Now that VP8 isn’t patent free, is Mozilla going to remove it?

Personally I prefer if they dump it and just put in a h.264 decoder.

For a time there was a really good chance to get rid of flash but that its built into ie10 and and chrome’s share is rather large, its probably too late now.

In the end Mozilla’s stance did nothing but hurt users.

1. Timothy B. Terriberry

   > Now that VP8 isn’t patent free, is Mozilla going to remove it?

   We probably didn’t do a good enough job of explaining this in the article:
   “The agreements also grant Google the right to sublicense those techniques to any user of VP8, whether the VP8 implementation is by Google or another entity.”

   See Greg’s comment below for a link to Google’s promise that they will sublicense to anyone under terms compatible with the W3C royalty-free patent policy.

   The W3C policy is the same one used by all browser vendors to make sure that web standards are available royalty-free for everyone.

   > In the end Mozilla’s stance did nothing but hurt users.

   This is almost certainly not true. The availability of a credible, royalty-free alternative puts downward pricing pressure on the MPEG LA, which makes even using H.264 cheaper for everyone. The terms for using H.264 on the web are a lot better than the terms for making set-top boxes.

   March 8th, 2013 at 09:12
   1. John

      Can’t say I noticed any material savings for h.264 for any of my gear.

      On the other hand years of having to continue to put up with flash crashing and updating and worrying about its security flaws are very noticeable.

      As for Google’s promises, doesn’t Motorola continue to sue using h.264 patents? They gone evil a long time ago.

      March 8th, 2013 at 09:42

i know you are not a lawyer (and neither am i), but how is this a “win”, or how is this “unencumbered video technology” when it still must be licensed or sub-licensed to everyone shipping/using the format?

even if no money is required, and even if google grants a distribution sub-license to mozilla, that leaves anyone using firefox(os) code downstream, liable to mpeg-la, unless they too can negotiate another license.

that doesn’t sound neither scalable nor compatible with open source, and even less with “the open web”.

1. Greg Maxwell

   The sublicense will be available to all under under terms that are in line with the W3C’s definition of a Royalty Free License. Like the initial Google VP8 license this is a open grant to the public, not something specific to particular parties— which as you note wouldn’t be acceptable.

   It’s also important to note that this is a security blanket: Some people (e.g. MPEG-LA) alleged that parties they represent /MAY/ have rights and people used that as an excuse to dismiss VP8/WEBM. Now that argument can’t be made, though you’ll note that the joint release was careful to not claim that they’d actually found anything applicable only that if anything were it’s now licensed.

   March 8th, 2013 at 09:05

> *goes and watches a movie*
And in what format is that movie?
theora thus zelda or x264?