Thor: another free video codec [LWN.net]

Cisco, it seems, is unhappy with the patent mess around video codecs, so it has launched a project called "Thor" to make one that can be freely distributed. "The effort is being staffed by some of the world’s most foremost codec experts, including the legendary Gisle Bjøntegaard and Arild Fuldseth, both of whom have been heavy contributors to prior video codecs. We also hired patent lawyers and consultants familiar with this technology area. We created a new codec development process which would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents."

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Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 11, 2015 21:06 UTC (Tue) by droundy (guest, #4559) [Link] (33 responses)

As several comments point out in the blog comments, it is strangely hostile to refer to VP9 as "Google’s proprietary VP9 codec," when it is both royalty-free and open-source. Apparently the idea is that because it hasn't passed through a standards organization it is unacceptable. Still, it seems a strange attitude.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 11, 2015 21:10 UTC (Tue) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

They could even give it a legal review and fork or contribute...

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 11, 2015 21:21 UTC (Tue) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link]

Me thinks not invented here.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 11, 2015 21:28 UTC (Tue) by atai (subscriber, #10977) [Link] (2 responses)

more codecs can be a good thing, more fault tolerant and more competition

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 1:53 UTC (Wed) by welinder (guest, #4699) [Link]

and more security issues

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 4:32 UTC (Wed) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link]

Codecs needs network effects. More may not necessarily be better...unless a free codec can become ubiquitous, h264/5 will continue to dominate.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 11, 2015 21:35 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

Not only hostile, but highly suspicious.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 11, 2015 22:11 UTC (Tue) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link]

I believe that Cisco's characterization of H.265 and VP9 is accurate in this regard. Whether the standard is public, an open source implementation exists, and whether the standard is royalty-free or not, is orthogonal to the question whether it is an open or a proprietary standard. That question is decided by the means of participation in the standardization process.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 11, 2015 22:12 UTC (Tue) by jmspeex (guest, #51639) [Link] (24 responses)

I think the confusion is that some people use the word "proprietary" to mean "controlled by one company" rather than "closed-source". The idea behind the NetVC working group is to design a new video codec collaboratively in an SDO, just like what happened with Opus for audio. Should Google decide to submit VP9 as well, that would certainly be highly appreciated. The idea isn't to "select" one of the codecs to become NetVC, but rather to take the best of all the available technology and make something better than any of the individual submissions.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 3:05 UTC (Wed) by jhoblitt (subscriber, #77733) [Link] (2 responses)

What are the odds for the lawyers of all the major players to do their patent landmine analysis in public? I had presumed the the motivation to keep legal evaluation confidential was a roadblock to these large consortium.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 3:46 UTC (Wed) by jmspeex (guest, #51639) [Link]

Legal verification across different companies is indeed a hassle, but it's not a showstopper.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 14:38 UTC (Wed) by tterribe (guest, #66972) [Link]

This is something we're working with Cisco on doing. They want to do this as much or even more than we do. We just don't know what it will end up looking like yet.

The usual reason for not publishing your analysis is that it is basically giving potential plaintiffs a map to your defense strategy in advance. That's a risk no lawyer would advise without very compelling reasons, but we may have those reasons here.

One possibility would be to publish just one reason we think we avoid each patent claim we've analyzed, even though we might have several. That gives people something they can look at to decide if they feel safe, while not giving away the complete defense strategy should there ever be a real lawsuit.

Another possibility would be to open up the full analysis to anyone willing to make stronger licensing commitments than we'd ask just to use the codec (commitments which are currently basically just, "You can use this as long as you don't sue anyone else for using it"). Something like telling us who they are (not currently a requirement!) and maybe also a reciprocal license grant to be sure they won't sue our users over this codec in the future.

Of course we might do both. We're still figuring it out.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 6:01 UTC (Wed) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (20 responses)

I don't quite understand why Google has to submit it. It's free/open-source, BSD-licensed. Surely *anyone* could submit it?

(I almost made this comment on the main article's thread, but another comment suggested that Thor is intended to be next-generation. Which makes a little more sense, although they could still use VP9 as a starting point if they wanted to. They don't need Google's explicit permission. VP9 is already found in software that Google has nothing to do with, including some running on my desktop.)

