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Open Letter to Steve Jobs (and a reply)

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Re: Open Letter to Steve Jobs (and a reply)

#21

Post by vetinari »

riferguson wrote: post #10
alec wrote: post #3

"A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now." That's kind of scary.

Presumably it would be the holders of the putatively infringed patents that would be assembling the "pool". I don't think Apple is in the Video Codec patent-holding business. As a major licensee of H.264, you'd have to presume Apple be in a position to know if someone else was rounding up the usual suspects.

Apple is not only licensee, but also licensor.

Every time you license H.264 (or something other from MPEG-4 pool), a cut goes to Apple (also to Microsoft and Nokia).

Re: Open Letter to Steve Jobs (and a reply)

#22

Post by vetinari »

pohl wrote: post #14
boredguy8 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the whole point in this debate is that Flash is also, for better or worse, an industry standard.

Is there a specification? I think "de facto standard" is a more appropriate phrase for Flash.

Yes, there is (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/).

It is even available gratis (H.264 specification is not).

Re: Open Letter to Steve Jobs (and a reply)

#23

Post by zweben »

commieneko wrote: post #16
jamesbressi wrote: post #9

Steve has been quite busy with his email lately. I don't remember him ever doing this much correspondence via email. Very interesting.

He's been doing this for years. I know several people that have gotten terse, 3 or 4 word responses to him. It's only recently that the press and the bloggers have noticed this.

He's been doing short emails for years, and the occasional open letter, but it seems that he's doing it a lot more as of late.

Presumably in response to all the recent Apple controversy.

Re: Open Letter to Steve Jobs (and a reply)

#24

Post by stingraycharles »

davidw wrote: post #5
alec wrote: post #3

"A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now." That's kind of scary.

Is it real? I am no fan of Apple or Jobs, but it almost sounds too evil . Edit: in reply to a "tweet" of mine, he posted the headers: http://hugoroy.eu/jobs-os.php It's really hard to believe they'd be such arrogant jerks as to go after something open source like that.

And on top of that, I'm pretty sure webkit infringes at least some patents too, which is used as an example of Apple supporting and contributing to open source. So he's using double standards again.

Re: Open Letter to Steve Jobs (and a reply)

#25

Post by riferguson »

vetinari wrote: post #21
riferguson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably it would be the holders of the putatively infringed patents that would be assembling the "pool". I don't think Apple is in the Video Codec patent-holding business. As a major licensee of H.264, you'd have to presume Apple be in a position to know if someone else was rounding up the usual suspects.

Apple is not only licensee, but also licensor. Every time you license H.264 (or something other from MPEG-4 pool), a cut goes to Apple (also to Microsoft and Nokia).

I stand corrected.

Apple has one patent in the H.264 pool, US 7292636, and one in the MPEG-4 Systems pool, US 6134243. I have no idea if either of these would be relevant to Theora.

For what it's worth, there are hundreds of patents in the total MPEG-LA pool.

Re: Open Letter to Steve Jobs (and a reply)

#26

Post by andr »

While I agree with the spirit of the message to Steve, the attack on Apple not sharing back open source software modifications is out of place. Darwin is open source. WebKit is open source and actively developed by Apple, giving competitors the ability to quickly catch up with one of the iPhone's biggest advantages. Apple is also the chief contributor to LLVM.

Re: Open Letter to Steve Jobs (and a reply)

#27

Post by kierank »

vetinari wrote: post #22
pohl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a specification? I think "de facto standard" is a more appropriate phrase for Flash.

Yes, there is ( http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ ). It is even available gratis (H.264 specification is not).

H.264 specification is available gratis: http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264-200903-S/en

Re: Open Letter to Steve Jobs (and a reply)

#30

Post by pohl »

vetinari wrote: post #22
pohl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a specification? I think "de facto standard" is a more appropriate phrase for Flash.

Yes, there is ( http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ ). It is even available gratis (H.264 specification is not).

Interesting, but I don't see how one could create a complete implementation without a spec for the Sorensen Spark codec.
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