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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

#111

Post by rimantas »

ashearer wrote: post #85
rimantas wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think the world (outside HN) cares about the openness of video player they use?

I'll throw that back at you. What makes you think I think that, or that it somehow affects what I said? Regular people don't care, nor do they need to. Browser makers (Apple, Google, Mozilla) and content publishers (YouTube, BBC) care intensely, and are driving the entire controversy. All have a significant financial stake. Sufficiently large content publishers like Google/YouTube and the BBC have been motivated enou…

Google owns WebM. Just something to consider.

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

#112

Post by commandar »

rimantas wrote: post #106
commandar wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You're right that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard. It is, however, much less of one than it was three years ago, and that's pretty much entirely due to one factor: iOS doesn't support it. The HTML element has traction entirely due to the fact that it's the only way to play video from a web page on an iOS device. You don't have a choice between or Flash: It's or nothing. So is this debate about what's best f…

> So is this debate about what's best for the future of open > standards on the web, or is it about what's best for iOS? Dropping support for h.264 means slower adoption of How's that better for the open standards? The most infuriating part of this is, that FSF and Google are so busy with their own agenda, that they forget users.

>Dropping support for h.264 means slower adoption of How's that better for the open standards?

20% of the browser market was never going to adopt H.264. That's a fifth of the market cut out from using entirely.

How in the world is that possibly good for web standards?

>The most infuriating part of this is, that FSF and Google are so busy with their own agenda, that they forget users.

That majority of the market has the entrenched Flash until HTML5 gets sorted out as a standard everyone can use.

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

#113

Post by spiffworks »

GHFigs wrote: post #95
spiffworks wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all browsers did that, web codec development would move at the same glacial pace as Windows version updates, not to mention losing any semblance of uniformity and all possible hope of changing the status quo in any meaningful way away from patent-encumbered codecs.

web codec development would move at the same glacial pace as Windows version updates I'm not convinced that that is the case, but even if it were, the state of things with bundling codecs is being limited to what Google and Mozilla say is ok for them. You, the user, have no say in what you can view. This might be acceptable if you have supreme confidence in them (where is the next free codec going to come from, anywa…

The whole point of moving things to the browser was to remove any lockin advantages a specific platform might have. That is the reason Flash gets so much hate from anybody who doesn't use Windows. Going back to OS-specific codecs would limit codec choice to what the OS vendor considers kosher. And lest we forget, its far harder to switch operating systems than it is to switch browsers. If you don't like Chrome, Firefox or Opera, nobody's stopping you from using IE or Safari.

> bundling codecs is being limited to what Google and Mozilla say is ok for them

What you are suggesting merely takes the power out of the hands of browser vendors and puts it in the hands of the os vendors. I trust Mozilla, and to a far lesser extent Google, more than I ever will trust Microsoft.

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

#114

Post by drdaeman »

rimantas wrote: post #22
drdaeman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By any chance, did you read the actual article?

Yes I did. Did you?

Of course. I'll even quote the article:

> H.264 is a patent-encumbered codec; the MPEG LA organization requires developers who implement it to agree to a patent license. 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.

While the wording is not perfect, this is actually about end user freedoms and convenience. There's the same situation is with parts of ffmpeg/libavformat or libmad - you just can't ship and use them completely legally. This is why "restricted formats" notion appeared, and why Ubuntu started shipping Fluendo's non-free encoder binary (http://www.fluendo.com/shop/product/fluendo-mp3-decoder/, previous-to-last paragraph).

It was always a problem (albeit, nowadays, minor one) to use proprietary codecs on GNU/Linux systems. Problem not on developers' side, but the for the actual end users. Killing H.264, thus actively encouraging WebM support helps WebM to win the formats battle. In a short term, both end users and developers will experience compatibility problems, but in the end - if WebM will win - both end users and developers will benefit.

And please remember that we have Firefox, which - due to various FLOSS reasons - just won't support H.264 anyway.

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

#115

Post by commandar »

rimantas wrote: post #108
commandar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, but mobile only represents about 3% of web traffic. http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2011/01/2010_mobile_...

How do you expect this number to change?

With time. The point is that both HTML5 and mobile web are in their infancy. Browser desktop share is now and it seems foolish to ignore 20% of the market in favor of a segment that accounts for 3% of traffic.

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

#116

Post by ZeroGravitas »

loire280 wrote: post #79
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'…

"Further, H.264 was a complete non-starter for Mozilla, and Firefox holds nearly 20% of the market. Using H.264 for HTML5 would have guaranteed market segmentation and hurt the chances of a truly open future" Except Internet Explorer will continue to be the highest-marketshare browser for the foreseeable future, and IE9 won't ship with VP8 (though you can install a codec for it, I doubt regular people will). It does…

If you extend last years trend for another 12 months then (according to Statcounters figures) IE, Firefox and Chrome will all have 30% of the market each, with IE heading down, Firefox level, and Chrome going up.

Which means, somewhat surprisingly, that IE could be 3rd globally in the relatively near future. In fact the IE drop/Chrome rise appears to be accelerating, so it could happen sooner.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200812-201012

But that's all versions of IE, IE9 won't be available on XP, and historically it's taken years for new versions to penetrate, so it'll be a much weaker force than Chrome and Firefox which complete updates in a few weeks and months respectively.

Microsoft getting on board would be nice, but Adobe getting WebM into Flash would take care of the older versions of IE that are hanging around too.

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

#118

Post by spiffworks »

hakl wrote: post #96
spiffworks wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's compliant with FSF's definition of free software ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html ) and Debian's guidelines ( http://www.debian.org/social_contract ). Stallman himself agreed that it was a good thing for Xiph to relicense their libraries from the LGPL to a permissive free software license ( http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/icecast-dev/2001-February/00... ): In response to the change of license, Richar…

Well, we're talking about two things, really- the webm reference implementation and the license under which the patents covering the spec are licensed. I guess the reference implementation is free as in freedom, and the spec is free as in beer to re-implement. This is why 'free standard' is such a pithy and accurate description.

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

#119

Post by ashearer »

rimantas wrote: post #111
ashearer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll throw that back at you. What makes you think I think that, or that it somehow affects what I said? Regular people don't care, nor do they need to. Browser makers (Apple, Google, Mozilla) and content publishers (YouTube, BBC) care intensely, and are driving the entire controversy. All have a significant financial stake. Sufficiently large content publishers like Google/YouTube and the BBC have been motivated enou…

Google owns WebM. Just something to consider.

Google bought it in order to irrevocably release it as a free standard, and now it's baked into hardware where they can't change it further. That's less of a good way to exercise control over the video standard at everyone else's expense while reaping profit from them, and more of a good way to prevent anyone else from doing so. Are you suggesting something else?

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

#120

Post by tomlin »

acgourley wrote: post #42
tomlin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You just simply cannot deny the audacity of Gruber's comments about WebM/H.264/Flash. They are completely self-serving. I think…

I agree Google is being self serving, but I also believe in this case their interests align with the average internet consumer.

For sure. Google and Apple both play the good for humanity card and both have had some failure and success with aligning their strategies with the people.

My only wish is that we identify the difference between tribe-mentality and logical necessity.

cookiecaper said it best here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2105570

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