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 13:32 UTC (Wed) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link] (19 responses)

No, this is all about patents. If it's open source code licensed under a BSD license this does not solve any patent problems.

Some companies at IETF meetings keep claiming that some ( MPEG-LA ?) patents might apply to VP8/VP9.

That is why VP8/VP9 hasn't already adopted by for example the WebRTC/RTCWeb working group at the IETF.

Or actually, they adopted: browsers need to include both H.264 and VP8. Through some strange agreement.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 14:23 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (10 responses)

> If it's open source code licensed under a BSD license this does not solve any patent problems.

There's also an explicit patent grant to go along with the code license.

> Some companies at IETF meetings keep claiming that some ( MPEG-LA ?) patents might apply to VP8/VP9.

Yet nobody -- including MPEG-LA -- has actually come up with any actual patents that might apply.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 14:51 UTC (Wed) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link] (9 responses)

> > If it's open source code licensed under a BSD license this does not solve any patent problems.
>
> There's also an explicit patent grant to go along with the code license.
>
> > Some companies at IETF meetings keep claiming that some ( MPEG-LA ?) patents might apply to VP8/VP9.
>
> Yet nobody -- including MPEG-LA -- has actually come up with any actual patents that might apply.

All true, but certain members at the RTCWeb IETF WorkGroup didn't want to accept VP8 because of possible patent problems (hint: at least some of those members are also part of MPEG-LA).

Having now a new codec developed by a IETF WorkGroup in the open solves the whole problem.

Just like Opus did for audio.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 21:21 UTC (Wed) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (6 responses)

All true, but certain members at the RTCWeb IETF WorkGroup didn't want to accept VP8 because of possible patent problems (hint: at least some of those members are also part of MPEG-LA).

And how do we know that some members of MPEG-LA (either including or in collaboration with those who are also part of the Workgroup) aren't planning to deliberate (but secretly, obviously) slip in some submarine patents into this new yet-another-standard?

There's simply no way to know about possible submarine patents.

Microsoft has proven that even the largest and most trustworthy of standard bodies can be subverted by a sufficient application of cash and rules-bending. Some people, sadly, still seem to have too much misplaced trust in the idea that standards solve all our problems. (Not that I've got anything against standards in general—I love 'em—but they have definite limits.)

Just like Opus did for audio.

Opus: the standard so useless that it's not even installed with Debian's default desktop environments, unlike Vorbis and VP9, which both are! Yes, that's something to try to emulate. :)

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 21:50 UTC (Wed) by luto (subscriber, #39314) [Link] (3 responses)

IETF rules.

The IETF is really quite serious about distributing this thing:

https://www.ietf.org/about/note-well.html

to everyone who shows up. If you get that, participate, and have a submarine patent, then (IANAL) you're reasonably likely to get sued, and the courts are quite unlikely to be sympathetic.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 22:33 UTC (Wed) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (2 responses)

But that only covers active participants. Third parties can still have patents, which can be violated inadvertently (this is the whole basis of the doubt about VP9, but it applies just as well to any other system). So, it's basically useless.

Furthermore, there's still the possibility of collusion between participants and non-participants (especially if both are members of MPEG-LA) to deliberately inject a submarine patent. This, I admit, is a bit implausible and contains dangers for the colluding participant if their role is discovered, but people do bad things when money is involved....

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 19:39 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

> But that only covers active participants. Third parties can still have patents

Sure, you take your shot, and you take your chances, nothing that the IETF can control can change that so its just a risk that needs to be accepted to move forward. Creating a new codec that's sufficiently different as to be unlikely to infringe on patents created while researching traditional codecs is one of the few risk mitigation strategies that can affect this.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 15, 2015 14:45 UTC (Sat) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]

deliberately inject a submarine patent.

I believe the IETF requires members to disclose this. Thus if you do this, if your organisation has patent against this won't hold up in court. So if a codec is developed in the open by many participating organisations it should be pretty safe. Now it could be that the number of participating organisations in the IETF working group isn't very big yet.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 15, 2015 14:32 UTC (Sat) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link] (1 responses)

Opus: the standard so useless that it's not even installed with Debian's default desktop environments

Up to date Debian Wheezy (oldstable) or newer includes Iceweasel, Iceweasel plays Opus just fine.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 17, 2015 8:57 UTC (Mon) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]

> Iceweasel plays Opus just fine.

