

The Ambiguity of Open and H.264 vs. VP8 - antimatter15
http://antimatter15.com/wp/2011/01/the-ambiguity-of-open-and-vp8-vs-h-264/

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Athtar
>H.264 is an open standard. It was developed by a committee, standardized,
reviewed by many engineers and developers for multiple companies and has been
standardized for use with a multitude of containers and devices.

>VP8 is not a standard. It was developed secretly by a single company, and
until recently, had only a single working implementation. The public wasn’t
open to collaboration on the specification until the bitstream spec was
frozen, including the bugs that existed within.

This is an interesting point. One I had never even realized.

~~~
kenjackson
This is an important point not just for ideological reasons, but it is one
reason why the FUD argument is not symmetric.

Since H264 was implemented in the open with open and large membership to the
body, it is more difficult for some company to come out of the woodwork and
say, "Hey, we have a patent that H264 rides on, but we didn't know it until
now" Note, QCOM tried this with H264 several years ago and got their butt
handed to them by the courts
(<http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=1037466>). People have had 10
years to examine this open specification. I think its reasonable to say that
one would have found a violation by now. And almost all the majors are already
either licensees or licensors. There's a slim chance that there's a patent
floating around in some patent troll portfolio that hasn't been examined, but
that's the only real vector I can see of a legitimate surprise H264 patent
violation.

Whereas with WebM its been in the public domain less than a year. It could
feasibly take a few years for it to be reaonable that anyone who would have
done due diligence to have done so. It's completely reasonable that in a year
from now Siemans comes out and says, "WebM infringes these three patents we
have". A court is not likely to throw it out saying they've been sitting on
them.

~~~
etherealG
While what you're saying is true, the royalties side of things has been locked
down by Google's legal team very effectively. If said patent holder makes a
patent claim against WebM they automatically destroy all free royalty rights
for themselves on the same codec (if I understand correctly). This means that
while they could try to hold Google (or any other user of the codec) to some
kind of patent royalties, Google could retaliate for any use that company or
individual makes of the same codec (with as much leeway to set a price as the
patent gives the original individual or company.

This is the true genious of the WebM license. It means even if this _does_
happen in the future, Google can destroy whoever has this patent through a
massive counter. It also means that any challenge would have to be made
extremely carefully.

edited for spelling :)

~~~
cornedpig
Doesn't matter if the patent holder is a troll with no viable products of its
own.

~~~
yuhong
But H.264 would not be immune to that either.

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te_chris
Very good summary of the issue. I particularly like the point that <video> is,
in and of itself, open and as such the establishment of a consistent baseline
codec in VP8 could actually allow h.26x to flourish and innovate as the codec
of choice for high-quality content.

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mryall
This is a great post and clarified quite a few confusing points of the
discussion for me.

One area that unfortunately it didn't really cover was the impact of widely
available hardware and GPU-accelerated decoding for H.264. Surely the millions
of non-PC devices being sold with H.264 support (even baseline) will have some
effect on the outcome of the new video format war.

~~~
vetinari
Not really. The upcoming generation of mobile devices will have hardware
support for VP8 and the users upgrade these devices very often.

~~~
eelco
Very often? Have you seen how many people are still using iPhone 3Gs (not
3GSs!) That's about two and a half years old.

~~~
Locke1689
I still am. I know a couple people who still are too (the 3G iOSv4 wouldn't
have needed an update if the market share weren't significant).

------
wallflower
> MPEG LA has a royalty cap so that companies selling high-volume products
> know beforehand the maximum amount of royalties they'll have to pay to MPEG
> LA in a given year. The current $5 million cap really isn't much for a big
> player possibly generating many billions of annual revenues with products
> that include an AVC/H.264 encoder and/or decoder.

[http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/06/mpeg-las-
avch264-lic...](http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/06/mpeg-las-
avch264-licensing-terms.html)

~~~
magicalist
leaving google aside, I think it's pretty obvious that the "royalty-free
codec" that entities like Mozilla are looking for is pretty incompatible with
"but there's a cap on the royalties."

hence the <video> situation we were in even before last week and google's blog
post.

