http://lwn.net/Articles/277038/ This is a special feed containing comments posted to the individual LWN article titled "Video forums for free software". hourly 2 http://lwn.net/Articles/279771/rss 2008-04-25T18:36:50+00:00 jake <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> <font class="QuotedText">&gt; And i don't mean by "xy did a patent survey and didn't find</font> <font class="QuotedText">&gt; anything" but by "xy did a patent survey, scanned patents based on these</font> <font class="QuotedText">&gt; and that criteria and closely looked at those patents". Anything else is </font> <font class="QuotedText">&gt; just FUD.</font> I have a hard time seeing how "xy did a patent survey and didn't find anything" can be considered FUD. It sounds like it is insufficiently rigorous for your taste, but it is hardly spreading "fear, uncertainty, and doubt". It may well be that there was either no patent survey done or it was done in a cursory fashion, I don't know, but characterizing it as FUD is, at best, counterproductive. FUD is not (as far as I know) another name for "incorrect" or "insufficiently rigorous", which is what seems to be implied here. jake </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/279733/rss 2008-04-25T16:26:56+00:00 KotH <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Sorry if i have to correct you, but Diego is not spreading FUD or anything. He is also not someone who is promoting anything proprietary. Diego and I work together on MPlayer and FFmpeg for years now. We've done more in the field of OSS video and audio codecs than most you here. We know exactly what the field looks like, how companies behave and how much FUD is spread by both companies and uneducated FOSS activists. So, here some facts for you: 1) So many OSS video players violate thousands of patents, not one has been sued. Threatened yes (libdts and libvp62 are the only two cases that come to mind, and that in the over 8 years I closely follow OSS video players), but never actually sued. 2) Patents on video and audio codecs are so plentyfull and broad that there is no way that Theora and Dirac (or vorbis of that matter) are not covered by even one of them. Believe us, we've read quite a few patents on codecs and know how the world out there looks like. So, before you claim that they are not covered by any non-trivial patent, prove your claim. And i don't mean by "xy did a patent survey and didn't find anything" but by "xy did a patent survey, scanned patents based on these and that criteria and closely looked at those patents". Anything else is just FUD. 3) Theora (i haven't extensively tested Dirac yet) is so inferior to anything out there (PSNR vs compression rate), that you can just simply forget it. Even MPEG4 Simple Profile beats it. Not to talk about the commonly used Advanced Simple Profile. Which is even more embarrassing if you think that snow (a prototype wavelet based OSS codec) was written in a few months by a single guy years ago, and not touched since and still beats Theora. This alone makes Theora obsolete as the market will not pick anything vastly inferior if there is a better solution available at a similar price (eg MPEG4 ASP or h.264), especially not if there are OSS implementations available. Just have a look at VC-1, microsofts attempt to gain a foothold in the video codec business. They couldn't deliver a much better performance than h.264 and hence are not much considered, even though they are very comparable in performance and under some circumstances even better. 4) MPEG4 &amp; Co are _not_ proprietary codecs. They might be patent encumbered, but the standards are freely available for anyone. You can get them "legally" from ISO and/or MPEG (and not too expensive) or "illegally" by searching for them on google/yahoo. 5) Beside what most people think, for non-commercial use, you don't have to pay any patent fees at all. Patents cover only the commercial world. Anything you do at home or in your free time is not covered by patent law and hence you don't have to pay anything. If you still think that you have to prove us that we are spreading FUD, i personally invite you to visit us at LinuxTag end of May in Berlin. We can have a long and nice chat there. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/278845/rss 2008-04-21T10:33:17+00:00 robbe <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> <font class="QuotedText">&gt; What's wrong with text?</font> I like audio features because I can listen to them wherever I am (e.g. in the garden) and while doing a lot of other things (e.g. household chores). I don't have much use for video, though. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/278840/rss 2008-04-21T08:47:16+00:00 Ross <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> You assume that for the ones known to be covered by patents that we know all of the patents involved. It's almost the same case, really, except you are prevented from applying copyleft terms to your implementation because of the patent licensing agreement. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/278577/rss 2008-04-18T06:19:47+00:00 robbe <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Hear, hear! To rub it in, no generic Windows includes Flash support, so to use the "gold standard" the user has to be persuaded to download a plugin. I don't see why the proposed Video site can't do the same and entice the user to install a plugin for the codec of choice. <font class="QuotedText">&gt; Contrast this with the capabilities of programs like MPlayer or VLC [...]