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Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward for openness.

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Re: Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward for openness.

#41

Post by jarek »

Entlin wrote: post #29

You know what we actually need? A h.264-buyout. Let's ask MPEG-LA how much they are planning to earn by the time their licence runs out (2024?). It will probably be ~200 Million or so. Then ask the whole internet to chip in. Result: all the open source people are happy, and we all get to use the higher quality codec in any application we can imagine. And we also get to keep our devices with their battery efficient de…

Or we could just use VP8. All the open source people are happy, the codec will quickly improve, and the vast majority of your devices with their battery efficient dedicated H.264-decompression chips will be replaced by devices with battery efficient dedicated VP8 and H.264-decompression chips within three years. We also save 200 mill.

Re: Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward for openness.

#42

Post by alanh »

DjDarkman wrote: post #6
mikeryan wrote: post #2

This is a pretty poor rebuttal to what was actually a fairly well written (like it's opinion or not) article by Ars. Ars fairly clearly delineated the difference between "open standards" and "open/free to use" and this one mixes them up continuously This statement "Indeed, most sites offer different bandwidth options and video sizes. They are already converting the video!" shows a pretty clear lack of understanding o…

I have to disagree, the article points out a lot of flaws in the Ars. article. The premise of the article is self-contradictory: H.264 is patent encumbered, open web means open/free to use for anybody, these two don't relate to each other. I find it dubious to suggest the following: we should use it, just because most other people use it. Google dropping this codec actually helps prevent h.264's monopoly.

> Google dropping this codec actually helps prevent h.264's monopoly.

A baseless assertion. It’s far more likely that most sites will continue using H.264, wrapping it in Flash for desktop users, and then sending it naked to mobile devices including iOS and most other video-capable phones. Economically, what is the incentive to do otherwise, as a publisher? How in the world do you figure otherwise?

And can you please fucking stop pretending your own definition of “open” is the same as everyone else’s? Open ≠ free. Sometimes people use it that way. But there IS open source software (GPL’d, even) that is NOT free of cost (like many Wordpress themes & plugins), and there IS open source software that has been tripped up by PATENT TROLLS, and when we are talking about open SPECIFICATIONS the word “open” should be demonstrating that more than one party controls it — which IS the case with H.264 but NOT the case with VP8. So if you want to argue about openness, DEFINE your terms and ACCEPT others will not agree, but we CAN and SHOULD be dealing in terms of facts regarding who controls the spec and who can use it for free, not to mention what’s best for users (something Chrome is otherwise fantastically and fanatically obsessed with).

Re: Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward for openness.

#43

Post by recoiledsnake »

zppx wrote: post #33
recoiledsnake wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In real life you easily can, because of incompatibilities with the existing software. Eg. Chrome and Android are technically open-source but their direction and development are completely governed by Google. If you make changes and are unable to convince Google to incorporate them, the video generated by your software will be incompatible with all the millions of WebM decoders out there.

I do not care about WebM or H.264 since I dislike both, my comment will concern the license and the situation. WebM have a Apache style license, you can grab the source, fork it and develop your codec, and you're not even obligated to open a repository including your changes, they can remain closed. Google will not stop you from doing so and guarantees that he will not sue you asking for royalties, since a license li…

I am talking about practicality or the chances of it happening. Anyone can do what they want, but if it's incompatible with the 800lb gorilla's offering, it's basically a moot point.

Re: Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward for openness.

#44

Post by Locke1689 »

haberman wrote: post #21
redial wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Google dropping this codec actually helps prevent h.264's monopoly." How about a Google monopoly? At least h.264 is owned by a number of different companies. Never mind that almost everyone agrees that it is the better codec.

> How about a Google monopoly? At least h.264 is owned by a number of different companies. It's amazing to me. In the 90s Microsoft's overt policy was "embrace, extend, extinguish," and it called the GPL a "cancer," the MPAA was launching war against DeCSS, and Amazon.com was flexing its one-click patent against competitors. Open source developers had no powerful allies. Now you have a powerful company like Google th…

I don't know what kind of fantasy world you live in where the only reason you could like H264 is because it's patented.

I like H264 because VP8 is an inferior technology.

Re: Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward for openness.

#45

Post by thomasmeeks »

alanh wrote: post #38
k33l0r wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out that MPEG-LA also doesn't offer patent indemnification on H.264 or any of its other formats. I can't find where I originally read this, but EETimes mentions it at the end of this article: http://www.eetimes.com/design/other/4012977/MPEG-licensing-b... "Also, MPEG LA does not offer any indemnification guaranteeing that its patents do not infringe someone else's patent rights."

Worth pointing out? Sure, but let’s not forget that what MPEG-LA actually does is license to you all the patents which H.264 is known to use — so you’re probably not infringing anything, barring of course the insanity the USPTO perpetuates… If you have a patent for part of the H.264 process, chances are, you’re part of the MPEG-LA and getting royalties through that organization already, legitimately, without suing an…

The patents WebM is known to use are also licensed. http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/

Re: Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward for openness.

