[theora] Bad news from Google

Shayne Wissler wissler at gmail.com
Fri Jan 22 13:30:53 PST 2010


As with so many other things, the licensing issues are not a problem
at all for big businesses like Google. There is a maximum cap of
something like $5M for H.264, which for Google is nothing.

The problem is for small to medium sized businesses and not just with
royalties, but with the costs of compliance. I'm sure big businesses
love it when they can pay what for them is a tiny fee that shackles
all their would-be competitors (and if they don't love it I don't see
them complaining on our behalf).


Shayne

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 2:13 PM, startx <startx at plentyfact.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:53:01 -0500
> Basil Mohamed Gohar <abu_hurayrah at hidayahonline.org> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for chiming in and sharing your thoughts on this, Chris.  I
>> have to say, I'm not thrilled with the state of things as they seem
>> on the surface.  I am hoping for the best, but I think the battle for
>> freedom is a continuous one, and I'm glad to see Mozilla on our side,
>> now and, hopefully, always.
>
> i am of course not suprised about google, as others pointed out it seems
> to fit with their recent promotion of chrome.
>
> however, i wonder what will happen if h.264 streaming licence fees will
> be really enforced at some point in the future (somebody mentioned 2011
> as a specific date, can you give a source for that?). of course google
> won't mind to pay the fees, but if the licence is really enforced,
> theora will become the choice of non commercial websites (and hopefully
> there will be a real alternative to youtube one day)
>
> and afterall, as with standards like VHS (decades back) it will be
> interesting what all the porn websites (especially youporn) are going
> to do. :)
>
> startx
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