There are similarities, there are differences...

There are similarities, there are differences...

I don't see what makes video codecs so much different/more special than other areas of software development.

There are no differences if we are talking about "just a codec" (things like Theora, Vorbis or Dirac). There are big differences if we are talking about "media format" (be it VHS, CD, DVD or MPEG4).

Surely you're not suggesting that software development was stymied and slow before patents?

Not at all.

So why are video codecs unique in this way?

Videocodecs are not unique: there are audio codecs too. That's because it's place where software development mets content distribution. CD, VHS, DVD, ATRAC, MPEG, etc - all these developments are heavily influenced by future royalties and huge firm create and break huge alliances in fight to control future markets. The latest such battle was HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray - have you already forgotten about this? Questions about patents and future royalties figured prominently in the fight.

For what it's worth I've worked on a LOT of software projects for companies both big and small, and never once in all those years was ANY decision about what to build or whether or not to build something EVER based on whether we could get a patent or not.

How many of these projects were about collaborative development by fierce competitors?

The fact that as result of this collision we've got all this patent mess is unfortunate, but it's quite obvious that we only get these standards (H.261, MPEG1 and all others) as early as we did is because software become patentable at this point.

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