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TechNewb
The biggest part of the 'rage' towards Google over the drop of Chrome's native
ability to use H.264 in the <video> tag, is that Google is trying to spin as
its for the benefit of innovation. Which is not the case. Flash has been
great, but it's not needed for the distribution of video content, and the fact
that WebM is a lawsuit waiting to happen does not help either.

Great article though!

~~~
zaphar
H.264 could also be considered a lawsuit waiting to happen. Who knows who out
there has a patent it infringes? Maybe the webm folks have a few patents it
violates?

~~~
mikeryan
_H.264 could also be considered a lawsuit waiting to happen_

It _could_ be and its been challenged at least once in the past (however
Qualcomm lost that challenge), but though its not free, its patent
restrictions are pretty clear and tested. It is 7 years old. While stranger
things have happened, its very unlikely that as a licensee of H.264 you are
going to be sued.

WebM's status is not as clear, sometimes you choose the devil you know.

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shuri
Could this be a move to get the H.264 patent holders to release their patent
hold on the standard?

~~~
danbmil99
It's definitely putting pressure on them to provide a royalty-free version,
which might include some of the less performant profiles. This was in the mix
originally when H.264 was being developed, but major patent holders refused to
go along with a 'royalty-free baseline' profile.

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bradleyland
Why is it necessary for HTML5 to specify a codec for the <video> and <audio>
tag when no format is specified for <img>?

(I'm not being rhetorical)

~~~
othermaciej
It's not really necessary, and so far the HTML5 spec hasn't done so. However,
it would be useful if all browsers had at least one codec in common. GIF and
JPEG became de facto standard image formats because all browsers supported
them, even though there was no de jure requirement.

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sigzero
As the end user...I only care about which one gives me the best experience
period.

~~~
pyre
I'll expand a bit on barrkel's comment:

Back in the day when IE dominated Netscape Navigator/Communicator, IE _was_
the best end-user experience. Flash-forward a few years and IE is languishing,
with practically no new development happening on it. At this time (prior to
Mozilla taking off), IE is still the best end-user experience _available_ ,
but not the best end-user experience _possible_. It to took the Mozilla Suite
and it's spin-off, Firefox, to bring a better user-experience to market.

The same applies now. While h.264 might provide the best experience _right
now_ , it's (possibly) at the cost of the experience in the future. What
happens in the future when the MPEG-LA decides to start changing/enforcing
royalties? What growing pains will the industry have to endure to change
formats away from h.264 if that becomes an issue? What if h.264 is so
entrenched that they can't migrate away from it? Why not just standardize on
something now that won't have those problems later?

To fall back on the analogy, if IE hadn't pushed Netscape out of the market,
what would the web ecosystem look like now?

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ergo98
Fantastic article. This is one of very few entries on this debacle that is
actually informed and insightful.

~~~
zmmz
I agree that it's a well written article and provides a very good overview.
The tables are especially helpful.

However, there is one rather large oversight: _H.264 is an open standard_

This is not necessarily correct. As a citizen of the EU, I have to disagree.
One of the EU pre-requisites[1] for something being qualified as an Open
Standard is: The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
(parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard#European_Union_de...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard#European_Union_definition)

~~~
hackermom
I'd think that H.264 isn't subject to this definition - or, at worst, it falls
in a gray area of sorts - as the H.264 technology is unencumbered by license
fees if it's used non-commercially. No developer of _gratis_ software using
MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 tech. has ever been subjected to a legal case initiated by
the MPEG-LA.

~~~
bzbarsky
> the H.264 technology is unencumbered by license fees if > it's used non-
> commercially

That's not true, unfortunately.