Anything based on GStream too - you just need to install the "bad" plugins package [sic!].

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 14:11 UTC (Thu) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link] (1 responses)

"All true, but certain members at the RTCWeb IETF WorkGroup didn't want to accept VP8 because of possible patent problems"

Which is the most stupid argument possible, yet it seems to work. Who says that MPEG-LA are the only ones who have parents that apply to H.264 and H.265? Just because there is a patent pool, it doesn't exclude the possibility of other patent holders existing. And indeed, there's now a second pool for H.265.

All the existence of a patent pool shows is, that indeed, there are parents covering the codec. Which if anything is _worse_ than a no-known patents codec.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 22:10 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> All the existence of a patent pool shows is, that indeed, there are parents covering the codec. Which if anything is _worse_ than a no-known patents codec.

Actually, that is an absolute howler ... :-) Just because there is a pool, does NOT mean that any patents cover the codec. It just means that people are making threatening noises.

Which, I thought, was perfectly valid grounds in America for a lawsuit - "We're afraid of being sued by you, so we're going to force your hand by suing for a declaration of non-infringement".

Cisco, Google and Red Hat should look for the party making most noise - preferably the people organising the patent pool - and sue for such a declaration. Demand a list of all patents that the relevant party controls, and a sublist of all patents that MAY be infringed. That immediately gets a declaration of non-infringement for the patents the other party doesn't declare as may be infringed. Then all the patents that could allegedly apply are in the open for an Open Source attack.

The patents are likely to be hammered with prior art, or attacked as incomprehensible, or laughed at as irrelevant. All being well, the cost of defending the pool is likely to be prohibitive (the cost of attacking it might be nasty, too, but probably noticeably less). It'll only take one or two suits like this, and hopefully the possession of a large arsenal of poor quality patents will become a liability, not an asset.

It'd be lovely if it were like the launch of the Dreadnought - the first modern battleship - that pretty much obsoleted entire navies at one stroke!

Cheers,
Wol

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 16:36 UTC (Wed) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (7 responses)

> No, this is all about patents. If it's open source code licensed under a BSD license this does not solve any patent problems.

Neither does Google submitting it themselves. Even if Google say they think it's OK patent-wise, it still doesn't mean there's no-one else who thinks they've got a patent that covers it.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 19:46 UTC (Wed) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]

Yes, that is exactly what some members of the IETF RTCWeb WorkGroup are saying

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 20:22 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (5 responses)

....and how will Thor be any different than VP9 in that respect? No matter how much diligence Cisco puts into Thor, it's just as susceptible to a patent landmine as VP9.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 9:39 UTC (Thu) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (4 responses)

The only ways to avoid patent landmines is to either:

* Abolish software patents altogether (the best solution, obviously)

* Disallow non-implementing entities to sue for patent infringement
(that way there's at least the M.A.D. risk to keep things in check)

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 15:15 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (3 responses)

* Take a radically different technical direction to the work done at the patent-hungry companies. This is Daala.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 22:13 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

The problem there is that these patents are patents on maths. Therefore they are, in fact, invalid, but you try telling the patent office that :-(

The other thing is, *because* they are patents on maths, they are actually patents on the problem, which are also invalid because they close off any AND ALL solutions, which is considered a proper reason to invalidate a patent!

Cheers,
Wol

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 15, 2015 16:19 UTC (Sat) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link] (1 responses)

The main problem is in the event one modern, patent-free codec is widespread (and it is likely because application writers hate the current fragmented situation), many of these patent-troll leeches seize to exist. So (ab)using math they have closed all the obvious ways, and left a mine-field with for anyone who dares to enter the game.
As an application writer, I want one codec as long as I know it will work on all the platforms.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 15, 2015 19:29 UTC (Sat) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]

Obviously when it's a (patent) free codec and good enough it is the most likely to come to all platforms. :-)

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 20:49 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

I wonder how much "passed through a standards organization" is compatible with "patent-free".

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 11, 2015 23:54 UTC (Tue) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (1 responses)

I am confused about how VP9, Thor, and NetVC interrelate. Is NetVC a competition that might choose Thor, VP9, or something else?

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 2:07 UTC (Wed) by wahern (subscriber, #37304) [Link]

I found the following comment on the Cisco blog post helpful.