</font> Which are available for Windows (as you know). I recommend VLC to all afflicted. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/278087/rss 2008-04-16T10:30:49+00:00 DonDiego <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> I was making a somewhat more general point, sorry for being unclear. It is always claimed that multimedia hackers will get in all sorts of legal troubles due to patent infringement, reverse engineering and whatnot. Contrary to the FUD, this has never been the case. The only cases that actually went to court were related to CSS. However, DVD Jon won fair and square. I actually forgot about the case you mentioned, but later there was Bunner and Pavlovich and this one went well: <a href="http://w2.eff.org/IP/Video/DVDCCA_case/">http://w2.eff.org/IP/Video/DVDCCA_case/</a> This is not about "getting away with geek-ware". VLC is the single most successful free software application next to Firefox. I see it on every Windows desktop I encounter. And it is so much better than any of its proprietary alternatives that only play DVDs or a small subset of codecs. The use cases you describe are valid, but they cover perhaps 1% of the people using multimedia software. The vast majority are private people that will never get into trouble for using libdvdcss to watch their DVDs or for encoding their wedding videos in H.264. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277909/rss 2008-04-15T08:09:33+00:00 appie <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Indeed, however much important it is to not exclude people lacking the required bandwidth and/or cpu power, it's the whole issue of efficiency and wasting _my_ time. Talking about time, it's more circumvent to time the speed in which to take in the information comparing video to text+pictures. I think it already has been pointed out, most people are better writers than actors/teachers. Jotting something down also forces you to rethink and reconsider. Guess it's the 'gray beards' all over again when I point out that educational institutions and students alike all over the world still use... books. Yes, video shows up here and there, but mostly when they add actual value to the process. I never watch tutorials, howtos, articles in video format. It's much easier to soak up the information in a decently written article. If helps a lot of people if the article consists of text plus pictures (screenshots or 'CLI shots'). Still one can time, copy/paste, forward, condense, (dead tree alert) print &amp; read somewhere else - no batteries needed, comment on, search, etc. a text article in a much much more efficient manner than a video/vodcast/screencast/webinar. And that's not even considering the impact it has on indexing in search engines. Not an unimportant part of our online lives. And the person mentioning the telephone: how come we have video telephony for ages now and almost no-one owns/uses one ? For the majority of people it plain just doesn't add much to the communication. I kind of suspect the whole issue of screencasts is technology for the sake of technology. There IS a place for video, but looking at the majority of the screencasts out there i'd say: not the place, nor the time. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277883/rss 2008-04-15T02:57:01+00:00 gmaxwell I'd hate to flood the threat after already saying so much, so I'll just speak again to make this small point of correction: <p> <blockquote>The only times when things really got to the courts was CSS decryption. We won fair and square.</blockquote> CSS wasn't patented. It was a trade secret, precluding it from patent protection. Any litigation related to CSS would be about anti-circumvention or copyright, but certainly not patents, so it's an entirely orthogonal matter. <p> More interesting to me is that in the US the only court case related to CSS of which I am aware is <i>Universal City Studios, Inc. et al v. Reimerdes, Corley and Kazan</i>, and not only was there no "we won" in that case, legally it was a <b>total and unmitigated failure</b>. Plaintiffs were demanded to not distribute CSS and not link to anyone distributing it and it was upheld by a US federal appellate court, so the ruling is precedential. <p> Of course, since CSS was a weak protection scheme which ultimately depended on secrecy for its security, once that particular horse was out of the barn attempting to suppress further redistribution was futile. The same situation simply doesn't exist for encumbered codecs, the licensing of which continues to generate millions in income even though their specifications are publicly available. While someone may well get away with distributing a geek-ware movie player including H.264, or bittorrent distributing bunches of illicitly copied movies in a format with per-use fees, plenty of other people won't. Helping these people is <a href="http://www.xiph.org/about/">not the primary motivation for free codecs</a>. The medium-sized band or independent movie maker trying to make it big shouldn't have to pay what amounts to a codec tax to distribute their works..., but they do because they aren't judgment-proof and the risk of not playing along is too great. If you don't think Theora or Dirac go far enough I invite you to help out. <p> Cheers. http://lwn.net/Articles/277660/rss 2008-04-12T15:29:41+00:00 DonDiego <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> I'm glad to hear that, but I would like to have a bit more than just your word for it. Can you please provide a link or similar thing to substantiate this? </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277663/rss 2008-04-12T15:12:36+00:00 nix <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Stop injecting *facts* and *logic* into this flamewar. If everyone did that, the Internet would collapse, or something. