[whatwg] on codecs in a 'video' tag.

Gervase Markham gerv at mozilla.org
Mon Apr 2 06:11:19 PDT 2007


Gervase Markham wrote:
> I'll let others comment on this. But I would note that JPEG2000 is 
> technically superior to JPEG, but hasn't been widely implemented due to 
> patent issues.

Correction: "in part due to patent issues".

> The problem is not that it's $5 million, it's that the amount is unknown 
> and unmeasurable. They have no "fixed fee above a certain number of 
> units" licensing policy. 

My apologies; that's wrong. I assumed the earlier quote on this list was 
the sum total of the applicable terms. There is a cap and, as Maciej 
says, it's $4.25M per year in 2007-08, and $5M per year in 2009-10.

Such a figure is, of course, entirely out of reach for every single free 
software browser project other than Firefox - including the one on which 
Safari was based.

> And even if they did, a Mozilla license 
> wouldn't cover other members of that community.

This part of my point stands.

Gerv



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