> How about a Google monopoly? At least h.264 is owned by a number of different companies.
It's amazing to me. In the 90s Microsoft's overt policy was "embrace, extend, extinguish," and it called the GPL a "cancer," the MPAA was launching war against DeCSS, and Amazon.com was flexing its one-click patent against competitors. Open source developers had no powerful allies.
Now you have a powerful company like Google that releases millions of lines of open source, sponsors college students to work on open source, fights for openness standards in wireless spectrum auctions, fights for open standards like HTML5, open sources its entire mobile operating system, and in its latest move, buys a video codec company for $106 million and promptly pledges all of the patents for use by anybody.
And yet some people would prefer the codec whose rights are effectively owned by a known patent troll (MPEG-LA) because "at least [it] is owned by a number of different companies."
It goes to show that you can never please everyone.
Why doesn't Google release the source code of the flavor of Linux that it uses after earning tens of billions basically leveraging Linux code?
Google open sources things that are not central to it's business, just like every other company out there.
MPEG-LA cannot be a patent troll let alone a known one, because it's a loose organization of companies that agree on a standard to prevent fragmentation of video and let people deal with one entity instead of a thousand. Those individual companies could be trolls.
>fights for open standards like HTML5
Really? Then this move to remove support for H.264 will get Flash even more entrenched because it would be the easiest way for content providers to get WebM video working on IE9 and Safari. Flash has already announced upcoming support for WebM.
The MPEG-LA patent troll is a reference to MobileMedia, a Non-Practicing Entity (aka patent troll) that uses patents it got from Sony and Nokia and sued Apple, Rim and HTC within months of forming as a company.
MobileMedia is owned by, and shares a CEO with, MPEG-LA (who also licence non MPEG patent pools e.g. Firewire, the name alone is a bit misleading if you ask me).
> Why doesn't Google release the source code of the flavor of Linux that it uses after earning tens of billions basically leveraging Linux code?
Because the GPL does not require them to do so.
If the GPL required them to do so, nobody would licence their code with it, and only the most batshit-insane people would dare use code licensed under it. Would YOU want to run a Linux server if it obligated you to provide a complete dump of source code to anyone who asked? Seriously people, think before you write.
> MPEG-LA cannot be a patent troll let alone a known one, because it's a loose organization of companies
MPEG-LA manage a suite of patents and can issue press releases, therefore they can be a patent troll.
MPEG-LA cannot be a patent troll let alone a known one, because it's a loose organization of companies that agree on a standard to prevent fragmentation of video and let people deal with one entity instead of a thousand.
Also, the licensing terms are fixed at a maximum 10% rise per five-year renewal. Given the lifespan of patents, that's a low ceiling.
Also, the licensing terms are fixed at a maximum 10% rise per five-year renewal. Given the lifespan of patents, that's a low ceiling.
This is the first I've heard of this. Since one of the main concerns I've heard is that MPEG-LA could raise fees to unacceptable levels, do you mind providing a source for this? I'm still less comfortable with H264 being the standard rather than WebM, but this makes me less worried. (Anti-FUD?)
Considering how the large corporations easily reach the annual cap (currently $6.5 Million per year until at least 2015), the footnote that the 10% maximum increase in royalties does not apply to the cap is a bit disconcerting.
Ah, that explains how the cap has managed to go from $5 to $6.5 million (a 30% rise) since the last time I looked at it, which certainly wasn't 15 years ago.
It's amazing to me. In the 90s Microsoft's overt policy was "embrace, extend, extinguish," and it called the GPL a "cancer," the MPAA was launching war against DeCSS, and Amazon.com was flexing its one-click patent against competitors. Open source developers had no powerful allies.
Now you have a powerful company like Google that releases millions of lines of open source, sponsors college students to work on open source, fights for openness standards in wireless spectrum auctions, fights for open standards like HTML5, open sources its entire mobile operating system, and in its latest move, buys a video codec company for $106 million and promptly pledges all of the patents for use by anybody.
And yet some people would prefer the codec whose rights are effectively owned by a known patent troll (MPEG-LA) because "at least [it] is owned by a number of different companies."
It goes to show that you can never please everyone.