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277658/rss 2008-04-12T14:58:22+00:00 dvdeug <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Actually, the BBC has checked for patents on Dirac, and found none. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277653/rss 2008-04-12T10:13:40+00:00 man_ls <blockquote type="cite">By the way, that sentence needs one of its commas (preferably the first) to be changed to a semicolon.</blockquote> That is a <a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/27494/">known</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_splice">bug</a> in our author. Is there any update on its status, or when a fix will be available? http://lwn.net/Articles/277617/rss 2008-04-11T20:19:28+00:00 vmole <p>I can download the transcript for a 30 minute interview in a few seconds. The equivalent video is several minutes. And the problem is not so much download time or storage, but *my* time. <p>I'm not against video per-se; there are clearly things for which video is the preferred medium. My objection is the trend for projects to use it for things that are just as easily communicated via text. http://lwn.net/Articles/277615/rss 2008-04-11T19:51:35+00:00 graydon <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> "It wouldn't surprise me if very similar arguments were used against the telephone 100 years ago!" Oh please. They're not "arguments against" video, rather qualifications on exactly how much we should expect video to "displace" other things just because it can. And subsequently how much we need to worry about it as the only way things will be done in the future. Here we are 100 years later still reading books, writing papers and "talking" by exchanging text fragments. Why? It's a *good technology* that's much more appropriate than a string of recorded telephone conversations. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277614/rss 2008-04-11T19:39:46+00:00 graydon <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> "Against"? Well, hardly. As I said, the modern industrial condition is nothing if not a massive party of waste. Almost everything we do recreationally, by volume, is voluntary waste. What sense would it make to worry about wasted bits when we're drowning in wasted physical goods? Comparison between phones and letters is not apt as phone calls are just transient energy signals, not physical objects. Phone calls vs. the same message expressed as dense text codes? Sure, absolutely wasteful. Why do you think phone networks are so much more happy to carry SMS over voice streams? They charge you similar "get the message through" rates (say, a dime) while saving almost all of the cost of transmission. When videophones are the default, heaven forbid, "voice only" calls will be cheaper too, and text will carry even fatter margins. Anyways, if it gives you hope for the future, don't let me interfere. I'll stick with text as long as I can, but I'm a cave-person. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277612/rss 2008-04-11T19:27:43+00:00 bronson <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> The graybeards are out in force today. :) With multi-tens-of-MB links commonplace today (more in Europe and Japan than the US, alas), and &gt;1TB on a 3.5" spindle, who cares how big a video file is? And, I'm afraid you guys have been watching lots of conference proceedings or something. Very few videos are quite so easy to boil down into an easy-to-read transcript. It wouldn't surprise me if very similar arguments were used against the telephone 100 years ago! </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277611/rss 2008-04-11T19:19:55+00:00 bronson <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> How is it absurdly wasteful? Are you against phone conversations because they're vastly more bandwidth-intensive than just mailing a letter? Personally, I'm really happy to see new modes of communication cropping up organically. It gives me hope for the future. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277546/rss 2008-04-11T07:37:57+00:00 angelortega <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> And don't forget people which native language is not english. You don't need to have many skills in english to (at least partially) understand written text (you can pick a dictionary for words not known to you), but understanding someone speaking in 'real time' is a very different thing. Also, you can't search for words in audio. