I'll make one somewhat long group reply on this thread. See inline:
On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 3:48 PM, Marco Schuster
<marco(a)harddisk.is-a-geek.org> wrote:
What about Internet Explorer? Will MS ever honor this
HTML tag and
this video codec without plugins?
There are no known publicly announced plans from Microsoft to include
support in Internet Explorer. Although it looks like Microsoft will
be including XiphQT (Theora, Vorbis, Speex, Flac) in a windows
standard codec service for Vista, though what that entails is somewhat
vague to me right now.
The non-inclusion in Explorer is unfortunate, but not the end of the world:
Web developers can use <video/> in pages and source a piece of JS that
knows how to replace the video tag with another playback method.
Currently Theora + Vorbis can be played by by any Java supporting
browser, or via browser plugins (like VLC plugin). There is now a
Flash 10 player for Vorbis (which involves a Vorbis decoder written in
actionscript) and Theora decoding in Flash 10 should be possible if
someone gets around to implementing the Theora spec in Flash) . Of
course, native playback will always work best and since native
playback will be supported in both Opera and Firefox the public will
have the opportunity to change browsers if they are unhappy with the
performance in IE.
Wikimedia projects have had support for <video/> in one form or
another pretty much since the original spec was drafted. So it's nice
to see production browsers catching up.
On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 10:37 PM, Tei wrote:
I don't understand why Nokia and other people
would "ban" and "block"
the adoption of video on internet. Is a bad idea. It don't make
sense.. but I can live with it (Note to self: boycot nokia products).
They fear a standard format without DRM so that they still can sell
crappy protected music or other content to uninformed customers.
Someone could propose a DRM standard for Ogg. No one has done so.
Apple and Nokia are both participants in several of the MPEG patent
pools, Nokia quite substantially. When people license MPEG technology
these companies make money. It's unsurprising that they would promote
their codecs to the exclusion of 'the competition'. It doesn't
require any evil.
I strongly recommend that you take a few minutes to read the About
Xiph page (
http://xiph.org/about/) if you have not. The document is
somewhat old, but it's every bit as relevant today as it was a decade
ago, although the commercial format battle ground has shifted more
towards Video as Ogg/Vorbis largely salted the ground for profits to
be made on audio formats.
In any case, since Microsoft, unlike Apple or Nokia, isn't making any
money from the MPEG formats and their own formats have mostly lost the
format wars outside of set top boxes (at least I think so, they may
disagree), it would seem to make economic sense for them to adopt the
open standards. So perhaps that may happen at some point, but I am not
a Microsoft executive and my crystal ball is currently in the shop for
repairs.
On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 5:11 PM, Husky <huskyr(a)gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
Apple uses and writes lots
of open source software, including the kernel for Mac OS X, Darwin.
Apple's relationship with Free/Open source software is tenuous at
best. For example: Apple programmers are now forbidden from reading
the mailing lists for GPLv3 licensed software if it's possible that
code may be posted to the lists. (I can cite public statements if you
do not wish to take my word for it). I do not consider them evil for
this— Their policies are a result of honestly made business decisions,
and their mission is to maximize value for their shareholders, not the
public good.
As mentioned, Apple enjoys licensing fees from MPEG technology, it
would be bad business for them to not resist the adoption of Vorbis,
Theora, FLAC, Speex, etc. Unsurprisingly they have resisted every one
of these formats even while their competition (including Microsoft,
Adobe, etc) have adopted (some) of them. At the same time they
continue to support MP3, .WAV files, and other DRM-free formats.
The patent hand-waving with respect to Theora is spurious at best and
dishonest FUD at worst. There is a very important reason that the
claims are non-specific and always attributed to unnamed parties: It
makes it impossible to address them. There exist patents in every area
of engineering interest and it is almost always impossible to be
*certain* that a particular solution violates none of them (excepting
old solutions used in the same way they were always used). This is a
truism — the same risk exists even for licensed codecs and virtually
all software and technoligy. When you license a MPEG codec you are not
provided with indemnity against third party claims, just ask Microsoft
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatel-Lucent_v._Microsoft).
Multi-million dollar companies have shipped Theora, and have had legal
teams evaluate the situation. If this doesn't provide you with enough
confidence you should be demanding patent reforms, not expressing
concern about Theora. So please do not spread the claim that Theora
has some uniquely poor position with respect to patents.
Cheers