There may have been no lawsuits (I can't comment on that, though I'd like to
see your data). But that's just because the MPEG-LA hasn't felt like suing
people. If you're shipping an H.264 encoder or decoder in binary form to
people and not paying the relevant licensing fees, then you're infringing on
the patents. There's no exception for "non-commercial" use there last I
checked. If you think there is, please cite.

~~~
anonymous246
They probably won't do it.

Somebody will come up something similar to the hack/exploit that Mozilla did:
set up a for-profit corporation to receive money and a non-profit foundation
(which owns 100% of corp's shares) to do the development. Then they can claim
that the non-profit foundation is the one that's really using the patents and
hence should not have to pay royalties.

------
hackermom
I believe this is to date the sanest article related to the H.264/WebM
debacle; it clearly, and with detail, brings out the fact that H.264 _is_
open. However, it fails to clarify a very important detail to this discussion,
surrounding the royalty issue: H.264 coding/decoding is _free-of-charge to
implement, distribute and use in non-commercial contexts_.

Google's, Mozilla's and Opera's actions and careless, uninformed (or possibly
intentionally slanderous) responses in this discussion clearly show that their
issue with H.264 isn't that H.264 isn't open enough, but rather that it isn't
gratis enough.

------
Herring
_> open standard_

 _> incompatible with open source_

Does this make sense to anyone? It seems to me the word open doesn't mean much
now.

~~~
pohl
The term "Open standard" predates the term "open source". The latter term was
born as recently as January 1998 - around the same moment when Netscape
Navigator was open sourced. The semantics that the latter term's use of "open"
imply cannot be forced on the former.

~~~
sayrer
(disclosure: I work for Mozilla)

I've never found the argument you're making very compelling. It's "open" in
the same way that golf course with a $500 greens fee is open.

What it really constitutes is a way for existing market players to collude,
and thereby exclude future participants. Some of those future participants
might be quite disruptive, and benefit consumers.

It's really pretty funny that some terribly corrupt standards organizations
arrived at a totally unsatisfactory definition of "open", and then tried to
claim that better definitons of "open" somehow infringed(!) on their early,
bad definition.

~~~
kenjackson
Most public golf courses I know of charge fees. Anyone can play as long as
they pay. Some people actually do complain the fees are too expensive, but
it's better than some country clubs where you need to be invited, approved,
and then upfront dues atart at $100k.

Now I know your point wasn't actually about golf, but a lot of "open"
facilities do cost money to use. It's just that they're non-discrimanatory
about their use and charge what they consider reasonable fees (enough to pay
for staff, upkeep, improvements, etc...).

This is actually very similar to MPEG-LA, the big difference being that MPEG-
LA is not non-profit. But then again neither is Google. What would be a nice
move by Google is to actually give all On2 property to Mozilla or Xiph. Or
ever better yet, Outercurve (to show that they don't really want to indirectly
exert disproportionate influence).

~~~
danbmil99
As for non-discriminatory: I believe the MPEG-LA patent-holders are free to
make side deals that bypass the supposedly non-discriminatory licensing fees.
So if you are a major patent holder, you can in theory go to each of the other
patent holders and negotiate 'cross-licensing' of your patents, agreeing to
charge each other nothing for using each other's licenses.

So MPEG in this light can be seen as a collusive monopolistic oligarchy, where
if you're in the club you get something for free that everyone else has to pay
for. Not very competitive.

A bit of history: early on, On2 made a stink about the monopolistic nature of
MPEG-LA:

[http://www.cedmagazine.com/Article.aspx?id=63386&LangTyp...](http://www.cedmagazine.com/Article.aspx?id=63386&LangType=1033)

~~~
kenjackson
They aren't really side deals. Its that pricing for members is a function of
contributed patents. In otherwords, if you contribute 90% of the patents, you
pay less.

And anyone can go to each patent holder and negotiate licensing of patents
since the licensors still hold the patents. Part of the reason that MPEG-LA
exists is to make it so that you don't have to negotiate with fifty companies
in order to implement H264. MPEG-LA doesn't block you from doing this if you
prefer that route, but it will take a LOT more time and likely be more
expensive.

