Re: [rtcweb] VP8 vs H.264 - the core issue

[David Singer <[e-mail]>]

On Oct 27, 2013, at 19:26 , Cullen Jennings (fluffy) <[e-mail]> wrote:

> 
> On Oct 26, 2013, at 4:47 PM, cowwoc <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>> On 26/10/2013 6:19 PM, Harald Alvestrand wrote:
>>> I actually think Martin Thomson and Travis Leithead have been giving great input and been positive contributors. Not to belittle the contributions of others, but those two especially have made many positive contributions.
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>    An open process has to feel genuine, not just in words, but also in actions.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> I think we may have some differing perspectives.
>> 
>> I guess what I'm saying is... if all is well, then what's going on with Microsoft and Apple? What's their official position regarding MTI? Will it impact their intent to bundle WebRTC in their browsers? If we truly have an open process and representatives from Microsoft and Apple sitting on the WG then I would expect to get official answers to these questions.
>> 
>> I've seen multiple representatives from Microsoft, but not a single person from Apple. Is anyone representing them in an official capacity?
> 
> Apple people have been involved (in fact are co-authors of some of the drafts on the VP8 vs H264 topic) and Microsoft clearly been very involved with the WG as well.  Kaufman has been clear his employer has a policy of not pre announcing products and I believe the same is true of Apple. This is often true of standards work in any WG so it limits how much people can exactly say about their employers until product is announced - that's pretty normal at IETF. 

We would be delighted for the community to establish a royalty free codec, in particular for web applications. To that goal, among other efforts, and together with several other companies, we proposed to MPEG last year H.264 Constrained Baseline as a basis for a new royalty free standard. This project, named by MPEG Web Video Coding, is now at a DIS (Draft International Standard) stage, and we are collecting IPR disclosures.
We are also co-authors on the H.264 proposal for MTI to WebRTC.

As others have noted, we are, alas, formally constrained not to discuss what we might or might not do in future (sorry).

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.