[acdha]

> If Google didn't buckle like a house of cards on this. I wonder where we'd be?

Content providers weren't jumping to more double their storage costs or deal with another immature toolchain so I rather suspect we'd be where we are now: Flash got an extra couple years reprieve until everyone accepts reality and implements H.264. This is particularly true since no matter WebM's merits it was going to be worse when transcoded from the H.264 almost everyone is actually uploading.

The real fight needs to be over the next generation of codecs. If H.265 has serious competition there's a lot more reason to believe things will go differently, as they did with e.g. Opus where the open solution was also better in addition to being free.

[protomyth]

I dearly wish the MPEG-LA members would just charge for the patents for hardware implementations and go royalty-free for software and content for H.265. It would still make them money and get it standard quick.

[Joeri]

If we're going to be wishing for things, why not just wish for the end of software patents? This stuff shouldn't be patent-encumbered in the first place. It could have been developed like html5, a bunch of companies with common interests agreeing on a standard without charging for it. But because this is patentable matter that was impossible from the outset. The shape of the legal system enforces the shape of the industry.

[protomyth]

Because one is more likely to happen than the other.

[yuhong]

I do wonder that if it was declared that math is not patentable simply because it is executed on a computer whether this would apply to hardware implementation too.

[pwnna]

Hopefully Daala/Opus would take off soon so we don't have to worry about these things anymore..

[shmerl]

Daala is at least 2 years away still.