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

[Martin Atkins]

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 
> We think your reasons are strong and worthy of respect. That is why we 
> are not trying to force our codec preference on you, but rather propose 
> to leave this issue open. We ask you to respect our reasons as well, 
> rather than trying to force us to go along with your codec preference.
> 

If there is no baseline codec in the specification, I firmly believe 
that one of the following will happen:

  * Everyone will end up implementing whatever Microsoft implements.
  * Microsoft won't implement <video> anyway, so no-one will use it.

In practice, everyone's just mimicking whatever Microsoft does. At least 
when they violate the spec they can be called on it; if what they do is 
allowable by the spec, then everyone will have to copy it or they'll 
have a useless browser.