[theora] Theora Petition on YouTube

[Jason Self]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:10 PM, Basil Mohamed Gohar
<abu_hurayrah at hidayahonline.org> wrote:

> According to Google, they *are* using open standards by using H.264.
> They're using the <video> tag.  It's HTML5.  It's an open standard.
> H.264 is also an open standard.  Oh, yeah, you have to pay licensing
> fees to use it, but the *standard* is open.
>
> What we need to say is that Google should use free-and-open,
> royalty-free & patent-free (to the best that such a thing is possible)
> codecs for their multimedia.  Yes, it's easier to say "open standard",
> but they showed us how that's not precise enough.

Agreed -- Being able to see & understand how the technology works does
not mean you're able to implement it freely (patents & non-free
licensing can get in the way.) This can be compared to how "open
source" software is not necessarily "free" software. While free
software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a
big difference which name we use because different words convey
different ideas.