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277527/rss 2008-04-11T00:17:51+00:00 nix <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Also it eliminates the substantial number of people without broadband or sufficiently capable computers (such as, oh, everyone in my extended family three links in any direction, bar only me and a cousin: if this sort of ratio is common that's a huge numer of people being excluded). It's annoying for those of us with slow broadband links (why pay lots extra for fast broadband? I don't need it. And lots of people can't get it at all.) </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277478/rss 2008-04-10T20:03:51+00:00 debacle <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> I'm sorry to hear that. I have Iceweasel a.k.a. Firefox 2.0.0.13-1, swfdec-mozilla 0.6.0-2, and libswfdec-0.6-90 0.6.2-1 installed on a Debian unstable amd64. But I'm pretty sure, that youtube went well with 0.5.0 of swfdec as well. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277462/rss 2008-04-10T17:51:44+00:00 GreyWizard <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Agreed, but text is also much easier to access for those with visual or auditory disabilities, including many elderly people. There's nothing wrong with video or podcasts but offering a separate transcript is important. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277460/rss 2008-04-10T17:46:32+00:00 graydon <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> I quite agree. What amazes me further is the habit of posting *forum-like conversations* via exchanges of video streams on youtube. Not only is it absurdly wasteful -- what in the modern world isn't? -- but it's much less convenient for both sender and recipient than text. Why anyone bothers is beyond me. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277459/rss 2008-04-10T17:44:06+00:00 GreyWizard <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Thank you for posting that. I was considering writing a response much like it, but it would not have been as informed or articulate. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277457/rss 2008-04-10T17:33:05+00:00 vmole <p>Am I the only one who views this tendency towards video and podcasting as a bad thing? What's wrong with text? I can read a *lot* faster than you can speak. I can follow links embedded in the text. Text tends to be edited to remove the "uhhs" and "hmmms" and other noise. Text is easier to skim to find the interesting bits. I simply don't have the time to sit and watch a bad video. Not to mention that a 10K of text translates to 30M (300M?) of video. What a waste. <p>A wish to those projects: please provide a transcript of your valuable words. Yes, it takes time, but when you've gone video-onlu (or audio-only), you've lost me. Maybe I'm the only one, but I'd guess not. http://lwn.net/Articles/277452/rss 2008-04-10T16:37:37+00:00 jebba <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Rahul wrote: "Fedora does not develop or use any proprietary software" Fedora ships proprietary software in the form of firmware directly in the Linux kernel and also in various proprietary *-firmware.rpm packages. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277426/rss 2008-04-10T16:07:26+00:00 DonDiego <blockquote> Ugh. I'm getting fed up seeing this outrageous FUD repeated over and over again. Mostly by you, Mr. Biurrun. It's clear to me that you are far too deep into propritary codec advocacy for anything I say to leave an impression. </blockquote> <p> I can assure you, Mr Gregory Maxwell, that the feeling is mutual. However, please note that I am not advocating anything, much less proprietary codecs. I am pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. </p> <blockquote> Intentionally unencumbered codecs like Dirac and Theora are either free from known patents or have had the known patents licensed for perpetual royalty free use by everyone. They have received a reasonable level of scrutiny by their authors and others, since being unencumbered is a serious part of the purpose of these codecs. </blockquote> <p> Sorry, this is just a blanket statement, not proof. Where is the reasonable level of scrutiny documented? This is nothing personal. I just like getting some backup to hard-to-believe statements. </p> <p> What makes you so confident about Dirac anyway? It is very recent, so there are a large number of patents that it will not predate. Also, the field of Wavelet coding is heavily patented... </p> <blockquote> If anyone is aware of a specific likely-valid patent that covers either of these formats please speak up so that it can be avoided. </blockquote> <p> What makes you so confident that such a hypothetical patent might not be so broad as to be impossible to avoid? </p> <blockquote> Like the known-encumbered formats it is possible that there exists some submarine patents for Theora and Dirac. In comparing two items it is unreasonable to fault one side for a risk which is common to both. </blockquote> <p> Sure, but you explicitly claim that no patents on Theora exist when you speak of "patent-free codecs" and similar things. </p> <blockquote> Some even argue that the unencumbered formats will necessarily be less subject to less risk from even the unknown patents because patent problem avoidance was an important goal, and because