Jean-Marc Valin	August 11, 2015 at 2:28 pm
Having Google submit VP9 as a contribution to the NetVC would actually
be very welcome. The more technology we have to work with the better.
The final NetVC codec will be neither Thor, nor Daala. It will be some kind
of mix of the various contributions received. (disclosure: I'm in the Daala
team at Mozilla)

NIH syndrome? Time to fix it?

Posted Aug 12, 2015 0:33 UTC (Wed) by proski (guest, #104) [Link] (4 responses)

This Thor was created by the US government. Maybe it's time for the government to intervene if the industry fails to create an unencumbered video codec? I don't see anything bad with the state intervention if the business fails to create a viable standard on its own. There are standards for screws and power plugs, why not for video? Sure, some the taxpayer money would be spent, but it would be cheaper than the rocket (hopefully), and it could open possibilities for new businesses.

NIH syndrome? Time to fix it?

Posted Aug 12, 2015 2:22 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (3 responses)

The state causes this mess through enforcing patents on video codecs. IF it was actually interested in creating a standard video codec is to do absolutely nothing. Stop helping to enforce patents and the problem can get solved overnight.

IF that is too much to ask then just tell the patent office to change it's standards so that filing software patents is impossible. The patent system is completely arbitrary so changing how the bureaucratic process works will free up innovation immensely. \

If that is too much to ask then simply de-fund the patent office so it can't do it's job. Get a 10-15 year backlog of patent applications and that will solve this problem as well.

This is extremely common practice in the USA federal government, it's why the thousands of new laws that get past every month don't grind the USA into the ground. Congress passes new laws for every 'crisis' that gets a lot of attention in the media. They know the laws are terribly written and are potentially damaging, so they just create a new department or committee group to enforce the laws and only fund them for a few years. Once the money is gone Congress just quietly neglects to renew it's budget and the laws go unenforced. This is standard operating procedure for the USA since the 1970's and probably before that. If you ever saw some financial crisis and wonder 'There was already laws on the books against this, why were they not enforced?'.. then now you know why.

The best thing the state can do with regards to media codecs is simply stop doing what it's doing. It will make a lot of people's lives a lot easier.

NIH syndrome? Time to fix it?

Posted Aug 12, 2015 7:26 UTC (Wed) by Otus (subscriber, #67685) [Link] (1 responses)

> Get a 10-15 year backlog of patent applications and that will solve this problem as well.

How would that solve anything? Patent terms are now counted from when it's granted (when that's longer), so wouldn't that just result in a longer effective patent term?

NIH syndrome? Time to fix it?

Posted Aug 12, 2015 14:05 UTC (Wed) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

It would create new problems yes but solve some also. If you can't get a patent on some technology until it's obsolete, it may be less attractive to file it at all.

NIH syndrome? Time to fix it?

Posted Aug 15, 2015 11:21 UTC (Sat) by dirtyepic (guest, #30178) [Link]

> If that is too much to ask then simply de-fund the patent office so it can't do it's job.

This is already the reality, and it's the reason why so many shit patents get approved. Patent examiners are severely underpaid and overworked. This makes it very difficult to attract effective examiners because anyone competent enough to be able to do a proper review can easily find better work elsewhere. The few that stick around are given so little time to do an examination that anything but the most cursory review is impossible. They're under a lot of pressure to just rubberstamp it and move on. Cutting their funding further would only make this worse.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 4:42 UTC (Wed) by cuboci (subscriber, #9641) [Link] (27 responses)

https://xkcd.com/927/

That's all.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 12:50 UTC (Wed) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link] (26 responses)

I wish we have a choice of patent-free non-proprietary video codec standards. Unfortunately currently we have zero of those.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 14:37 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

What happened to Dirac?

Anyway, I imagine that Cisco is seeing stuff like Skype cutting into their videoconferencing revenues. Once upon a time, it wasn't that unusual to see Tandberg gear being used in Norwegian organisations - Tandberg having been acquired by Cisco a few years ago - but I doubt that people can justify it as easily these days.

(It's interesting to read about the Tandberg patent/plagiarism controversy in the Wikipedia article. Maybe Cisco sees the madness of patent-encumbered technologies after all.)

