[Solar-general] Fwd: [DS-public] No video codecs for HTML5 because software patents :'(

[Diego Saravia]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alberto Barrionuevo <abarrio en ffii.org>
Date: 2009/7/4
Subject: [DS-public] No video codecs for HTML5 because software patents :'(
To: openstandards en ffii.org
Cc: public en digistan.org


Finally the comercial interest of Apple has won: HTML5 won't include any
open
standard codec to embed video.

It is explained by Ian Hickson, the HTML5 specification responsible at W3C:

http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-June/020620.html

But Ian is wrong in his reasoning arguing that including OGG/THEORA in the
HTML5 wouldn't help to interoperability neither would make it mandatory
finally
for the browsers.

First of all, H.264, the (only) competitor of OGG/THEORA never should have
been an option, since it is full covered by (expensive & discriminatory)
software patents and this is agaisnt the historical policy of W3C on
granting
only open standards and not patented (RAND) standards. Just taking in care
that H.264 would leave out the market to the second most used browser
(Firefox) because being open source it should be enough not to indeed
consider
it.

Apart of this, by including OGG/THEORA in the specification you would grant
a
special promotion and power to the adoption of OGG/THEORA. For example, if
any
goverment adopts HTML5, as is expected to be done in all the government
interoperability frameworks, they would be, at the end, adopting OGG/THEORA
no
matter of the interests of Apple.

Unfortunatetlly, in this way, we are just converting W3C in a rubber stamper
of the iPod commercial interests. And what is worse, opening the door to
Microsoft to impose its closed video formats from Windows Media Player with
the next version of their (poor but widelly spreaded) browser.

Saludos,
--
Alberto Barrionuevo
Open Standards WG
Ex President FFII
www.ffii.org



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-- 
Diego Saravia
Diego.Saravia en gmail.com
NO FUNCIONA->dsa en unsa.edu.ar
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