[whatwg] more discussion regarding codecs (Was: whatwg Digest, Vol 45, Issue 16)

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 12 Dec 2007, Stewart Brodie wrote:
> Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> 
> > There is no way we can ever guarantee that there are no covering 
> > patents. Whether a patent covers a technology or not really has more 
> > to do with what the courts say than with what the patents say. If 
> > Apple say they don't want to implement Ogg, then we have to find 
> > another solution.
> > 
> > (Similarly -- Opera, Mozilla, et al, don't want to implement H.264. So 
> > we have to find a solution other than H.264.)
>
> Is there any codec that would satisfy everybody?  I doubt it, to be 
> honest.

Currently there are no known codecs that satisfy everyone; if there were, 
we'd have picked it and moved on by now. However, that could change; there 
are people investigating this as we speak. (Indeed there's a whole 
conference about this and related issues this week in San Jose.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'