On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Amir E. Aharoniamir.aharoni@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe you are joking and i am missing it, but that is indeed sad - Nokia, Apple, Microsoft and many other companies really like non-open standards and dislike open ones. In the particular case of video, they all probably hate OGG, because it is not DRM-friendly.
It's not a DRM issue afaik. For Apple it's mostly because they have heavily invested in H264 as their video codec of choice (think hardware chips in iPods and iPhones) and because of the 'uncertain patent landscape' surrounding Theora (just restating what Hixie already said on the WHATWG mailing list).
For Microsoft it's a completely different issue. Their strategy is frustrating the HTML5 process by ignoring any requests for comments on HTML5-related issues because they want Silverlight to be the de-facto language for writing rich internet apps. Also, any embracing of HTML5 on the MS side would mean that they venture onto Google's terrain, who is almighty when it comes to using the browser for RIA's.
We do have a somewhat important role in this whole debate, because we are one of the few major websites that have embraced OGG for many years, and using it as our sole way of displaying video. When, at a certain point in time, all WP articles have beautiful OGG video's using the <video> element IE and Safari users might start to complain about the lack of native support in their browsers, forcing MS and Apple to support <video> and Theora in their browsers.
But that might be wishful thinking :)
-- Hay