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 15:10 UTC (Wed) by tterribe (guest, #66972) [Link] (24 responses)

Off the top of my head, we have:

- Animated GIF
- MJPEG
- Theora
- Dirac
- VP8
- VP9

I've contributed to code or specs for at least four of the six on that list, so I am pretty sure they exist. Obviously not all of those are useful for every application, and some are clearly better than others on whichever metrics of complexity, compression performance, IPR risk, etc., that you care about for a given use case.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 15:37 UTC (Wed) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (22 responses)

VP8 and VP9 are controlled by Google, so they are proprietary.
I am not sure about the participation rules in the Dirac project, they might qualify as open.
About Animated GIF, MJPEG and Theora you are correct I guess.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 19:38 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (20 responses)

They are controlled by Google, but not proprietary.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 20:05 UTC (Wed) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (19 responses)

Being controlled by one single company is very much the definition of a proprietary standard.

That VP9 is royalty-free, and an open source implementation exists, does not change that.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 21:02 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (11 responses)

> Being controlled by one single company is very much the definition of a proprietary standard.

well, usually a proprietary standard has not been released as opensource.

If you want to define "proprietary standard" as simply the case where one company controls the standard document, what term do you use when one company not only controls the standard document, but every implementation?

For a codec, the standard document should not change much, if at all, because it will cause interoperability problems between things that followed the prior version and the new version. So demanding that a committee all get a chance to fiddle with it sounds like a problem more than an advantage.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 23:27 UTC (Wed) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (9 responses)

The reference implementation is open source. But that does not make the standard open.
The definition of proprietary standard does not come from me.

The issue with interoperability in case of VP9 actually had some nasty consequences. There is no authoritative document describing VP9. Instead, the standard is basically defined by its reference implementation.

As a Phoronix reader pointed out, this led to an implementation bug become part of the VP9 standard that all other implementations must now emulate.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1648427#post1648427

If you want to denigrate an open standardization process with fair participation rules as "demanding that a committee all get a chance to fiddle with it" so be it. Certainly the above would not have stood in front of a competent committee.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 1:45 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

The reference implementation is open source. But that does not make the standard open.

Yet rubberstamp from some standard's body does?

As a Phoronix reader pointed out, this led to an implementation bug become part of the VP9 standard that all other implementations must now emulate.

And OOXML has dozen of quirks and some actual bugs which conforming implementations must emulate.

Certainly the above would not have stood in front of a competent committee.

Depends on the commitee, really. If you don't like OOXML then take a look on the MIME Sniffing standard.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 7:38 UTC (Thu) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link]

> Yet rubberstamp from some standard's body does?

If you had followed their mailing list, the NetVC group will not be rubber-stamping anything. They are currently figuring out how to integrate Daala and Thor's best features into a new video codec.

> And OOXML has dozen of quirks and some actual bugs which conforming implementations must emulate.

Rubber stamping does happen, yes. PNG is another example of a rubber-stamped standard from the W3C.
But it is at least not very common when it comes to web standards and nobody suggests that it is going to be the case here.

OOXML's standardization goal was completely different from others, including other Microsoft sponsored standards. VC-1 for example started out as WMV9 and was submitted to the SMPTE, who then fixed a couple of things and made it a standard. If Google decides to contribute VP9 to NetVC then a similar thing may happen here too.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 2:42 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (5 responses)

By this judgement, python, perl, ruby et al are proprietary. Python for example is proprietary to the Python Foundation.

What a worthless definition.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 7:50 UTC (Thu) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (4 responses)

I don't know what are the participation rules in Perl, Ruby, etc. they may qualify as open or not.

But if I read https://www.python.org/psf/membership/ correctly, anybody can join and start contributing and become eligible to vote through either a yearly fee or dedicating five hours of work per month. This looks very much open to me.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 12:07 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (3 responses)

I was a PSF member, even through the recent restructuring of the PSF membership, so I can tell you that absolutely anyone can become a member. To vote on PSF matters, as you note, you need to either sponsor the organisation, support it with money, volunteer, or do something that people thought was worthy of recognition. For the record, I was in that last category when only the first and the last categories comprised the entire membership (perhaps with the exception of those who were there at the very beginning).

However, the PSF does not control Python's direction: that is actually a community-driven process involving, principally, the python-dev mailing list and the proposal and approval of Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP) documents. So, Python-the-language, which isn't actually standardised in any sense other than the informal collection of PEPs and the code, is open because of that inclusive environment, not because of some organisation with a membership.

