I'm not an expert in multimedia codecs or patents so I leave the actual decision to people who know better (maybe legal team in WMF?) but according to tech news, major patents for mp4 have already expired and the rest will expire soon, a large batch of them expired in November 2023 and a major batch will expire by March this year.

There are many types of mp4, I think H.263 is now expired but again, not an expert.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.263_expired_yet%3F
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_MPEG-4_Visual_expired_yet%3F

VP9 and H.264 are not expired yet (but H.264 seems to be expiring soon so maybe we should prepare?):
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_VP9_expired_yet%3F
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_MPEG-4_AVC_expired_yet%3F


Am Fr., 26. Jan. 2024 um 18:59 Uhr schrieb geni <geniice@gmail.com>:
On Wed, 24 Jan 2024 at 07:00, Gnangarra <gnangarra@gmail.com> wrote:
> Simple mp4 upload option would be a starting point, surely we are big enough for any copyright holders to donate the licensing if wmf comes made a request
>

No. There are still members of the MP4 patent pool who expect that at
some point they will make a lot of money off it.

--
geni
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Amir (he/him)