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Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

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Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#151

Post by TheCondor »

mikekchar wrote: post #128
TheCondor wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can program it, you can use it. You might have trouble distributing it or selling it. Is it better to patent something and tell the whole world how to do it? Or is it better to just keep it secret? It seems like some refinements to when you can sue might be in order, specifically, I might outlaw suing if you don't market an implementation of your own; that radically changes the value of a lot of property though.

Actually, the crazy things about patents is the you can't legally program it, even for your own use. As a programmer, I am firmly against software patents. They are a burden only. How many programmers troll patents thinking, "I'll look for useful techniques so that I can license them in my program"? Even if you wanted to, you couldn't because there are millions of them. And if you start looking, you may get sued for…

You absolutely can implement it for your own use, research, etc. distribution and sale of code implementing patents is potentially problematic.

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#152

Post by TheCondor »

shadowmint wrote: post #132
TheCondor wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can program it, you can use it. You might have trouble distributing it or selling it. Is it better to patent something and tell the whole world how to do it? Or is it better to just keep it secret? It seems like some refinements to when you can sue might be in order, specifically, I might outlaw suing if you don't market an implementation of your own; that radically changes the value of a lot of property though.

> Is it better to patent something and tell the whole world how to do it? Or is it better to just keep it secret? Where did this 'patents are good because they make inventions public' idea suddenly come from? I've seen it bandied around a lot lately from people who are uncomfortable with directly supporting patents. No. It's not better. Don't be ridiculous. > Or is it better to just keep it secret? How do you imagine…

Patenting your algorithm is going to make you more likely to be sued by patent trolls? That's not how it works... More importantly, why aren't the hevc groups doing this to each other?

It's not about privacy, it's about the competitive advantage of inventing something better.

Why do insanely profitable companies get patents?

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#153

Post by marrs »

TheCondor wrote: post #152
shadowmint wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it better to patent something and tell the whole world how to do it? Or is it better to just keep it secret? Where did this 'patents are good because they make inventions public' idea suddenly come from? I've seen it bandied around a lot lately from people who are uncomfortable with directly supporting patents. No. It's not better. Don't be ridiculous. > Or is it better to just keep it secret? How do you imagine…

Patenting your algorithm is going to make you more likely to be sued by patent trolls? That's not how it works... More importantly, why aren't the hevc groups doing this to each other? It's not about privacy, it's about the competitive advantage of inventing something better. Why do insanely profitable companies get patents?

Either to help them wage war against less profitable companies or to help defend themselves against an attack from a fellow superpower.

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#154

Post by marrs »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #77
russtrotter wrote: post #58

Wasn't Ogg Theora created under just the same principles? I'm not smart enough in all things codec to know how it stacks up technically, but best I can tell, it's unencumbered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora

Theora simply can't do what H264 can. example: http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/ogg-vs-h264-...

Does anyone care? https://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.htm...

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#155

Post by ZeroGravitas »

russtrotter wrote: post #58

Wasn't Ogg Theora created under just the same principles? I'm not smart enough in all things codec to know how it stacks up technically, but best I can tell, it's unencumbered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora

The key principle in Thor development is doing it in the IETF process. Theora is much more like VP8 and VP9 in approach (it was based on VP3). The technical approach, basically use fairly standard approaches while avoiding the patent landmines, is similar across all these projects, it's doing it in the IETF that's different for Thor and may aid acceptance in some quarters, and help avoid some patent issues.

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#156

Post by anon1385 »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #142
anon1385 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that odd? It is pretty much a textbook example of a proprietary standard. Here are some definitions of "proprietary" as used by members of the FOSS community when talking about standards: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4634957 (BrendanEich) >"Proprietary" as in "sole proprietor" is appropriate for a project with zero governance, launched by Google after some incubation closed-source, dominated by Googler…

That is a really odd thing to claim, given that there are so many proponents of the MIT license. People claim that MIT is "more free than GPL" because MIT has less restrictions. GPL has more restrictions, and although those restrictions are there to ensure that the same rights are passed on other people, MIT proponents don't buy that argument: they argue that even if someone forks an open source project, slap a GUI o…

Did you apply to the correct comment? Your post doesn't make much sense. We are talking about standards not code. Code is an implementation of the standard, and the license of the code is irrelevant to the status of the standard.