Indeed, there are standards that appear to be governed by member-only organisations, some with fee structures. I would argue that if these organisations are the entry point for influencing such standards then those standards are actually proprietary.

I understand your labelling of a documented technology as "proprietary" if a single entity controls it without any avenue for input, but it is more helpful to separate the matters of the stewardship of the "official" technology and what other people can do with it. If people can take Google's codecs and apply the FSF's four freedoms, it becomes somewhat absurd to claim that the technology itself is proprietary.

But certainly, how such projects and others in the Free Software world are organised, whether people can reasonably contribute, and what constraints contributors are under, are all valid topics for discussion, especially if people claim total openness around their technologies and solutions.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 15:09 UTC (Thu) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (2 responses)

Thanks for shedding light on the Python situation.

> Indeed, there are standards that appear to be governed by member-only organisations, some with fee structures. I would argue that if these organisations are the entry point for influencing such standards then those standards are actually proprietary.

Whether there are fee structures is inconsequential I think. VESA, IEEE, etc. all charge membership fees yet they are able to produce open standards. It is more about whether the participation rules ensure non-discriminatory access to the standardization process.

> If people can take Google's codecs and apply the FSF's four freedoms, it becomes somewhat absurd to claim that the technology itself is proprietary.

If that were true, then any standard or technology with a free software implementation would qualify as open. That is something I am not sure I can agree with.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 14, 2015 11:44 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (1 responses)

Whether there are fee structures is inconsequential I think. VESA, IEEE, etc. all charge membership fees yet they are able to produce open standards. It is more about whether the participation rules ensure non-discriminatory access to the standardization process.

I think fee structures can certainly be discriminatory. That's why there's a lot of justified hostility to supposed "RAND" standards. ("$1M to join our club: we don't care who you are as long as you pay the money; it's not discriminatory at all; all my friends are billionaires!" And so on.)

If that were true, then any standard or technology with a free software implementation would qualify as open.

True enough. But if the custodian of the standard cannot sue you for implementing it, it does take on a life of its own. For instance, the Samba suite of technologies provides a way of using an admittedly proprietary set of de-facto standards, but it could also serve as the mechanism for a formulation of new and genuinely open standards.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 19, 2015 13:01 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

I don't know the status of the MS extensions, but you do know that Samba was not originally written to interface to PCs? Then someone (I think it was Jeremy) noticed that MS were also using SMB for their networking, and Samba took off.

And now, it's been standardised as CIFS.

So MS can't lay claim to SMB/CIFS, because they copied it from somewhere else :-)

Cheers,
Wol

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 13:42 UTC (Thu) by mstone_ (subscriber, #66309) [Link]

And for more than 20 years browsers have been sending a misspelling of "referrer" with every HTTP request -- and that's standardized in RFC1945. The fact that something goes through a standards body in no way prevents errors which much then be preserved for compatibility reasons.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 22:22 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> > Being controlled by one single company is very much the definition of a proprietary standard.

> well, usually a proprietary standard has not been released as opensource.

> If you want to define "proprietary standard" as simply the case where one company controls the standard document, what term do you use when one company not only controls the standard document, but every implementation?

An open standard? As in freely available to read and re-implement should you wish to do so?

This is actually an accurate description of the WordPerfect document format, which was freely available way back when in the 5.0 days (the 1980s) and when v6 was released in the early 90s, that was published too. To the best of my knowledge, the v6 format is still in use today.

Whether something is proprietary and/or open is actually completely orthogonal - the word "proprietary" means "owned by someone", so by the *standard* definition of the word, even Linux is proprietary!!!

This confusion about the meaning of the word "proprietary" is, as far as I'm aware, actually down to MS propaganda! When, in the NT3.1 days, it was a heavy part of their marketing pitch - "Unix is proprietary, Windows is open".

Cheers,
Wol

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 21:03 UTC (Wed) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (6 responses)

But they are not actually controlled by Google, any more than X was controlled by XFree86, OpenOffice by Oracle, or ssh by Tatu Ylönen. Google are the default custodians of VP9, but if it becomes important, and Google misbehaves badly enough, history has proven that the broader programmer community can and will appoint new custodians.

