Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine) [LWN.net]

Christopher Smart comments on the state of Linux and web media in a Linux Magazine article. "The situation on the Linux desktop is particularly horrible. Thanks to the lack of a free and open framework for multimedia, users need closed source applications and patent encumbered codecs to view content on the web. This is outrageous! Imagine if sending an email required a proprietary application which had to be compatible with the recipients system? What if to view a plain HTML website one had to pay royalties? Imagine further that these were controlled by a single company. If such a world had existed in the past, then the Internet would not have become the useful medium that it is today. We must make sure this doesnt happen in the future."

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 20, 2009 20:54 UTC (Thu) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (1 responses)

What Linux needs is decent codecs and a delivery mechanism for them, so that web authors have a free option to use if they want to. Luckily, we have this. Unfortunately, most practical people that deliver whatever content Linux users want to view won't care about "free", and no amount of preaching will make a difference. I expect they are rational, however, and will use the best tool for the job.

The best tool can well be flash: it's well established, in position to provide native decoders for codecs, and supported by everyone. In other words, it's a very tough competitor, and it should be respected as such.

On the other hand, there is Java. It is now free software, and if you write a decoder that works in JVM, you solve both the browser support and distributing problem as everyone has the applet support already. The performance can be expected to be worse by a factor of 1/2 to 1/3 to a native implementation, but I imagine the typical web streams and their small windows ought to have perfect FPS using somewhat above average machines. In other words, the somewhat lower performance and somewhat higher memory requirements might not be fatal, only a disadvantage.

The final part would then be to make this video implementation suck less than its competitors. It has to be usable, look better, sound better, have enough performance, and use less bandwidth. In other words, it has to provide quite compelling technical excellence.

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 20, 2009 21:49 UTC (Thu) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]

There is the free (GPL) Cortado java applet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortado_%28software%29

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 20, 2009 21:07 UTC (Thu) by cjcox (guest, #60378) [Link] (14 responses)

So... while the concept is simple... developing a totally free audio/video codec is NOT. Granted, we could argue that Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora are the ones... not sure if Theora is completely without patent issues though.

Next... get Microsoft to use them... and we're done.

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 21, 2009 5:03 UTC (Fri) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link]

Make that Apple.

Likelihood though

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 21, 2009 8:02 UTC (Fri) by fsphil (guest, #44932) [Link] (12 responses)

To be fair very few codecs developed in the last 20 years, proprietary or not, can ever be demonstrated to be completely free of patent issues.

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 21, 2009 16:36 UTC (Fri) by cry_regarder (subscriber, #50545) [Link] (7 responses)

No software developed in the past 20 years can be shown to be completely free of patents...

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 21, 2009 19:30 UTC (Fri) by chuck97224 (guest, #40161) [Link] (1 responses)

Here you go, written in the last few minutes and completely free of patents:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
printf("I'm free sofware!!\n");
return 0;
}

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 21, 2009 21:25 UTC (Fri) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

You merely claim that it's free of patents, you don't show it.

Are you certain that the version of stdio.h you #included is unencumbered? More to the point, are you sure the Patent Office hasn't issued some patent that, perhaps hidden by (even more) obfuscating language, claims to cover "output using a pre-stored sequence of representative characters wherein control signals are represented by a special sequence from the same representative character set"?

(And if you don't think the PTO would issue a patent containing such language, I have a bridge for sale....)

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 22, 2009 5:31 UTC (Sat) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

> No software developed in the past 20 years can be shown to be completely free of patents...

A more correct statement would be something along the lines of:

"No non-trivial software can be depended on to be free of patents, in fact the odds of it violating a patent in someway is damn close to 100%"

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 23, 2009 19:16 UTC (Sun) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (3 responses)

So we should all go back to use H.261. H.264 is not safe enough as well by your reasoning. After all, who knows when a new patent troll will show up claiming rights for using it?

