Koleszar: VP8 Codec Optimization Update

I don't think that there is anything no-cost with what Google is doing here. How much did On2 cost? I believe it was 106 million dollars.

They have put considerable time and effort behind the codec since then, also. Probably to the tune of a million dollars or more.

How much are you willing to pay, personally, to liberate the internet from patent-encrusted video codecs?

I fear that you may have missed one of the fundamental points of Free software and open-standards;

Everyone is able to work together for a libre result, not that anyone should be doing it for gratuity.

Judging by another comment there, evidently you aren't. However, if the people is willing to do stuff for free, why not let them? The code is open source, after all.

It's called "open source". You should look into it sometime.

"getting people to do its coding for free"

It would only be their coding if it was only ever going to be used by google on google's machines. But as it is, this is software than many of us are going to end up using on all kinds of devices. It's more *our* coding than it is theirs.

Or perhaps you prefer a world where we all sit around with our mouths open like baby birds waiting to be fed.

Yeah, google is evil, they don't get nearly enough pork or coerce enough of us. They don't even have a true monopoly! It is not government enforced after all, and they still have real competitors, pathetic. They should lobby for more laws to protect themselves. Maybe they could pass a law to make search provider choice or email illegal, and, of course, get a patent on search and email. In fact instead of giving away email for free, they should cozy up to all the local municipalities and get them to pay to use gmail accounts and then degrade the user interface until is it unusable. Over time they need to start losing more peoples' emails, or leaking private email contents to the public, and surely, couldn't they let more spam through? Then they could lobby to get all email to be government owned and regulated since they will have proven that private corps obviously don't know what they are doing with email.

But no, they don't get it, those evil google execs, do they? They give away services and code, that they spend honestly earned money on, for free to people! I mean come on, couldn't they at least get a government grant to do some of that? Perhaps a grant to create a patented video codec that will become the official national codec! Then they might be able to force it to be pre-installed on every device with anything more than an 8 bit processor. In fact, they should additionally get us to pay a video decoder tax for all the devices which allow user software to be installed on them since surely users will install infringing (maybe even free software) codecs which use the patented techniques illegally. Yes, ignoring all these coercive opportunities is beyond evil, they must have a pact with the devil.

They need to step back and think about their ethical obligations to the image of rich corporations. A good start would be to create a product that no one really wants, why do I not see more viagra adds when I do technical searches? Sheesh! They are obviously doing too well economically and pleasing too many people. They need to figure out how they can do worse so that they will not be considered rich (and evil).

Maybe they could gain some respect if they were just a bit more financially insolvent? In fact, maybe they should look to GM, or better yet Merrill Lynch. They could go bankrupt, and get some bailout money to pay bonuses to their execs! That would be a lot poorer (and less evil). But no, what do they do: they get others to contribute to the free software eco system, voluntarily doing a small portion of their dirty coding for them! Ughh, all these missed opportunities, google makes me sick, I want to retch! Their stock holders must despise them.

See the vp8 branch in that first link.

Was this fixed in the 0.6 release? I didn't see any mention of it in the Changelog.