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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, i

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
  We at Mozilla understand things like divide-and-conquer to achieve a uniformly public good just fine, thanks. Do you really insist on all or nothing at a given instant? That is not how Firefox took on IE and took back the web, restarting competition and standardization. Sorry, we aren't able to take on the patent system in full. Note that US "health care" cartels practice legal price discrimination, they are exempt from Robinson-Patman. Still, piecewise reform can make a net public good. On RF for some or all profiles, see my point about desktop rents. Time passes. Just because something did not work in the past does not mean it won't in changed future circumstances.
gillianseed 13y ago
>Third, MPEG LA has not thrown us a bone. Cisco != MPEG LA. Oh please, Cisco is part of MPEG LA and you'd have to be incredibly naive to believe that this was Cisco striking it out on their own to offer a 'solution'. This is MPEG LA's offering, brought to you by one of it's members. And likewise it doesn't take a genious to realize that you switching sides one week before the vote came as a result of discussion with Cisco, to offer broader support for h264 as the WebRTC standard. So yes, I say you sold out. >Fourth, MPEG LA was not terrified of HTML5 standardizing on a truly RF codec, because HTML5 was never going to do any such thing. Oh I'm sure this royalty free h264 binary blob offering from MPEG LA was due to the kindness of their hearts. Of course they were terrified, because even if this was just for WebRTC and not HTML5, it would have set a precedent for a fully open source and royalty free codec, with all the benefits that come along with it, which in turn would increase demands for fully open web video solutions in all areas. Also you totally avoided the question I posed regarding your 'hardware support' argument, and where that leaves Dalaa as anything more than a toy project. I held you guys to much too high standards it seems (much higher than any others in the web industry), I was obviously wrong.
- BrendanEich 13y ago
  You wrote "MPEGLA was terrified of WebRTC and HTML5 standardising under a truly royalty free ...". Note the conjunction, also the past tense ("was"). When I called you on being wrong (HTML was never going to standardize on VP8/WebM), you changed your argument. Are you implying that WebRTC making VP9 (not 8) MTI would in the future affect HTML? If so, dream on. If not, you shifted your argument, and plonk. BTW I answered your Daala vs. hardware question. Read more carefully. Getting into hardware as second codec is hard for any codec, even with a big sugar daddy (Google). Leapfrog via the GPU is the better way.
- BrendanEich 13y ago
  > Oh I'm sure this royalty free h264 binary blob offering from MPEG LA was due to the kindness of their hearts. That's not from MPEG LA to us. That is from Cisco to everyone who wants to use a blog, and it's permitted by the licensing, just the same as Flash today can be downloaded from Adobe as a binary blob and neither I (as a user) nor Mozilla needs to pay MPEG LA. I still see lots of anger, as well as confusion. Anger leads to the dark side. A hopeful sign, kind of: you started with "betrayal" (Harold Pinter play!) and now you are faulting Mozilla for being confused, or for not reforming All The Things instantly. A bit of a climb-down -- just sayin'. Please note that we don't like any of the bad patent-pooling, rent-seeking behavior either. Failing to overcome it all at once, finding an incremental path to what we believe will be a better future, not throwing ourselves on all the swords, is part of how Mozilla operates. If you want purity, there are prefs you can set and add-ons you can install in Firefox. If that's not pure enough because you have to set prefs or use add-ons, there are tiny share browsers you can use instead. I'm not saying "there's the door", rather I'm explicitly reaffirming that Mozilla does not consider every bad reality imposed on competitive browsers to be a make-or-break principle test (Monty made it sound like that; Mitchell and I do not agree), which we can pass only by rejecting reality and therefore very likely shrinking to tiny market share. /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
We at Mozilla understand things like divide-and-conquer to achieve a uniformly public good just fine, thanks. Do you really insist on all or nothing at a given instant? That is not how Firefox took on IE and took back the web, restarting competition and standardization. Sorry, we aren't able to take on the patent system in full. Note that US "health care" cartels practice legal price discrimination, they are exempt from Robinson-Patman. Still, piecewise reform can make a net public good. On RF for some or all profiles, see my point about desktop rents. Time passes. Just because something did not work in the past does not mean it won't in changed future circumstances.

gillianseed 13y ago

>Third, MPEG LA has not thrown us a bone. Cisco != MPEG LA. Oh please, Cisco is part of MPEG LA and you'd have to be incredibly naive to believe that this was Cisco striking it out on their own to offer a 'solution'. This is MPEG LA's offering, brought to you by one of it's members. And likewise it doesn't take a genious to realize that you switching sides one week before the vote came as a result of discussion with Cisco, to offer broader support for h264 as the WebRTC standard. So yes, I say you sold out. >Fourth, MPEG LA was not terrified of HTML5 standardizing on a truly RF codec, because HTML5 was never going to do any such thing. Oh I'm sure this royalty free h264 binary blob offering from MPEG LA was due to the kindness of their hearts. Of course they were terrified, because even if this was just for WebRTC and not HTML5, it would have set a precedent for a fully open source and royalty free codec, with all the benefits that come along with it, which in turn would increase demands for fully open web video solutions in all areas. Also you totally avoided the question I posed regarding your 'hardware support' argument, and where that leaves Dalaa as anything more than a toy project. I held you guys to much too high standards it seems (much higher than any others in the web industry), I was obviously wrong.

BrendanEich 13y ago
You wrote "MPEGLA was terrified of WebRTC and HTML5 standardising under a truly royalty free ...". Note the conjunction, also the past tense ("was"). When I called you on being wrong (HTML was never going to standardize on VP8/WebM), you changed your argument. Are you implying that WebRTC making VP9 (not 8) MTI would in the future affect HTML? If so, dream on. If not, you shifted your argument, and plonk. BTW I answered your Daala vs. hardware question. Read more carefully. Getting into hardware as second codec is hard for any codec, even with a big sugar daddy (Google). Leapfrog via the GPU is the better way.
BrendanEich 13y ago
> Oh I'm sure this royalty free h264 binary blob offering from MPEG LA was due to the kindness of their hearts. That's not from MPEG LA to us. That is from Cisco to everyone who wants to use a blog, and it's permitted by the licensing, just the same as Flash today can be downloaded from Adobe as a binary blob and neither I (as a user) nor Mozilla needs to pay MPEG LA. I still see lots of anger, as well as confusion. Anger leads to the dark side. A hopeful sign, kind of: you started with "betrayal" (Harold Pinter play!) and now you are faulting Mozilla for being confused, or for not reforming All The Things instantly. A bit of a climb-down -- just sayin'. Please note that we don't like any of the bad patent-pooling, rent-seeking behavior either. Failing to overcome it all at once, finding an incremental path to what we believe will be a better future, not throwing ourselves on all the swords, is part of how Mozilla operates. If you want purity, there are prefs you can set and add-ons you can install in Firefox. If that's not pure enough because you have to set prefs or use add-ons, there are tiny share browsers you can use instead. I'm not saying "there's the door", rather I'm explicitly reaffirming that Mozilla does not consider every bad reality imposed on competitive browsers to be a make-or-break principle test (Monty made it sound like that; Mitchell and I do not agree), which we can pass only by rejecting reality and therefore very likely shrinking to tiny market share. /be