#46

Post by othermaciej »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #8

>I also find it puzzling that Google is being accused of giving users fewer choices, while Microsoft and Apple aren't even mentioned. They refuse to support WebM, after all. Err, Microsoft has already declared that WebM will be supported if a compatible plugin codec is installed on the machine. They just don't want patent trolls (successfully) suing them for shipping hundreds of WebM decoders. After all, Google is no…

Safari also supports pluggable codecs via the QuickTime component mechanism. I don't know if anyone has made a WebM QuickTime component yet though.

Re: Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward for openness.

#47

Post by bzbarsky »

Osiris wrote: post #27
grayrest wrote: post #5

All the outcry over this I've read is basically a complaint that you can't ship one codec for HTML5 video, which you've never been able to do. That's what the whole argument over the video tag has always been about. The only difference this makes is that this cements the split instead of everybody expecting Firefox and Opera to give up and adopt H.264. If you were willing to ship just H.264 and flash fallback for Fir…

From what I understand, the main reason for Mozilla and Opera not wanting to include H.264 is that there would be licensing fees for including a decoder with the browser. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it could potentially cost both Mozilla and Opera a significant amount in licensing fees to include H.264 support. Apple doesn't care because it's already a licensee, the same for Microsoft (including in Win7) and Google…

The fee would be about $5 million a year. Arguably, both could afford it (it would be about 5-10% of revenue, but doable).

The reason Mozilla is not wanting to include H.264 is that:

1) It can't do that in the open source version, and doesn't want to have separate open-source and closed-source releases. 2) It feels H.264 would be bad for the web, since it requires paying to create content in H.264.

Reason #2 is somewhat more important than reason #1, since #1 could be worked around by using system media frameworks, etc.

Re: Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward for openness.

#48

Post by juiceandjuice »

The main problem with WebM/VP8 vs. H.264, especially in the face of the mobile internet device explosion, is hardware acceleration.

Once devices start coming with native WebM acceleration, it won't be an issue. Given that Android is so popular and Google is looking to abandon H.264, it's inevitable that hardware acceleration will come to phones, probably in conjunction with H.264 acceleration (just like H.264 and H.263 right now) At that point, any ARM platform with a H.264 acceleration will include a WebM acceleration, and it would be more than trivial for Apple/Microsoft/whoever to implement WebM in their mobile browsers.

A more interesting day will be when Google says "Android 3.x phones must have WebM acceleration"

Re: Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward for openness.

#49

Post by recoiledsnake »

haberman wrote: post #21
redial wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Google dropping this codec actually helps prevent h.264's monopoly." How about a Google monopoly? At least h.264 is owned by a number of different companies. Never mind that almost everyone agrees that it is the better codec.

> How about a Google monopoly? At least h.264 is owned by a number of different companies. It's amazing to me. In the 90s Microsoft's overt policy was "embrace, extend, extinguish," and it called the GPL a "cancer," the MPAA was launching war against DeCSS, and Amazon.com was flexing its one-click patent against competitors. Open source developers had no powerful allies. Now you have a powerful company like Google th…

Why doesn't Google release the source code of the flavor of Linux that it uses after earning tens of billions basically leveraging Linux code?

Google open sources things that are not central to it's business, just like every other company out there.

MPEG-LA cannot be a patent troll let alone a known one, because it's a loose organization of companies that agree on a standard to prevent fragmentation of video and let people deal with one entity instead of a thousand. Those individual companies could be trolls.

>fights for open standards like HTML5

Really? Then this move to remove support for H.264 will get Flash even more entrenched because it would be the easiest way for content providers to get WebM video working on IE9 and Safari. Flash has already announced upcoming support for WebM.

Re: Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward for openness.

#50

Post by Locke1689 »

zppx wrote: post #33
recoiledsnake wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In real life you easily can, because of incompatibilities with the existing software. Eg. Chrome and Android are technically open-source but their direction and development are completely governed by Google. If you make changes and are unable to convince Google to incorporate them, the video generated by your software will be incompatible with all the millions of WebM decoders out there.

I do not care about WebM or H.264 since I dislike both, my comment will concern the license and the situation. WebM have a Apache style license, you can grab the source, fork it and develop your codec, and you're not even obligated to open a repository including your changes, they can remain closed. Google will not stop you from doing so and guarantees that he will not sue you asking for royalties, since a license li…

Actually, recoiledsnake's scenario has already happened. The VP8 "spec" isn't a spec at all, it's just copy pasted C code. Unfortunately, they also chose to reuse the same code for the encoder and the decoder. This means bugs in either one can propagate into both. There was already one of these bugs found, fixed, and had a patch applied to the source tree. Google came in and reverted that patch because too much video had already been encoded with the bug in the encoder. This is exactly what happened with IE6, where bugs in the product become de facto requirements on the web.

Maybe the H264 spec drones on and on but at least it's a spec. The VP8 "spec" is just a mandate from Google. A shitty one, at that. I'll take the small risk of patent litigation among only the biggest players for an open specification and standard any day. Of course, there's also the fact that H264 is way better than VP8 which it seems like no one cares about.

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