codec quality

Posted Dec 13, 2007 6:24 UTC (Thu) by nettings (subscriber, #429)
In reply to: codec quality by DonDiego
Parent article: Specifying codecs for the web

> What's worse, there are no hard facts that prove Theora to not infringe any patents. It's
just a popular belief in certain circles.

as a certain member of such circles let me tell you in no uncertain terms that this remark is
not particularly brilliant.
some facts to clear the FUD:

* theora is based on a patented codec (VP3 by On2) donated to the open-source community. a
license for unlimited use has been granted, and a lot of legal babble ensures that this stays
so.
* therefore it has been scrutinized by patent law to some extent and found sufficiently
original that a patent was granted.
* there can never be absolute proof that something is entirely unencumbered by patents. this
is not an argument against theora, but against software patents.

http://theora.org/faq/#24

to post comments

codec quality

Posted Dec 13, 2007 13:36 UTC (Thu) by DonDiego (guest, #24141) [Link]

theora is based on a patented codec (VP3 by On2) donated to the open-source community. a license for unlimited use has been granted, and a lot of legal babble ensures that this stays so.

therefore it has been scrutinized by patent law to some extent and found sufficiently original that a patent was granted.

Your faith in patent law and the patent offices is honorable, but unfortunately there is no base for it in reality. The above points do not in any way refute my claim that the lack of patent encumbrances in Theora is - sadly - little more than wishful thinking by certain parties.

To the best of my knowledge there has not even been an exhaustive patent search around Theora to put some confidence into the assumption that Theora is free of patent encumbrances. Not that such a search could be exhaustive, but it could give people some confidence.