

Free Software Foundation statement on WebM and VP8 - tjr
http://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-statement-on-webm-and-vp8

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dangrover
Weird, I figured they would be vehemently against it for some unforeseen and
idiosyncratic reason.

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_delirium
Haha, I clicked expecting exactly the same thing. And I actually quite like
the FSF; I see them as usually serving a role of idealistic critic, which is
useful to have, especially in something like free software. But reality rarely
satisfies the idealistic critic, so it's surprising when the critic actually
loves something!

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zokier
One thing I have been wondering is how will xiph.org guys react? Developing
Theora much further seems bit useless now. Will they begin developing VP8 or
maybe specialize Theora for something different that web video. Theora has the
advantage of being bit lighter on resources.

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ZeroGravitas
They're very happy:

 _I, FOR ONE, WELCOME OUR NEW WEBM OVERLORDS_ :

<http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/50239.html>

and more officially,

 _Xiph.Org announces support for the WebM open media project_ :

<http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/2010/05/20/>

It's worth bearing in mind that Monty created Vorbis, as used for audio for
WebM, but Theora was donated from On2's VP3 so there may be less sense of
ownership. Plus their basic mission is royalty-free, open-source friendly
media so this is a big thing for them.

They seem to be hinting that they can let Google do the publicity and get back
into their core competency of R&D for future formats that will be
substantially better than encumbered alternatives.

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mvalle
I had never heard of WebM or VP8 before, but this is just good news. I just
wonder if Apple and Microsoft follow, somehow I doubt it.

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tzs
Microsoft will support VP8 in IE9.

Apple's HTML5 implementation uses Quicktime, so supports any format for which
you have a Quicktime plug-in. I have no trouble, for instance, watching Ogg
Theora video on HTML5 sites in Safari on my Mac.

I'd expect that Perian will add VP8 support for Mac, since they already have a
couple other codecs from the VP family. Perian is a third party collection of
codecs for Quicktime.

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chc
When people ask about Apple's support, I think we can assume they're thinking
of the other two platforms, which will not run QuickTime plugins.

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DrSprout
Any word on when VP8 will be added to the Android core media formats?

[http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-
formats.ht...](http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-
formats.html#core)

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bwr
According to <http://www.webmproject.org/about/faq/> "WebM support in Android
is expected in the Gingerbread release (currently planned for Q4, 2010)."

