[whatwg] Xiph.Org Statement Regarding the HTML5 Draft and the Ogg Codec Set

[Christopher "Monty" Montgomery]

On Dec 13, 2007 6:18 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:

> It matters in this case because the press release cites large company
> (i.e. potential patent troll magnet) deployment of Vorbis, but then
> the press release mostly talks about video.

Oh, I misunderstood what you meant in that part... but I did go on to
directly address your point.

> I've also seen people claim that before the design of Theora, an
> exhaustive patent search was done and it was deliberately coded to
> avoid existing patents, or that it is completely free of known
> patents. I think both of these things are true of Vorbis, but I do not
> believe they are true of Theora.

Here's where we need to get the lawyers all in the same room to even
begin talking about it in any detail-- and I think we absolutely
should get all those lawyers in the room.

> I think the press release may increase confusion on these sorts of
> points.

I don't think it *is* possible to increase confusion but we're [Xiph]
not going to sink because we can't be bothered to keep bailing.  We
[the larger group] are at an impasse because no one is willing to talk
details for fear of liability.  We [the larger group] need to find a
way past that.

> (The press release also talks about MPEG as if it were a monolithic
> thing and not several families of codecs and container formats, but I
> didn't complain about that because it's less likely to confuse the
> discussion in a material way.)

Yes, the statement suffers and benefits from brevity.  Bevity is the
best starting point for a conversation.  Now we have to find a way to
get all the players willing to discuss details.

> Darn, I was all ready to pull on my wrestling singlet. :-)

I'm not *nearly* drunk enough to be hearing those words.

Monty