submarine patents tend to be fairly broad which would result in a Dirac submarine patent likely also impacting H.264. </blockquote> <p> I assume you meant "less subject to risk" and not "less subject to less risk" above. Either way, you are in firmly hypothetical territory now. Hearing some people argue for something is quite the opposite of hard facts. </p> <p> No, this would not help at all. If such a patent surfaces, I'm screwed. Dirac or H.264 would not make a difference. Possibly I would be even more screwed if I was never expecting to run into patent problems. </p> <blockquote> In any case, the world is paying many millions of dollars a year to licenses things like AAC, H.264, and MP3 encoders. These fees have *no equal* for Dirac, Theora, and friends. </blockquote> <p> Correct. And this is quite something. You should clearly state this instead of pretending that you have something you do not have. Then we would have no need to argue here. </p> <blockquote> I think it is very unfortunate that so many people in the various "open media software" communities are spending so much of their time on known-encumbered formats and ignoring the problems until the summons shows up on their doorstep. </blockquote> <p> What sort of summons are you expecting? So far everybody has been leading quite a quiet life while hacking, reverse engineering, infringing all sorts of patents and doing things that are claimed to get you into jail immediately. The only times when things really got to the courts was CSS decryption. We won fair and square. </p> http://lwn.net/Articles/277438/rss 2008-04-10T15:46:27+00:00 smoogen <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> You are a lone voice.. I have not been able to get it to work all the time. Sometimes it does.. and sometimes I just have a grey area in my browser which means restart. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277437/rss 2008-04-10T15:41:36+00:00 DonDiego <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Jake, when you write that Patented video codecs are a big part of the problem, though there are free alternatives (Theora and Dirac for example), they are not widely used. then you are clearly implying that the alternatives (i.e. Theora and Dirac) are not covered by patents. I really do not think I am reading things into your article that are not present in it. You could avoid this by either replacing "patented video codecs" by something along the lines of "video codecs with known patent pools" or simply avoid making a statement about the patent situation at all or by speaking about the licensing fees (protection money rather) that some entities collect for its use. As an alternative you could rephrase the above paragraph like this: Video codecs requiring licensing fees for certain uses in certain parts of the world are a big part of the problem, though there are alternatives that do not require licensing fees (Theora and Dirac for example), they are not widely used. This would certainly be a tad more cumbersome, but you would not make statements which are misleading and for which you have no proof. You get my drift. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277428/rss 2008-04-10T15:28:06+00:00 jake <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> <font class="QuotedText">&gt; What irks me is that perfectly reasonable people like you, Jake, repeat </font> <font class="QuotedText">&gt; this fallacy as if it were gospel, when they really should know better.</font> I guess I am having trouble seeing what fallacy I am repeating. I think you read more into my statement than was there. I don't believe the article really addressed the patent situation vis a vis Theora and Dirac, though it certainly implies that they are less patent encumbered (and they are, at least as far as is known). Free is ambiguous, but I think most folks understood what was meant. <font class="QuotedText">&gt; No such proof exists.</font> Nor can it as we have both agreed. <font class="QuotedText">&gt; Statements like "XYZ is not covered by software patents"</font> Which is not a statement that the article made. I think you are reacting to what you have heard elsewhere (possibly including on this site and written by me) as if it is here in this article. jake </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277423/rss 2008-04-10T15:17:43+00:00 DonDiego <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Of course you cannot prove a negative. Nonetheless, you can attempt to do more or less exhaustive patent searches and come to the conclusion that none of the patents you checked apply to your program, e.g. Theora decoder X. This has been done for many things, but not for Theora or Dirac. I don't think free software folks should just give up on video codecs. Not at all, I work on FFmpeg and MPlayer every day. What we should give up on is centering on those small parts of the world where these encumbrances are a problem (mostly USA) and those people for whom these encumbrances are a problem (enterprises, not private users). What we should give up on is buying snake oil. Statements like "XYZ is not covered by software patents" - like all sorts of statements really - are only credible when convincing proof is presented. No such proof exists. What irks me is that perfectly reasonable people like you, Jake, repeat this fallacy as if it were gospel, when they really should know better. You could avoid falling into all these traps by modifying your statements when talking about things like Theora and Dirac. Do not claim that they are "free", the term is much too ambiguous anyway. Say that they are free software (this applies to many others as well) or state that there are no licensing bodies collecting fees for them. Just don't state things for which no shred of proof exists. