[whatwg] The truth about Nokias claims

[Dave Singer]

Thank you.

I want to clarify something in what you say below.  In case it helps 
calm things down.



At 9:26  +0100 14/12/07, Stijn Peeters wrote:
>Simply bashing Apple/Nokia/Ian does not help here. It is not simply a matter
>of reverting the spec to say Theora is the recommended format (as you seemed
>to be asking for a few replies ago), as it has been stated several times
>before that there are major browser vendors that will not implement this,
>and HTML5 naturally seeks to be a specification that will be implemented by
>as many as possible. Even though a SHOULD is not technically required for
>conformance, including a SHOULD that we know beforehand won't be implemented
>is of no use.


Those browser vendors are not stating a permanent and dogmatic "will 
not", AFAIK.  This is quite important.

They are saying that *given their current understanding* they do not 
think they will be to implement these codecs.  Similarly, *given the 
current licenses for mpeg codecs* they understand that they cannot be 
mandated.  *Given the quality of the old solutions with expired or no 
IPR (e.g. Motion JPEG)* they do not think that these codecs offer 
enough compression.  And so on.

For all these that are mutable, work is going on or could be done. 
On the IPR and risk question, it has been suggested that the W3C help 
with an independent, unbiased analysis, for example.

We all knew before any of this recent flood of emails that the 
open-source codecs were candidates, and had support.  The emails, 
despite their volume, have done little more than confirm this.


-- 
David Singer
Apple/QuickTime