I think it's obvious why thy did this. They don't want Google's open source WebM codec to become the norm so they're going to push even harder for h.264.
The whole Internet is better off in the end if it's built only on open source and free stuff.
They're not sitting around a conference table in an underground bunker, stroking their beards and cackling maniacally while trying to screw the open source community as hard as possible. Microsoft is a business. What business sense does it make to release this plugin?
I doubt they pay more for their use of H.264 than they receive from everyone's use of H.264. Providing the codec may cost them money, but it's far from obvious that it's an unprofitable act.
I guess that, for most of the companies on that list, it is a 'pay a bit to prevent legal troubles' scenario, where 'a bit' is a couple of millions. Some of that they will get back when MPEG-LA gets disbanded.
Don't they also have to pay licensing fees to MPEG-LA? What's the overall impact on the bottom line? IMO it would have to be pretty substantial for it to really be a driving factor in the decision-making.
Just thinking out loud, but if this codec becomes dominant, and is only released by Microsoft on the Windows platform, perhaps it's another reason to prefer Windows over OSX?
WebM is not that great technically (http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377) and is unlikely to remain royalty-free if it ever takes off as there are many patents that could apply to it's code.
H.264 will play in both flash and the browser. It's a standard codec that is used in most workflows already. On top of that, MPEG-LA has announced it will always be royalty free for video that is free to end users (http://www.macworld.com/article/153692/2010/08/h264_royaltie...).
There's no reason for Firefox and Opera to not pick up H.264. It is the only choice that makes sense if HTML5 video is going to take off, and they are holding the web back. Thumbs up to Microsoft for actually trying to push us forward this time.
MPEG-LA has also refused (IIRC) to license the H.264 patents to the Mozilla Foundation in a manner that would actually be compatible with an open source project. Eg., MF would not be allowed to distribute the source code of the H.264 codec/plugin for Firefox, and users who download the Firefox source code and compile Firefox would forced to license their own copy of the H.264 plugin, or else would not be able to use it with their build of Firefox. This then means that downstream projects like Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, etc would not be able to maintain their own modified builds of Firefox unless they too licensed the H.264 patents.
There are other restrictions that I am surely missing, but the point is that MF licensing H.264 is not a feasible solution for such a shining example of free and open source software projects.
Or the other way to look at it is that Mozilla has refused to build Firefox so that it will be compatible with MPEG-LA's licensing. Millions of users care about Web video; how many care about downstream modified versions of Firefox?
>Or the other way to look at it is that Mozilla has refused to build Firefox so that it will be compatible with MPEG-LA's licensing
Well now that you put it that way, it's obvious; Mozilla should definitely ignore those pesky licensing problems in order to support a predatory cartel in gaining a global monopoly over video on the web.
Also, I hear ground up babies make excellent fertiliser.
> how many care about downstream modified versions of Firefox?
All of the Firefox users running Ubuntu or Debian, for a start, even if they don't realize that they're using a downstream release of Firefox, which probably encompasses millions of users already...
> (...) and is unlikely to remain royalty-free (...)
The argument that there may be lurking patent issues in WebM doesn't carry a lot of weight, I think, unless they are actually demonstrated. After all, couldn't you say that about absolutely any software?
Citing from Jason's article that you obviously didn't take the time to read:
"With regard to patents, VP8 copies too much from H.264 for comfort, no matter whose word is behind the claim of being patent-free. This doesn’t mean that it’s sure to be covered by patents, but until Google can give us evidence as to why it isn’t, I would be cautious."
I'm not sure what you think is in those sentences that amounts to a verified patent infringement of some kind. You would think though that in the ~8 months since Jason wrote this some kind of specific claim might have surfaced?
I'm not at all convinced WebM doesn't have patent issues, but I'm certainly not going to assume it does have patent issues because someone said it might have patent issues.
Also, for what it's worth, the burden of proof is not on Google, that's not how patents work.
You would think though that in the ~8 months since Jason wrote this some kind of specific claim might have surfaced?
Nope. Personally I would wait until it's too late for the major players to back out before I make a patent claim. There's no 'statute of limitations' on patent claims. Laches may make things a tad more difficult but holding off until the actual specification is in use would probably hold up.
I'm not at all convinced WebM doesn't have patent issues, but I'm certainly not going to assume it does have patent issues because someone said it might have patent issues.
As Jason said in his article (and he's probably in one of the best positions to judge technical ingenuity in this area), it's very likely that it does have patent issues. That's not someone saying it might have patent issues, that's someone saying it probably does.
Also, for what it's worth, the burden of proof is not on Google, that's not how patents work.
In court. We're not in court. The claim is being made that we should use WebM mostly because it isn't patent encumbered (certainly not for technical reasons). This is a claim that Google should defend. Without support for this statement there's no reason to use WebM instead of H264.
I really don't know much about this, but I understand that VP8 was designed to deliberately avoid patents. (Thus some of the weird decisions Dark_Shikari comments on.)
That's simply a truism. There is no piece of software for which this isn't true. Everything, to a first approximation, violates some patent somewhere. Until somebody cowboys up and actually sues for infringement, this is purely scaremongering. That's one of the greatest evils of patents - their use as a weapon of terror.
Microsoft is a H.264 licensor, with one or more patens in the H.264/AVC patent pool. Having H.264 become the standard for publishing video on the Web will benefit them directly in terms of licensing fees.
I think Mozilla's refusal to allow use of OS installed codecs is worse, though. I can see the justification for not providing support for the H264 codec in-browser but not allowing OS codecs seems like taking ideology over technology too far.
The context here is that Mozilla specifically said they will not allow Firefox to use Windows's built-in codecs. MS found a workaround by rewriting <video> tags into <embed>.
I got a pit in stomach reading that....Microsoft just can't win. I'm sure they have business motives for this, but it really seems like a damned if you do, damned if you don't.
They release a free plugin for Firefox, which'll help address the major issue surrounding HTML5, and the question we ask is if they've gone too far? Or why is it Windows 7 only? Really?!
I doubt it. I think their motivation is to prevent WebM from replacing h.264 as the dominant web video format. Microsoft don't care about licensing fees - their cash cows will be earning them orders of magnitude more. But if WebM replaces h.264 then Firefox on Linux (or ChromeOS or whatever) will be able to play that quite happily, whereas I'm sure MS would prefer h.264 to remain dominant since it's patent-encumbered.
Preventing WebM to become dominant has the exact same outcome of more license income ;)
Also, why shouldn't they care about license fees? Think about all encoders/decoders, all producers, all receivers, home cinema players. With more and more videos (VOD) moving into the web, this is only at the beginning. Once H.264 is established enough it's income for free!
http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/html5-extension-for-w...