Open Letter to Steve Jobs (and a reply) • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by 10ren » Fri, Apr 30, 2010, 4:15 PM UTC

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.

Google purchased the creators (On2 Technologies) of the basis (VP3) of Theora. http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/04/google-will-open-so...

Now, just because you create something doesn't mean it doesn't infringe on someone's patent (read: it could infringe a patent). However, google presumably did some serious due-diligence before forking over their measly $133M, especially on the patent position. That doesn't make mean they're right, but it does mean that they think the patent position is pretty strong. Of course, they would have focused on VP8, the one they bought, not Theora's VP3 (and which might infringe due to subsequent open-source additions.)

Google might open source VP8 on May 19-20 http://www.reelseo.com/html5-vp8-google/

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

#32

Post by ghurlman » Fri, Apr 30, 2010, 4:23 PM UTC

madmaze wrote: post #19

Props to Steve to actually answer to this open letter, but i think he could have put a little more effort into it, sounds like he has no confidence in open source. I wish apple would be a little more involved in open source.

He did put effort into it - there's a full paragraph there, Steve's emails rarely go beyond a sentence fragment; rightly so, as I doubt he has the time to research and write out a fully-formed response.

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

#33

Post by jcl » Fri, Apr 30, 2010, 4:26 PM UTC

All video codecs are covered by patents.

All the popular ones, maybe. But MPEG-1 is over twenty years old, so unless there is a submarine patent out there, all the patents on it have already expired. Likewise, most aspects of MPEG-2 should be freed up within a decade. Even H.264 will eventually be unencumbered, given enough time.

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

#34

Post by kierank » Fri, Apr 30, 2010, 4:28 PM UTC

pohl wrote: post #30

vetinari wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FFmpeg has reverse engineered it and there is an open source decoder and some documentation.

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

#35

Post by jsz0 » Fri, Apr 30, 2010, 4:32 PM UTC

boredguy8 wrote: post #8

jsz0 wrote: post #2

you like Openness so much that when you use “Open Source” Software to build your Mac operating system Only some parts of it. The bulk of OSX is closed source. May I remind you that H.264 is not an open standard? Jobs said H.264 is an industry standard not an open standard

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

That's a fair point. I think that's more or less how Google approaches it even though they are not fans of closed web formats.

I do think there is a world of difference between a big complex closed platform exclusively available from Adobe and H.264 which has a variety of encoders/decoders available from multiple license holders. I seem to recall in the past Adobe has licensed in Flash to Nokia in almost the same way. Nokia ported & optimized the code for some of their handsets (N900 and others) It would be interesting to know if Adobe offered a similar arrangement to Apple. That would completely debunk everything Apple has been saying if they had the flexibility to control the Flash implementation on the iPhone themselves.

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

#36

Post by gvb » Fri, Apr 30, 2010, 4:32 PM UTC

jsz0 wrote: post #2

you like Openness so much that when you use “Open Source” Software to build your Mac operating system Only some parts of it. The bulk of OSX is closed source. May I remind you that H.264 is not an open standard? Jobs said H.264 is an industry standard not an open standard

To add to jsz0's correct observation, H.264 does not show up at all under the first section discussing proprietary vs. open standards.

H.264 shows up once under the heading Second, there’s the "full web" but not really a primary point.

The main H.264 is in the section Fourth, there’s battery life. Jobs wrote that the benefit of H.264 vs. flash was that there was hardware decryption support for it. The result of hardware decryption support was a doubling of battery life vs. software decryption (e.g. flash).

I see a lot of jumping from Job's discussion of open vs. proprietary to his advocacy of H.264. While there are serious problems with the openness of H.264 (from an OSS POV), Jobs tied battery life to H.264 in his objection of flash codecs, not openness.

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

#37

Post by illumin8 » Fri, Apr 30, 2010, 4:38 PM UTC

madmaze wrote: post #19

Props to Steve to actually answer to this open letter, but i think he could have put a little more effort into it, sounds like he has no confidence in open source. I wish apple would be a little more involved in open source.

I think Steve has plenty of confidence in open source. He's just a realist and understands that current software patent law doesn't really allow for completely open video codecs. Even if you create an open implementation of them, you're going to be subject to patent lawsuits, and as we know, most open source projects don't have the funding to withstand the legal battles.

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

#38

Post by PontusVull » Fri, Apr 30, 2010, 4:40 PM UTC

The writer seems to think that an open standard must be free of cost but is that actually true? Or is it just what many would like to be true?

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

#39

Post by kierank » Fri, Apr 30, 2010, 4:42 PM UTC

riferguson wrote: post #25

vetinari wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

MPEG-4 Systems is not offered any more (since it's effectively dead).

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

#40

Post by tlb » Fri, Apr 30, 2010, 4:57 PM UTC

h.264 is far, far more open than Flash. What matters is that the spec is public and that you can choose from many implementations. There are no usable competing implementations of Flash, but dozens for h.264 including excellent open-source ones.

The h.264 terms aren't onerous. If you ship less than 100,000 devices you pay nothing. At large scale, it's $0.10 / unit. When selling hardware, that's a pretty light tax.

As Jobs points out, Theora is not immune to patents. On2's many patents are irrevocably licensed for free, but there are thousands more patents that may apply held by trolls. It sucks to ship devices with unknown patent liabilities. It almost destroyed RIM, for example.