[theora] Bad news from Google

[Jason Self]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Patrick Aljord <patcito at gmail.com> wrote:

> If any transcode is going on, it must be with the on2 codec they bought. I
> mean, they didn't buy it for nothing I guess. But the merger is still undone
> I think so it might take a long time before they open source it and
> transcode all the youtube videos. Eventually it'll probably get done
> though.

Even if the merger completes in February as planned, and Google
promptly licenses the codec (and associated On2 patents) for
everyone's free use, there's still the question of whether On2's
codecs step on patents owned by anyone else. In addition to being
careful to avoid patented methods, I believe that the folks at
xiph.org did a patent search on Theora & Vorbis in the past. To my
knowledge, no patent search has been done regarding the On2 codecs,
nor do I know if On2 been as careful as the folks at xiph.org in
avoiding them. Google using Theora & Vobis would be the preferred
method in my book just because its patent status is known (as much as
can be.)