> I've never understood the objection to MPEGLA. [...] MPEGLA is a licensing agency, so there are no personal or political issues.
Others have comments on other parts of this statement, but I wanted to mention that the political factors in the patent pool can have significant effects on the codec's final quality.
There are pieces of the MP3 codec which exist only to include the patent. After all, if your patent is in the technology, it is quite a lot of money in royalties you'll be getting. There is extraordinary pressure to get your patented tech into the standard even if it isn't helpful.
When I originally hired Monty to work on Ogg Vorbis fulltime, I also hired Mark Taylor (LAME author) to work on a new codec as well. His idea was essentially to remove all the idiocy from MP3 and leave only the useful pieces. It was an eye opening experience.
There is also the problem that MPEG and ISO have fairly closed membership. This is one reason why the IETF has taken up codec work over the last year or so.
Others have comments on other parts of this statement, but I wanted to mention that the political factors in the patent pool can have significant effects on the codec's final quality.
There are pieces of the MP3 codec which exist only to include the patent. After all, if your patent is in the technology, it is quite a lot of money in royalties you'll be getting. There is extraordinary pressure to get your patented tech into the standard even if it isn't helpful.
When I originally hired Monty to work on Ogg Vorbis fulltime, I also hired Mark Taylor (LAME author) to work on a new codec as well. His idea was essentially to remove all the idiocy from MP3 and leave only the useful pieces. It was an eye opening experience.
There is also the problem that MPEG and ISO have fairly closed membership. This is one reason why the IETF has taken up codec work over the last year or so.