Cisco's Open Source H.264 Codec
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Cisco's Open Source H.264 Codec
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Re: Cisco's Open Source H.264 Codec
#2It would be really cool if they provided predictable builds, then we could just compare the binary against a self-compiled binary and be sure tehre are no backdoors we can't see in the code.
Sadly even truecrypt fails to provide that. So i guess we'll have to life with binary blobs no one knows what they're really doing.
Re: Cisco's Open Source H.264 Codec
#3I'm genuinely curious --- how come nobody thought of doing this (being some kind of platinum member and just putting it out there for all to use) all these years during the fighting about h.264 vs the open web and yada yada?
What Cisco did seems to have put an end to all those debates, and h.264 is available for all, with patents intact, etc.
Re: Cisco's Open Source H.264 Codec
#4I'm genuinely curious --- how come nobody thought of doing this (being some kind of platinum member and just putting it out there for all to use) all these years during the fighting about h.264 vs the open web and yada yada? What Cisco did seems to have put an end to all those debates, and h.264 is available for all, with patents intact, etc.
It costs Cisco $6 million a year to do this. I wonder if any of the beneficiaries (Firefox, etc) are pitching in.
That sounds like loose change, but probably stuck up in bureaucratic decision-making at anyone who thought of this before. ("Why are we spending $6 million a year to make it free for everyone else again?")
EDIT/UPDATE: In the second paragraph, I was referring to other companies and why they didn't do this earlier. It clearly brings Cisco quite a bit of goodwill to do this, and to see more video flowing on the web.
Re: Cisco's Open Source H.264 Codec
#5I'm genuinely curious --- how come nobody thought of doing this (being some kind of platinum member and just putting it out there for all to use) all these years during the fighting about h.264 vs the open web and yada yada? What Cisco did seems to have put an end to all those debates, and h.264 is available for all, with patents intact, etc.
No, it hasn't put an end to debate at all. This is an ugly workaround and still requires Cisco to build binaries on your behalf. It's quite a stretch of "open" and certainly not "free" (not that it claims to be).
There is still ongoing work to create a better, free standard.
Re: Cisco's Open Source H.264 Codec
#6I'm genuinely curious --- how come nobody thought of doing this (being some kind of platinum member and just putting it out there for all to use) all these years during the fighting about h.264 vs the open web and yada yada? What Cisco did seems to have put an end to all those debates, and h.264 is available for all, with patents intact, etc.
It costs Cisco $6 million a year to do this. I wonder if any of the beneficiaries (Firefox, etc) are pitching in. That sounds like loose change, but probably stuck up in bureaucratic decision-making at anyone who thought of this before. ("Why are we spending $6 million a year to make it free for everyone else again?") EDIT/UPDATE: In the second paragraph, I was referring to other companies and why they didn't do this…
I doubt it costs Cisco anything extra because they probably need the distribution rights for other products they develop (for example WebEx.) Besides it a good PR benefit for them with minimal incremental cost.
Re: Cisco's Open Source H.264 Codec
#7I'm genuinely curious --- how come nobody thought of doing this (being some kind of platinum member and just putting it out there for all to use) all these years during the fighting about h.264 vs the open web and yada yada? What Cisco did seems to have put an end to all those debates, and h.264 is available for all, with patents intact, etc.
It costs Cisco $6 million a year to do this. I wonder if any of the beneficiaries (Firefox, etc) are pitching in. That sounds like loose change, but probably stuck up in bureaucratic decision-making at anyone who thought of this before. ("Why are we spending $6 million a year to make it free for everyone else again?") EDIT/UPDATE: In the second paragraph, I was referring to other companies and why they didn't do this…
Cisco benefits from video on the internet being a big thing.
Re: Cisco's Open Source H.264 Codec
#8I'm genuinely curious --- how come nobody thought of doing this (being some kind of platinum member and just putting it out there for all to use) all these years during the fighting about h.264 vs the open web and yada yada? What Cisco did seems to have put an end to all those debates, and h.264 is available for all, with patents intact, etc.
No, it hasn't put an end to debate at all. This is an ugly workaround and still requires Cisco to build binaries on your behalf. It's quite a stretch of "open" and certainly not "free" (not that it claims to be). There is still ongoing work to create a better, free standard.
VP8 exists, and is free
VP9 exists, is better and free (in Chrome, will be in Firefox release in a few months)
There is still ongoing work to create a better, encumbered codec, h.265
There is going work to create a much better, free codec, Dalaa
Now is a good time to finally break free of encumbered video codecs. If not now, when. :)
Re: Cisco's Open Source H.264 Codec
#9I'm genuinely curious --- how come nobody thought of doing this (being some kind of platinum member and just putting it out there for all to use) all these years during the fighting about h.264 vs the open web and yada yada? What Cisco did seems to have put an end to all those debates, and h.264 is available for all, with patents intact, etc.
Fluendo does this with MP3, but that license is only $50K instead of millions.
People proposed this idea repeatedly to Mozilla back in the day but they rejected it. Maybe they feel their hands are somehow cleaner if Cisco is paying instead of them.
Re: Cisco's Open Source H.264 Codec
#10It would be really cool if they provided predictable builds, then we could just compare the binary against a self-compiled binary and be sure tehre are no backdoors we can't see in the code. Sadly even truecrypt fails to provide that. So i guess we'll have to life with binary blobs no one knows what they're really doing.
Hi, I'm one of the people working on the stuff Cisco open sourced and yes, it will be predictable and verifiable builds. We are working with some of the Mozilla folks to make sure we can do that.