In August 1999, Unisys changed the details of their licensing practice, announcing the option for owners of Billboard and Intra net Web sites to obtain licenses on payment of a one-time license fee of $5000 or $7500. Such licenses were not required for website owners or other GIF users who had used licensed software to generate GIFs.
Edit:
I am completely opposed to web standards including proprietary codecs. HTML5 should have Theora (or some other open gratis and libre codec) as the standard which all browsers wishing to be HTML5 compliant must be able to handle - this does not stop anyone from using h264 if they wish to. What it does is ensure that the web remains as free and open to use as possible.
If the working groups had plumped for Theora then optimisations and hardware would follow in pretty short shrift. It ain't going to happen and the reasons are commercial - this makes me sad for the future of the web, I see this is a big turning point. Kinda like if the developers of HTML4 had said "we know about the LZW patent but we're going to write in GIF as the standard requirement".
(Incidentally I gather that no image formats were written into the standards before?!).
So do you link to h264 videos from your intranet - want to buy a license for $10k? No? Switch to Theora as the best free alternative. OK, now none of the browsers support your video format natively. Congratulations you've been screwed again by MegaCorp.
other GIF users who had used licensed software to generate GIFs.
In light of this article, that quote is quite interesting. Looks like this time around the software is only licensed to generate h264 for non-commercial reasons right from the get go. Something planning ahead?
I am completely opposed to web standards including proprietary codecs
h.264 is not in the HTML5 standard and nobody is trying to get it put there. The reason it is a hot topic is that it is what people are actually using, not because of web standards.
HTML5 should have Theora (or some other open gratis and libre codec) as the standard which all browsers wishing to be HTML5 compliant must be able to handle
The point of the spec is to document what is shared in common across browsers. Mandating something that was not going to be shared in common would have turned the spec into a work of fiction.
I am completely opposed to web standards including proprietary codecs. HTML5 should have Theora (or some other open gratis and libre codec) as the standard which all browsers wishing to be HTML5 compliant must be able to handle - this does not stop anyone from using h264 if they wish to. What it does is ensure that the web remains as free and open to use as possible.
You seem not to realize that Apple and Microsoft are the ones writing the "standards". Their goal is use HTML5 to make money, not to make the web "more free" or something.
>You seem not to realize that Apple and Microsoft are the ones writing the "standards".
Nope I thought it was the WHAT-WG and the HTML WG at the W3C. Yes major corporations have direct influence on these groups but so to do the OSS friendly browser corps and to some extent web designers and users.
Google are already using h264 in HTML5 on YouTube for capable browsers aren't they? Are they sending Theora/Vorbis streams at all? Seems clear where they are going then.
Google are currently using H.264 for everyone on Youtube. That's what they send to iPhone, most of the higher quality Flash videos and the new HTML5 trial.
However, they support Theora in both Chrome and Chromium. In the Chromium OS demos they demonstrated playing Theora files from an SD card. They also purchased a company that creates codecs that don't infringe on MPEG patents and which was the original source of Theora.
I don't think it's clear at all which "side" Google is taking on this because as a large they'll get some benefit whether the web adopts royalty free codecs or not (e.g. if small, community specific Youtube competitors pay more per video than giant sites like Youtube that's good, but more video on the web generally probably helps Google too).
In August 1999, Unisys changed the details of their licensing practice, announcing the option for owners of Billboard and Intra net Web sites to obtain licenses on payment of a one-time license fee of $5000 or $7500. Such licenses were not required for website owners or other GIF users who had used licensed software to generate GIFs.
Edit:
I am completely opposed to web standards including proprietary codecs. HTML5 should have Theora (or some other open gratis and libre codec) as the standard which all browsers wishing to be HTML5 compliant must be able to handle - this does not stop anyone from using h264 if they wish to. What it does is ensure that the web remains as free and open to use as possible.
If the working groups had plumped for Theora then optimisations and hardware would follow in pretty short shrift. It ain't going to happen and the reasons are commercial - this makes me sad for the future of the web, I see this is a big turning point. Kinda like if the developers of HTML4 had said "we know about the LZW patent but we're going to write in GIF as the standard requirement".
(Incidentally I gather that no image formats were written into the standards before?!).
So do you link to h264 videos from your intranet - want to buy a license for $10k? No? Switch to Theora as the best free alternative. OK, now none of the browsers support your video format natively. Congratulations you've been screwed again by MegaCorp.