[whatwg] The issue of interoperability of the <video> element

[Maik Merten]

Dave Singer schrieb:
> At 10:16  +1000 25/06/07, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
> can I insert the same phrase you used "and unknown submarine patents"? 
> Otherwise you mis-characterize the position.  What is more, no-one with
> deep pockets has yet used the Ogg codecs seriously, and therefore there
> is no "honey pot" to attract the submarines (hm, do submarines like
> honey?).

Obviously there is a bunch of Ogg codecs.

Well, as for Ogg Vorbis there e.g. are...

Microsoft (their game division loves Ogg Vorbis), Epic Megagames, id
Software and many more (actually I have problems finding major game
studios that don't use Vorbis). Some manufacturers (one example is
Samsung) put Vorbis into their DAPs. Oh, and AOL is shipping it with
WinAmp, the #1 digital media player for the Windows platform.

Ogg Speex again is used by many VoIP products, this includes Xbox Live
(again, Microsoft).

And Ogg Theora's technology was used commercially as VP3 (you'd have to
ask On2 on what revenue was raised in that time period) - Theora itself
is in basically every Linux distribution out there, of course including
the "commercial" ones. Red Hat and Novell and whatnot - again,
multi-million dollar deployments.

Now, you could argue if that honey pot is large enough or not. No idea
what the usual "patent troll threshold" is.

Fact is: There is a submarine threat for both MPEG (you're already
having that risk) and Ogg (you'd like to avoid putting that potential
risk on top of the risks you're already taking). That is my
understanding of your situation and it won't help arguing "Tomorrow you
could be sued for using H.264 or MP3 or AAC" or "Tomorrow you could be
sued for using Theora or Vorbis".


> ISO standards are indeed open standards.

Well, as usual it depends on how one defines "open". If "open" is
assumed to mean "usable even for people/organizations without money"
then standards with patent license fees (no matter if ISO or not) are
not open, even if they're "more open" than e.g. completely proprietary
stuff.


> I (and others at Apple) are aware that the situation is not ideal, I
> assure you.  I wish I could see a better solution than the current
> "should".  Indeed, as you pointed out, an ability to add codecs would
> ameliorate the situation.  Lastly, I feel a little hurt that Apple is
> being so attacked when we take great efforts to develop, implement,
> promote, and interoperate open systems and specifications, while there
> are others in the industry who make no such efforts.  Could the rhetoric
> against us be toned down a little, please?

If there's a problem, let's get constructive and let's try to solve it.

If Apple doesn't want to take the IP risk of shipping anything but
QuickTime then let's find someone who's willing to do it ;-)

If Safari is encountering "application/ogg" and it can't decode that
stuff then redirect (after asking of course) the user to a fitting
QuickTime component download page on e.g. xiph.org or even automate the
process of installing a fitting 3rd-party component after the user
acknowledged the process.

That won't be as smooth as "native" and "out of the box" support - but
if the whole process only involves like 4 user mouse clicks then
operability is as "okay" as it can be under the given circumstances.


Maik Merten