Blizzard: HTML5 video and H.264 - what history tells us and wihy we're standing with the web [LWN.net]

Blizzard: HTML5 video and H.264 - what history tells us and wihy we're standing with the web

Posted Feb 2, 2010 9:37 UTC (Tue) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848)
In reply to: Blizzard: HTML5 video and H.264 - what history tells us and why we're standing with the web by Per_Bothner
Parent article: Blizzard: HTML5 video and H.264 - what history tells us and why we're standing with the web

While Flash is more annoying because of bugs etc, it is in principle the lesser evil, since (I believe) it can be legally re-implemented in Free Software. H.264 cannot, in many parts of the world.

I think it's still the case though that codecs you send over flash are still patentable (and largely patented). Which is why the gnash devs get so annoyed that people get annoyed when it doesn't work with youtube, because they won't distribute the codecs themselves, so have to hope that the distributions will (and often distributors get it wrong).

Even if flash is perfectly reimplemented, then, we still have all the problems with codec patent issues.

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gnash codecs

Posted Feb 2, 2010 17:21 UTC (Tue) by DonDiego (subscriber, #24141) [Link]

gnash could just distribute the codecs themselves. We've been doing it at FFmpeg/MPlayer for 10 years without problems. If they are afraid to do it themselves, they should get a hoster that is not.