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No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

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Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#51

Post by pohl »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #36
pohl wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...baseline is what is used on mobile... That's the market segment that the baseline profile was conceived for, but the phone in my pocket and the tablet on my nightstand both support the main profile. Sure, most content that I view on it is probably encoded in baseline, but there are 17 million iPads in the wild that support the main profile. Edit: it's not just iOS devices, either. The Playstation Portable supports…

The iPad really should have supported High Profile. No-one's going to encode a 3rd version for the iPad when everyone else jumped straight from Baseline to High, which means it's effectively Baseline. Seems strange that the iPhone 4 got better specs so shortly after (much like the 256MB memory). I'm sure they'll fix it in the next rev though, which just increases the chance that rev. 1 devices will be served Baseline…

when everyone else jumped straight from Baseline to High

Interesting. Which mobile device(s) did that, and what decoder chip(s) did they use?

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#52

Post by kenjackson »

spiffworks wrote: post #37
sudont wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WebM wasn't an option because it didn't even exist yet. And when WebMx is released, everybody will hound those who don't immediately change their product strategy to fit this. This is also a good reason for why Apple isn't using WebM: it's not a standard, it's as controlled by Google as Flash is controlled by Adobe. They're essentially giving a bunch of control of their device to an outside company.

The webm spec is frozen, and all patents are irrevocably licensed. Webm is not 'controlled' by Google.

They're not irrevcably licensed. If you find that WebM does actually violate your patents you can't sue otherwise you lose your license to all of the other patents.

Realistically Google should not revoke your licenses unless you lose the lawsuit (not when filed), because if they have legitimately infringed your patent then it seems like blackmail to keep them from acting on it by such a method.

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#53

Post by GHFigs »

spiffworks wrote: post #32
cletus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "This license is fundamentally incompatible with software freedom. It requires developers to restrict how their software can be used, and to collect royalties in many situations." According to the FSF's definition of software freedom. The FSF has quite a radical view in this regard. A Microsoft exec once described the GPL as "viral' [1] and it's a fair point. Many view licenses like MIT and Apache as being more fre…

Ok, here is how I define minimal software freedom - I give you a piece of software, along with source code, you are free to use it in anyway you please, or make your modifications and distribute it to as many people as you like. With H.264 bundled with a piece of software, that is not possible. > This ambiguity is more pronounced when you use words like "open" because it means different things to different people. I…

With H.264 bundled with a piece of software, that is not possible.

The decision to only support bundled codecs and refuse to let the user use anything else was made by Mozilla, Google, and Opera. It is not a spec requirement or technical necessity. The idea that a browser would be forced to bundle h.264 is quite evidently mistaken, as the browsers that do support it don't bundle it.

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#55

Post by rimantas »

commandar wrote: post #18

I was discussing this with some people yesterday. I find it incredibly frustrating that the Grubers of the world have spent months attacking Google for supporting the evil, closed Flash, but then manage to spin Google dropping a closed format in favor of an open one as evil and using it as a roundabout way of continuing to hate on Flash. The fact of the matter is that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard and isn'…

What's Mozilla's market share on mobile devices?

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#56

Post by spiffworks »

9oliYQjP wrote: post #44
spiffworks wrote: post #2

"free standards" I'm glad somebody finally figured out how to accurately describe webm. All this hand-waving talk of 'openness' and 'open standards' was debate poison.

Except it's not "free" in the Free software sense. Google specifically addresses why they didn't use a GPL license but rather BSD. They want to promote WebM in proprietary, closed, products. http://www.webmproject.org/about/faq/ "One of the goals of having this code licensed as liberally as possible is to encourage adoption by as many users as possible. This includes both proprietary and free software. Using the GPL…

No, clearly it's not Free as in FSF, but 'free as in beer' is the only thing that separates it from H.264, it's definitely the most accurate description I've seen yet.

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#57

Post by jasonlotito »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #49
jasonlotito wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However if we're talking "childish", then the "Plugins! I thought the point of HTML5 was to avoid plugins" argument wins by a mile. Which doesn't challenge anything I said. In fact, you can remove plugins from you browser, including Flash, right now.

Sorry, I was agreeing with you about Flash and then going off on a tangent without making it clear I was meaning a different "plugin" argument. I was referring to coverage such as: So Much For Standards, Google Says WebM Plugins Coming Soon For Safari And IE9 http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/14/webm-plugins/

Now that makes sense. I was reading it completely differently. Which is also why I probably couldn't find anything wrong with what you were saying.

Sorry for the confusion.

=)

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#58

Post by spiffworks »

kenjackson wrote: post #52
spiffworks wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The webm spec is frozen, and all patents are irrevocably licensed. Webm is not 'controlled' by Google.

They're not irrevcably licensed. If you find that WebM does actually violate your patents you can't sue otherwise you lose your license to all of the other patents. Realistically Google should not revoke your licenses unless you lose the lawsuit (not when filed), because if they have legitimately infringed your patent then it seems like blackmail to keep them from acting on it by such a method.

You're quite right, but I think its ridiculous to ask Google to give you a free license to their patents even as you are suing them for infringing yours.

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#59

Post by commandar »

rimantas wrote: post #55
commandar wrote: post #18

I was discussing this with some people yesterday. I find it incredibly frustrating that the Grubers of the world have spent months attacking Google for supporting the evil, closed Flash, but then manage to spin Google dropping a closed format in favor of an open one as evil and using it as a roundabout way of continuing to hate on Flash. The fact of the matter is that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard and isn'…

What's Mozilla's market share on mobile devices?

I don't know, but mobile only represents about 3% of web traffic.

http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2011/01/2010_mobile_...

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#60

Post by vetinari »

GHFigs wrote: post #53
spiffworks wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, here is how I define minimal software freedom - I give you a piece of software, along with source code, you are free to use it in anyway you please, or make your modifications and distribute it to as many people as you like. With H.264 bundled with a piece of software, that is not possible. > This ambiguity is more pronounced when you use words like "open" because it means different things to different people. I…

With H.264 bundled with a piece of software, that is not possible. The decision to only support bundled codecs and refuse to let the user use anything else was made by Mozilla, Google, and Opera. It is not a spec requirement or technical necessity. The idea that a browser would be forced to bundle h.264 is quite evidently mistaken, as the browsers that do support it don't bundle it.

The browsers that do support it run on the platform by the same vendor. IE9 runs only on Vista/7, where MS provides H.264 decoder. Safari runs only with Quicktime, where Apple provides H.264 decoder. So although the browsers do not come with decoders, they use their vendor's decoder and nothing else.

On the other hand, if Mozilla/Opera/Chrome used third party decoder, that would be support nightmare ("It works on my computer, but not on friend's! Please fix it!").

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