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

[Henri Sivonen]

On Mar 27, 2007, at 23:40, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:

> I would be curious for the reasons that 3GPP has taken the requirement
> of vorbis out of the spec. Was that a decision based on technical
> reasons and could you please explain what these technical reasons
> were?

First: I don't know about what goes on inside 3GPP.

However, about one 3GPP stakeholder with significant clout:
When Nokia guys show up Open Source meetings, the FAQ about Maemo is  
why they don't ship Vorbis support. The manager of the Maemo  
operation has said that Nokia is afraid of Vorbis having some  
Fraunhofer-owned stuff in it after all, so Nokia does not want to  
ship Vorbis support until their own people have vetted Vorbis for  
patent issues. It is entirely unclear to me if they are actively  
vetting it.

That's the stated reason.

In addition, it might be relevant that *all* the companies that have  
patents in the AAC patent portfolio are 3GPP members. If everyone  
used Vorbis, the value of the AAC patents would be diluted both in  
terms of licensing revenue and as MAD warheads mounted on defensive  
patent missiles.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen at iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/