

Comments on Cisco, Mozilla, and H.264 - 0x006A
http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/61927.html

======
ZeroGravitas
Interestingly, no mention of VP9.

Although the current political battle is over VP8 vs H.264 (Baseline) for
Mandatory To Implement status in WebRTC, that's only the fallback position to
avoid interoperability failure. Any random codec supported by the endpoints
could be used.

For example, since you're forced to buy patent rights for all of H.264 as a
bundle it seems that anyone who uses H.264 for WebRTC would use H.264 High
Profile when both ends have it. (Currently Cisco is only offering Baseline,
but are happy to accept code for the higher levels).

But just as easily, two copies of a future Google Chrome could use VP9, or two
copies of even further future Firefox could use Daala, or IE13 could use
H.265.

But VP9 gets no mention at all in Xiphmont's post. Have Firefox decided
officially to skip VP9? In WebRTC it would seem an obvious stepping stone
towards the Daala future, even if it's usage for standard HTML5 video is less
likely to be useful.

~~~
0x006A
There is a ticket for VP9[1] and no mention that it might be skipped. So my
guess is that it will happen eventually.

[1]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=833023](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=833023)

------
bradleyland
It's not "don't ask, don't tell," it's "don't ask, don't care."

My agreement with Monty's assessment depends upon the definition of the "codec
market". The people who write the checks to pay the royalties know the costs
very well. The people who pay indirectly don't care, because the costs are low
enough that they don't register any pain for them. Arguably, what has been
reached is an optimal economic balance.

When incorporating footnote 1, it appears that he's talking more about the
selective enforcement that MPEG LA engages in, which I could see being more of
a don't ask, don't tell scenario, but I'm not sure the limited number of
licenses are proof that companies don't know about their licensing issues.
It's just proof that MPEG LA selectively enforces the licensing requirements;
a fact that is pretty well known amongst those who are in the affected
markets.

The arguments in support of an open web, with open audio & video codecs, are
(under current circumstances) principle-based arguments. It is notoriously
difficult to get people to take action over principled issues unless there is
some practical impact that they can feel directly. Mozilla made an attempt at
this by digging in their feet on the H.264 inclusion issue. Unfortunately,
that stand didn't _really_ affect end-users, because website authors worked
around the issue (e.g., Flash video players).

If open web proponents want to advance their agenda, they need to be more
strategic. They need to identify and execute on plans that increase end-user
exposure to MPEG LA licensing restrictions in a way that has a practical
impact on them.

If that's not possible, then you're left with a principled disagreement only.
If that's the case, then we have to fall back to the rationalization presented
in Carl Sagan's "Dragon in My Garage" argument. If there is no practical
difference between open and closed video codecs, then there is no difference
at all. The principle disagreement is as incorporeal as Carl's dragon.

~~~
josephlord
I'm not really disagreeing with your substantive points but wanted to clear up
a misunderstanding.

The MPEG-LA does not enforce anything. Companies with patents in the pool can
enforce them (they can also license them outside the pool).

Companies (that aren't Lodsys like trolls) aren't likely to bring action where
there isn't significant revenue to obtain unless there is a strategic threat
to them.

I would also like to pick up your language. The MPEG codecs are open although
they are not free, Free or Libre.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
They're only "open" according to some definitions. In this list of definitions
of "open standard" in Wikipedia it only meets 2.5 out of 18, and the first one
is that of a group that develops the MPEG standards:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard)

The main sticking point, which is also what holds up W3C and IETF acceptance
is not being "royalty-free".

------
antonios
For those who don't know, Monty is the creator of the Vorbis audio codec. If
there's somebody that can create a competitive free video codec, it's him.

~~~
mikeryan
I know who Monty is and respect him a lot. But the technology behind H.264 is
a collaborative effort by many of the best in the business and more
importantly a large part of the compression techniques in H.264 are covered
via patent. Saying he can do this single handedly, when entire teams at Google
can't do it is a bit of a stretch.

I don't know if it can be done, but its going to take a lot of smart folks to
pull it off..

~~~
nnethercote
He's not trying to do this by himself. From Brendan's post
([https://brendaneich.com/2013/10/ciscos-h-264-good-
news/](https://brendaneich.com/2013/10/ciscos-h-264-good-news/)):

"Mozilla has assembled an engineering dream team to develop Daala, including
Jean-Marc Valin, co-inventor of Opus, the new standard for audio encoding;
Theora project lead Tim Terriberry; and recently Xiph co-founders Jack
Moffitt, author of Icecast; and Monty Montgomery, the author of Ogg Vorbis."

~~~
clarry
At least a couple others not employed by Mozilla are also involved. I think
they really do have a superb team; look at how passionate these guys are. You
can throw a bunch of engineers at a problem with a commercial interest
(patents!), but this easily leads to the incremental quantity-over-quality
development you have with MPEG. Or you can have a few skilled & passionate
fellows with some really new ideas.

------
pdkl95
_sigh_

As I argued [1] several years ago when the FF+h264 drama was in full swing
with Mozilla making their principled stand, and way too many people seemed to
be hanging their hopes on Google granting the world a miracle with VP8/WebM.
So while it seemed that many people got what they were hoping for, the problem
was never truly solved.

Instead, the refusal to put h.263 into Firefox (even if done though some sort
of proxy/external plugin that simply exported the problem to
mplayer/gstreamer/whatever) didn't affect video at all (MPEG-LA still holds
all kinds of patents). The real damage, though, was _keeping Flash around_.
When presented with the compatibility mess that is the <video> tag, _Flash_
was (and still is, most places) the obvious choice.

There's a time and a place for standing firm on your principles, but it's also
important to pick your battles, and removing that bug-ridden binary blob from
the browser would have been a huge win.

[ ok, rant/flame off. I'm not really angry, just bitter after dealing with
this particular mess while watching an obvious solution wash away. Maybe
building something in minecraft can counteract this particular Sisyphean
mood... ]

[1] It was before I know about HN, unfortunately. Second two links are follow-
ups attempting to explain the futility of fighting what had already been
decided...

    
    
      - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1597850&cid=31643970
      - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1597850&cid=31644218
      - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1730576&cid=33009474

~~~
eevee
Even Google, champion of HTML5, still forces the Flash player on YouTube for
videos that have ads, regardless of what your browser supports (or doesn't).
So immediately caving on h.264 wouldn't have gotten rid of Flash; it would've
left the Web depending on one more not-quite-freely-implementable blob.

If _nothing_ else, it's probably due in part to Mozilla's stance against h.264
that we're even having conversations about alternative codecs today.