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277419/rss 2008-04-10T15:00:25+00:00 DonDiego <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Of course there is a difference between a codec where the patent situation is an unknown unchartered territory and another codec where you can go to a patent clearinghouse to buy licenses. Some players in the market prefer codecs where you can get licenses from a clearinghouse, others prefer those where no such entities exist. This does not, however, constitute a proof or even a statement that no patents apply to the latter category. And neither model protects you from trolls coming along later of course. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277411/rss 2008-04-10T14:32:12+00:00 gmaxwell <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Ugh. I'm getting fed up seeing this outrageous FUD repeated over and over again. Mostly by you, Mr. Biurrun. Although I'm replying to you my message is really intended for others who might be mislead by your message. It's clear to me that you are far too deep into propritary codec advocacy for anything I say to leave an impression. The popular mainstream video codecs, such as H.264, are extensively patented by known and identified patents. The patents (frequently) cover novel and fairly non-obvious ideas. The participants in the patent pools for these codecs are raking in enormous amounts of money and codec patents are some of the few software patents that bring in much money at all. Various media coding patents have been enforced multiple times in the US, most of Europe, and the United Kingdom. Many of the most prominent patent holders in this field are European. These encumbered formats may also be covered by unknown/unidentified submarine patents, or other patents held by parties which do not participate in the patent pools. Obtaining a license from the pool grants you only a license to the pool patents and the pool make no warranty related to the non-existence of other covering patents. Even if some know about them they aren't obligated to tell you. You're on your own. Microsoft found this out quite painfully not too long ago after getting a 1.4 billion dollar judgment against them for some MP3 technology related patents, even though they were a fully paid of licensee of the patent pool. (The damages are on hold while they appeal...) Intentionally unencumbered codecs like Dirac and Theora are either free from known patents or have had the known patents licensed for perpetual royalty free use by everyone. They have received a reasonable level of scrutiny by their authors and others, since being unencumbered is a serious part of the purpose of these codecs. If anyone is aware of a specific likely-valid patent that covers either of these formats please speak up so that it can be avoided. Like the known-encumbered formats it is possible that there exists some submarine patents for Theora and Dirac. The current patents systems are an utter mess which create terrible problems. Even though it is easy to demonstrate that some software has better patent positions than others, as has been done for Theora and Dirac, It is completely impossible to certify that any piece of non-trivial software is entirely free of possible patent claims. This is by no means limited to media codec patents. In comparing two items it is unreasonable to fault one side for a risk which is common to both. Some even argue that the unencumbered formats will necessarily be less subject to less risk from even the unknown patents because patent problem avoidance was an important goal, and because submarine patents tend to be fairly broad which would result in a Dirac submarine patent likely also impacting H.264. In any case, the world is paying many millions of dollars a year to licenses things like AAC, H.264, and MP3 encoders. These fees have *no equal* for Dirac, Theora, and friends. Perhaps this doesn't matter to you. It matters to other people. I think it is very unfortunate that so many people in the various "open media software" communities are spending so much of their time on known-encumbered formats and ignoring the problems until the summons shows up on their doorstep. But this apparent lack of foresight is a natural consequence of the "scratching an itch" nature of most open development. That you don't care for open formats is your own decision. I'm glad you're happy with it. But please stop FUDing the work of people trying to improve your freedom just because you don't care. Thanks. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277413/rss 2008-04-10T14:20:28+00:00 jake <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> <font class="QuotedText">&gt; Given the (ever increasing) amount of patents and the way the patent </font> <font class="QuotedText">&gt; system works, such proof is unlikely to be produced - ever.