There is nothing proprietary about VP9. It's installed on my system because I typed "apt-get install gnome-core". And no part of my system is actually controlled by anyone but Debian, even though Debian will usually defer to well-behaved upstream developers. :)

You might object that Google is a more powerful entity that XFree96 or Ylönen, and probably more concerned with what happens to VP9 than Oracle was about OpenOffice. But if VP9 were adopted by an official standards body, that would make a lot of other powerful players much more interested. Heck, if VP9 were adopted as an official standard of some sort, and Google started misbehaving, even Microsoft might decide they like standard VP9 all of a sudden, just to poke Google in the eye! :D

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 23:36 UTC (Wed) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (5 responses)

> There is nothing proprietary about VP9. It's installed on my system because I typed "apt-get install gnome-core".

Please don't confuse proprietary software with proprietary standards. These two are orthogonal concepts; you can have open source implementations of proprietary standards as well as proprietary implementations of open standards.

> But if VP9 were adopted by an official standards body, that would make a lot of other powerful players much more interested.

So far, Google seems not interested in doing so. Unlike Thor, Daala, and now also NHW which have been submitted as contribution to the IETF's NetVC working group.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 0:32 UTC (Thu) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link]

As several people have pointed out, no-one needs Google's interest to be able to pick up the code, hold whatever committee meetings they find helpful, and then bless the result as an open standard if that's what floats their boat.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 3:39 UTC (Thu) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (3 responses)

I understand the difference between open standards and open source perfectly, thank you. I have dealt with all those permutations many times over the course of my career, and have contributed to open standards, including leaving my mark on at least one ISO standard. (I have also worked with both proprietary and open code, of course.)

In this case, however, what we have is an open-source implementation of something that has merely not yet been standardized. It is not proprietary in any way, shape or form. It is *certainly* not a proprietary standard—not even when considered as an informal standard, for the reasons I listed above.

And there's no more reason why Google has to submit VP9 to any standards body than there was for the Regents of the University of California to personally submit BSD sockets to POSIX or XOpen. (Which they didn't, yet BSD sockets are standard pretty much everywhere today. Official standard and everything.)

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 8:17 UTC (Thu) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link] (2 responses)

If you see no reason for requiring an open standard that is fine and your prerogative. But the fact remains that VP9 is a proprietary standard by the common definition of that term.

You can of course fork VP9 into your own standard and make it open. There will be some disadvantages because Google and other companies in the VP9 boat may not care about interoperability with you, and your new standard will not be covered by the patent agreement between Google and the MPEG LA.

> In this case, however, what we have is an open-source implementation of something that has merely not yet been standardized.

A specification document is not required to make something a standard, mind you.

VP9 is a standard and it is given by its reference implementation, libvpx. It has since been replicated, including libvpx implementation bugs, in a number of software and hardware systems.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 9:59 UTC (Thu) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (1 responses)

> If you see no reason for requiring an open standard

You're being obtuse. They didn't say there didn't need to be an open standard, they very clearly and with examples said that you can make an open standard without the involvement of the creator of the original implementation.

That it makes no sense to exclude VP9 on the grounds that it is not an 'open standard' when it is possible to make it one.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 15:24 UTC (Thu) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link]

> They didn't say there didn't need to be an open standard, they very clearly and with examples said that you can make an open standard without the involvement of the creator of the original implementation.

I marked the relevant part in your quote in bold. This is an important distinction. It is of course possible to make an open standard based on VP9. But that will no longer be VP9, it will be a fork. VP9 remains under the control of Google.

If you fork VP9, you may lose interoperability with existing VP9 implementations, and also the coverage through the Google/MPEG LA patent agreement. Then you might as well start fresh, making an open standard using the existing codecs as input, and that is precisely what NetVC working group is doing.

And yes, they said that having an open source implementation is enough, who cares about how the VP9 standard came to be. That is a valid opinion, and I am not attacking anyone for it.

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 12, 2015 20:10 UTC (Wed) by tterribe (guest, #66972) [Link]

> I've contributed to code or specs for at least four of the six on that list

That includes Theora, Dirac, VP8, and VP9. I do not work for Google (and never have).

Thor: another free video codec

Posted Aug 13, 2015 23:55 UTC (Thu) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

IIRC, you can add H.261 to that list as its patents have expired by now.