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 25, 2009 16:40 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link] (2 responses)

You sound like you're being sarcastic (I'm not certain), but what you're saying is correct. H.264 is heavily patent encumbered and that's why there's been so much arguing about the choice of codecs (or lack thereof) in the HTML5 specification - OSS implementations can't get the required licence.

Unfortunately, codecs based on H.261 or earlier are the only ones which even stand a chance of being accepted by Apple on the grounds of patent-safety (outside of the realm of their own codecs and those for which they already have a license). Of course thesec aren't sufficiently technically competitive to be worthwhile. This entire situation is likely to be deadlocked for quite some time, since the only time a codec can be reasonably declared patent-free is when it is obsolete.

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 25, 2009 16:44 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link] (1 responses)

I should add: I *believe* the MPEG LA offer patent indemnity to any of their licensees, should some troll appear claiming ownership over some part of the specification, so anyone licensing those patents would be covered not only for those which are known, but also any submarine patents which might crop up.

Unless that's just a vicious rumour, it would explain why Apple are happy to live with possible unknown patents in some codecs, but not others.

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Sep 5, 2009 4:12 UTC (Sat) by jrincayc (guest, #29129) [Link]

No, MPEG-LA does not offer patent indemnity so far as I can tell. For example their FAQ on MPEG-2 states "No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential patent." http://www.mpegla.com/m2/m2-faq.cfm

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 21, 2009 20:04 UTC (Fri) by chuck97224 (guest, #40161) [Link] (3 responses)

First let me say I believe software should NOT be patented. But that is the way it is and not likely
to change. Having said that...

I believe codecs by their nature of encoding and decoding, usually end up being patented to help
their adoption in the marketplace. For example, if I write a codec named "booglebang" and want it
to be adopted, then I have to insure that all implementations of "booglebang" work properly. In
that situation, patenting makes sense. By patenting the algorithm and attaching it to a
trademarked name, the codec becomes specific and verifiable. Providers and consumers will know
exactly what it is and how it works.

In short, patenting codecs helps drive their adoption since it removes ambiguity and establishes
standards.

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 21, 2009 21:56 UTC (Fri) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]

Trademarking, making a compatibility-test-suite, and saying "if you can't complete the suite, you are not allowed to call it OurCoolCodec (tm)" should be enough.

I can't really see how a patent changes this in any way.

Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web (Linux Magazine)

Posted Aug 22, 2009 1:07 UTC (Sat) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (1 responses)

A patent gives you the power to stop people from creating other codecs with other names that use similar techniques; it gives you no power against someone who decides to call their crazy totally different software "booglebang". Patent protection is both too broad and too narrow to do what you suggest.

Trademarks OTOH are designed to do exactly what you want; their whole purpose is to make it possible for people to trust that when they see a given name, they know what the associated product will be.

(But I am skeptical that either has anything to do with codec adoption in practice. AFAICT codecs are adopted either because a market leader -- MS/Apple/Sony/whoever -- declares that that's what they're using and everyone else is forced to get compatible or go out of business, or else a group of interested parties who all benefit from interoperability gets together and hashes out what they're all going to use -- MPEG, PNG, etc. Note that the Ogg codecs don't have any patents, but they still don't have any real interoperability problems.)

codec adoption

Posted Aug 23, 2009 22:51 UTC (Sun) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

A small but (probably growing and) significant corner of the market is the people who trade illegal copies of stuff. They tend to use the highest performance software available, regardless of legality (they're already breaking the law) and availability (they already have the right contacts to get illegal copies). Figuring out what program you need a copy of in order to open the file you've just downloaded is a rite of passage in such communities.

These are the first people I saw using MPEG4 codecs in anger, the first to adopt faster / smaller general purpose compression software instead of ZIP, they're the ones who didn't choose FLAC or Apple's lossless codec, but an obscure proprietary option that was payware, because of course they weren't paying and it saved nearly 5% on file size.

Whatever they're using to distribute their "warez" today will almost by definition be installed by the cool kids tomorrow, and has at least as good a chance of setting the standard as whatever Microsoft ships in Windows 7.