways. This is not about money, it is about interoperation and zero-price ceiling for H.264 now, and RF licensing for desktop next -- and after that, better codecs that are defensibly unencumbered and/or downloadable in JS and WebGL2 or better (probably both). None of this is easy to pull off. Rejecting interoperation is a sure way to die fast for no good end. Shouting about betrayal on HN is cheap and easy by comparison. Try doing something productive for a change. /be

nitrogen 13y ago
Is it possible to have VP8 as a mandatory baseline on platforms that support it, so at least all desktop users could rely on having VP8 support in WebRTC, even if Firefox still has to support H.264 for WebRTC calls to/from mobile devices?
- BrendanEich 13y ago
  Yes, that is possible (technically), but again, in the view of people on the scene whom I trust, VP8 was never -- meaning extremely unlokely -- going to win MTI. Likely outcomes: no MTI or H.264 MTI. No MTI would let peers negotiate, and VP8 does win against baseline h.264 on quality. Then the question becomes: will all the bigs support it? We do, and will.
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
> Taking H.264 to zero price is a net public good and a prerequisite for getting RF licensing of part or all of H.264 for all desktop systems (since rents there, as opposed to on mobile devices, are running low). More realistically, this just lets them have an escape valve for the one area that was likely to rock the boat, while not impacting their revenue at all (likely increasing it in fact). It's a standard cartel move, which they already used by charging TV networks, and pay TV on the web, but carving out exceptions for video porn ("any paid video under 12 minutes") and the web. How exactly this gets sold as "non-discriminatory" I don't know, but then I don't understand how moving a file across a network can trigger payments for patents on the encoder used to produce it either. It's a tricky subject, but I don't think allowing monopolies to price discriminate can be described as a "net public good" in the same that say, not allowing monopolies could be. I understand the compromise, I'd prefer it if Mozilla fully understood it too. edit: I just realised that by "a prerequisite for getting RF licensing of part or all of H.264" you're probably referring to the ongoing effort (started before H.264 was even begun) to get H.264 Baseline under proper RF terms, rather than "getting the blob for free" which is how I first took it. It would certainly be nice, but it seems to have failed repeatedly over the years.
- BrendanEich 13y ago