Forking standards is completely different to forking a codebase. It should be obvious why.

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#157

Post by shmerl »

0x09 wrote: post #146
shmerl wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Thor based on similar principles to Daala (i.e. like lapped transforms) to make it useful for merging? And unrelated question, what will be the name of the merged codec? I hope it won't remain as NetVC, as that name is awful.

According to the spec, Thor is a more traditional block-based codec with quadtree subdivisions in the vein of H.264 and forward. Beyond that the design is rather conservative and different from Daala's "start over from scratch" methodology. It doesn't look like the two would be poised to merge directly a-la Opus at this point, but rather to be mutual test beds and borrow and exchange unencumbered ideas that work well…

I see, thanks.

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#158

Post by ChrisLomont »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #88
ChrisLomont wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many more products besides the few that skirt the law. >What do you think most early iPod adopters filled the disks with? The first iPods shipped with decoders for several patented codecs, including mp3. This supports my claim that the codecs were not prohibitively expensive to make gadgets that include royalty payments to codec patent holders.

Apple refused to release QuickTime 6 until the MPEG-LA licensing for MPEG-4 was changed. This supports the claim that codec licensing has always been a contentious area.

I agree it has always been contentious. I disagree that it was "prohibitively expensive".

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#159

Post by indolering »

Animats wrote: post #61
TD-Linux wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by MP4 you are referring to H.264, there are still many years remaining on most of the patents. MPEG-LA publishes patent lists, if you're interested to look. You are right in that there are many other encumbered technologies that have patents expiring soon. MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video, MP3 and AC3 audio, and several container formats are included. Notably, this is almost all of the technologies required to make a DVD.

Yes, MPEG-LA publishes lists, and they need to be looked at closely. Most of the patents have expired. When you go down the list, you see things such as US #6,181,712, which has to do with multiplexing two unrelated video streams into one. Broadcasters and cable systems do this, but Internet video does not. US #6,160,849 only applies to compression of interlaced video, which nobody uses on line. US #7,627,041 is abou…

I don't want to disagree just to be disagreeable, but I don't find much correlation between applicability of patents and their ability to prevent adoption of libre codecs. I've run through a few video patents myself (from the ones Nokia/MS claimed VP8 infringed on) and they were absurdity hidden behind legalize. Daala's approach at taking a radically different design is much more comforting. That being said, even IPR claims have scared off adoption of Opus by Digium : (

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#160

Post by indolering »

0x09 wrote: post #147
slacka wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's not just open source, it's BSD which is about as none restrictive as you can get. So now 1) Open Source 2) Royalty-free 3) Free as in beer 4) Free as in freedom (Open Source OSI certified BSD) Software can now be call proprietary? pro·pri·e·tar·y : of or relating to an owner or ownership. So what is this guys saying. That now anything with a company behind is is proprietary? Linux has got LMI, so I guess tha…

VPx reference software is open source. The article is not referring to the software but the specification which is developed and published by Google (a private company), as opposed to an open standards consortium like ISO, ITU or the IETF. VP8 was published as an informational RFC under the IETF, but not as part of a standards track, see "Not All RFCs are Standards": https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1796

Parent has the right idea. One of the few valid criticisms of VP8 was that the code /was/ the standard, so you had to reverse engineer the encoder/decoder. This is not only a PITA but also prompts questions such as whether an obvious bug is part of the spec.

It also took a full year after Google bought the company behind VP8 to actually release the code. Someone from Firefox actually wrote an open letter to Google basically asking WTF was going on.

I don't have any first or even second hand knowledge of the current situation, but I suspect that Google has continued to ... not collaborate as much as everyone else would like.

(Caveat emptor: the above is based off of memory of events that took place a few years ago.)

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