</font> It's worse than that, of course, you can't prove a negative. My point is that there are free alternatives, not (yet, perhaps) known to be using patented algorithms/encoding schemes/mumble, but that they aren't widely used. Based on your comment, it seems like you think free software folks should just give up on using video codecs at all in patent-friendly jurisdictions. An overthrow of the patent regime would fix the problem, but is a ways off, if ever. jake </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277410/rss 2008-04-10T13:56:59+00:00 rfunk You have to admit there's a difference between having a codec that you know is covered by a patent, and having a codec for which you don't know of any current patent issues. <p> How about this change: <p> "Patented video codecs are a big part of the problem, though there are <strike>free</strike> alternatives (Theora and Dirac for example) <i>that are not known to be covered under any patents</i>, they are not widely used." <p> By the way, that sentence needs one of its commas (preferably the first) to be changed to a semicolon. http://lwn.net/Articles/277404/rss 2008-04-10T13:16:20+00:00 pkese <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> Hi all, I am a former kernel developer that I am now helping writing software for a free educational video site. The site is <a href="http://videolectures.net/">http://videolectures.net/</a> and currently contains over 4000 videos mostly regarding computer science. Please check it out (however currently we wouldn't sustain being slashdotted). We are open for any free / open source software videos. Regarding the site, I am a one-man software band and am trying my best effort to implement new functionality as fast as I can... the next features I plan to add is automatized upload and bit-torrent style download (we'll be using bittorrent internally for tracking on which servers the copies of our files are). We wish to become a YouTube style site for science, education and OSS with serious and good quality materials. Any suggestions and comments are welcome. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277401/rss 2008-04-10T12:55:31+00:00 DonDiego <blockquote>Patented video codecs are a big part of the problem, though there are free alternatives (Theora and Dirac for example), they are not widely used.</blockquote> <p>This is patent nonsense. There has never been a shred of proof for the claim that no patents apply to Theora, much less to Dirac. Given the (ever increasing) amount of patents and the way the patent system works, such proof is unlikely to be produced - ever.</p> <p>If you believed any of these claims, please enquire on the prices of a handful of bridges that I am selling at bargain prices.</p> http://lwn.net/Articles/277398/rss 2008-04-10T12:50:07+00:00 DonDiego <blockquote>Users of non-free operating systems are largely unaware of the video codec problems; their OS comes with a no-extra-cost video viewer that just works.</blockquote> It seems you haven't used Windows for any serious stretch of time during the last decade. Windows users have to go hunting high and low for different codec packs and players and end up installing a dozen different ones. Contrast this with the capabilities of programs like MPlayer or VLC that support all relevant multimedia formats out of the box and the obscure ones with the help of exactly one codec package. http://lwn.net/Articles/277375/rss 2008-04-10T09:22:23+00:00 debacle <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> I have no problems viewing youtube content using swfdec in Firefox/Iceweasel since long. It is available under LGPL for about a dozon architectures. AFAIK, free software exist to generate FLV videos. Am I wrong? </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277374/rss 2008-04-10T09:04:40+00:00 rahulsundaram <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> You probably meant Firefox instead of Fedora in the first sentence. Fedora does not develop or use any proprietary software or service and doesn't have a non-free repository either. Fedora Project is interested in promoting a platform for content under open formats. Marketing videos are only a very small portion of that effort. </pre></div> http://lwn.net/Articles/277357/rss 2008-04-10T05:54:13+00:00 wblew <div class="FormattedComment"><pre> While the theora format is very attractive, there is a technical problem: It is only a codec. It is not a multi-platform browser plugin that can easily play theora encoded videos. Not, that is, without there being extra steps, such as codec installations, etc. This is, IMO, the heart of the problem. As far as I can tell, there is a deliberate effort to prevent native browser support for a freely available video format, such as Theora. Recall the HTML 5 controversy over the video tag. As wikipedia recalls, the opponents to theora were Apple and Nokia. I would like to see Firefox come with native support for the Ogg and Theora codecs, and their associated container formats. It would at least offer an alternative to Flash. Perhaps this will happen, see: <a href="http://www.broken-links.com/2007/05/29/mozilla-gets-native-video-support/">http://www.broken-links.com/2007/05/29/mozilla-gets-nativ...</a> </pre></div>