Microsoft notes that It must also be flexible: there should also be no fixed ties to specific codecs, media formats or other scenarios.
The story is strangely familiar to video/audio tag mess. Avoiding specification of required codecs will give companies like MS and Apple their regular excuse to ignore open codecs. I think W3C needs to dodge this sneaky trick and put Opus in the standard explicitly. Nothing prevents extending WebRTC with more codecs beyond the required standard minimum, but enforcing the least common denominator is a must, to avoid the repeating of complete failure of ubiquitous video/audio tag. And that standard choice should be an open royalty free codec.
Microsoft notes that It must also be flexible: there should also be no fixed ties to specific codecs, media formats or other scenarios.
The story is strangely familiar to video/audio tag mess. Avoiding specification of required codecs will give companies like MS and Apple their regular excuse to ignore open codecs. I think W3C needs to dodge this sneaky trick and put Opus in the standard explicitly. Nothing prevents extending WebRTC with more codecs beyond the required standard minimum, but enforcing the least common denominator is a must, to avoid the repeating of complete failure of ubiquitous video/audio tag. And that standard choice should be an open royalty free codec.