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Microsoft release a Firefox plugin enabling H.264 support

arstechnica.com

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Re: Microsoft release a Firefox plugin enabling H.264 support

#21

Post by tvon »

Locke1689 wrote: post #16
tvon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (...) and is unlikely to remain royalty-free (...) The argument that there may be lurking patent issues in WebM doesn't carry a lot of weight, I think, unless they are actually demonstrated. After all, couldn't you say that about absolutely any software?

Citing from Jason's article that you obviously didn't take the time to read: "With regard to patents, VP8 copies too much from H.264 for comfort, no matter whose word is behind the claim of being patent-free. This doesn’t mean that it’s sure to be covered by patents, but until Google can give us evidence as to why it isn’t, I would be cautious."

I'm not sure what you think is in those sentences that amounts to a verified patent infringement of some kind. You would think though that in the ~8 months since Jason wrote this some kind of specific claim might have surfaced?

I'm not at all convinced WebM doesn't have patent issues, but I'm certainly not going to assume it does have patent issues because someone said it might have patent issues.

Also, for what it's worth, the burden of proof is not on Google, that's not how patents work.

Re: Microsoft release a Firefox plugin enabling H.264 support

#22

Post by natrius »

kprobst wrote: post #17
natrius wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a member of the H.264 patent pool[1], Microsoft makes money when people use H.264. If WebM becomes popular, Microsoft directly makes less money. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_LA

I'm fairly sure they pay more than they receive in this particular case.

I doubt they pay more for their use of H.264 than they receive from everyone's use of H.264. Providing the codec may cost them money, but it's far from obvious that it's an unprofitable act.

Re: Microsoft release a Firefox plugin enabling H.264 support

#24

Post by nuclear_eclipse »

wmf wrote: post #15
nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MPEG-LA has also refused (IIRC) to license the H.264 patents to the Mozilla Foundation in a manner that would actually be compatible with an open source project. Eg., MF would not be allowed to distribute the source code of the H.264 codec/plugin for Firefox, and users who download the Firefox source code and compile Firefox would forced to license their own copy of the H.264 plugin, or else would not be able to use…

Or the other way to look at it is that Mozilla has refused to build Firefox so that it will be compatible with MPEG-LA's licensing. Millions of users care about Web video; how many care about downstream modified versions of Firefox?

> how many care about downstream modified versions of Firefox?

All of the Firefox users running Ubuntu or Debian, for a start, even if they don't realize that they're using a downstream release of Firefox, which probably encompasses millions of users already...

Re: Microsoft release a Firefox plugin enabling H.264 support

#25

Post by gxti »

stingraycharles wrote: post #9
gxti wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not sitting around a conference table in an underground bunker, stroking their beards and cackling maniacally while trying to screw the open source community as hard as possible. Microsoft is a business . What business sense does it make to release this plugin?

Just thinking out loud, but if this codec becomes dominant, and is only released by Microsoft on the Windows platform, perhaps it's another reason to prefer Windows over OSX?

Apple adopted H.264 years ago -- it's basically all they use.

Re: Microsoft release a Firefox plugin enabling H.264 support

#26

Post by sid0 »

tvon wrote: post #21
Locke1689 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citing from Jason's article that you obviously didn't take the time to read: "With regard to patents, VP8 copies too much from H.264 for comfort, no matter whose word is behind the claim of being patent-free. This doesn’t mean that it’s sure to be covered by patents, but until Google can give us evidence as to why it isn’t, I would be cautious."

I'm not sure what you think is in those sentences that amounts to a verified patent infringement of some kind. You would think though that in the ~8 months since Jason wrote this some kind of specific claim might have surfaced? I'm not at all convinced WebM doesn't have patent issues, but I'm certainly not going to assume it does have patent issues because someone said it might have patent issues. Also, for what it's…

I really don't know much about this, but I understand that VP8 was designed to deliberately avoid patents. (Thus some of the weird decisions Dark_Shikari comments on.)

Re: Microsoft release a Firefox plugin enabling H.264 support

#28

Post by archangel_one »

buster wrote: post #27

Motivation: Push H.264 on the web, give MS (and Apple) more money from license fees in the future.

I doubt it. I think their motivation is to prevent WebM from replacing h.264 as the dominant web video format. Microsoft don't care about licensing fees - their cash cows will be earning them orders of magnitude more. But if WebM replaces h.264 then Firefox on Linux (or ChromeOS or whatever) will be able to play that quite happily, whereas I'm sure MS would prefer h.264 to remain dominant since it's patent-encumbered.

Re: Microsoft release a Firefox plugin enabling H.264 support

#29

Post by Locke1689 »

tvon wrote: post #21
Locke1689 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citing from Jason's article that you obviously didn't take the time to read: "With regard to patents, VP8 copies too much from H.264 for comfort, no matter whose word is behind the claim of being patent-free. This doesn’t mean that it’s sure to be covered by patents, but until Google can give us evidence as to why it isn’t, I would be cautious."

I'm not sure what you think is in those sentences that amounts to a verified patent infringement of some kind. You would think though that in the ~8 months since Jason wrote this some kind of specific claim might have surfaced? I'm not at all convinced WebM doesn't have patent issues, but I'm certainly not going to assume it does have patent issues because someone said it might have patent issues. Also, for what it's…

You would think though that in the ~8 months since Jason wrote this some kind of specific claim might have surfaced?

Nope. Personally I would wait until it's too late for the major players to back out before I make a patent claim. There's no 'statute of limitations' on patent claims. Laches may make things a tad more difficult but holding off until the actual specification is in use would probably hold up.

I'm not at all convinced WebM doesn't have patent issues, but I'm certainly not going to assume it does have patent issues because someone said it might have patent issues.

As Jason said in his article (and he's probably in one of the best positions to judge technical ingenuity in this area), it's very likely that it does have patent issues. That's not someone saying it might have patent issues, that's someone saying it probably does.

Also, for what it's worth, the burden of proof is not on Google, that's not how patents work.

In court. We're not in court. The claim is being made that we should use WebM mostly because it isn't patent encumbered (certainly not for technical reasons). This is a claim that Google should defend. Without support for this statement there's no reason to use WebM instead of H264.

Re: Microsoft release a Firefox plugin enabling H.264 support

#30

Post by Locke1689 »

jbk wrote: post #18

The problem with this is that they replace the html5 tag with an one that WMP plugin will pick up. It should be not important, but are we sure it does comply correctly to all the options and properties? I don't know why but I think not. Maybe I should activate my activex plugin that replace IE9 tag into a VLC and see how they take it?

I think Mozilla's refusal to allow use of OS installed codecs is worse, though. I can see the justification for not providing support for the H264 codec in-browser but not allowing OS codecs seems like taking ideology over technology too far.
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