
Ask HN: How can the BPG format be so much better, why isn't it widely supported? - nkkollaw
The BPG image format is so much better than all the other formats, packing better quality in smaller file sizes.<p>How can the difference between it and the rest be so huge, and why isn&#x27;t it getting a lot of traction (that I know of)?
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mmirate
> Based on the examples shown, BPG certainly has the makings of a useful image
> format. The catch, however, is that it is derived from HEVC, which is
> patent-encumbered and royalty-bearing. That poses a major problem for free-
> software projects in any jurisdiction that recognizes the patents—meaning
> most of them.[1]

I hadn't heard of this format before; after some cursory research, I believe
the above quote provides a likely explanation.

[1]: [https://lwn.net/Articles/625535/](https://lwn.net/Articles/625535/)

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technion
This came up a while back and I remember thinking...

If you were Google or Cloudflare, and you were paying for transit on petabytes
of traffic associated with images, at what point would a strategy of "buy the
patent, release it, encourage people to use it" pay for itself many times
over?

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nkkollaw
I thought the same thing and I can't figure it out.

