Re: [rtcweb] RTCWEB Session 2: A plea for brevity

[Harald Alvestrand <[e-mail]>]

On 10/20/2012 10:12 AM, Bernard Aboba wrote:
> I respectfully submit that the allocating the entire 150 minute 
> session to the video codec MTI isssue is not the best use of the WG's 
> time.
>
> Do we really  have to allocate 20 minutes to *each* draft? Since 3 of 
> the presentations are favoring H.264 and only one is pushing VP8, the 
> fairness of this approach is questionable, and since brevity is the 
> soul of wit (and argument), I believe that each side could probably do 
> the job in 20 minutes max, including example videos.
>
> If we spend, 40 minutes on presentations, 30 minutes on discussion and 
> 20 minutes on the combination of consensus and next steps, then that 
> would leave an hour for other important issues, such as the way 
> forward on SDP.

To my mind, the discussion so far has matured to the point where the 
presentations' salient points could be made in two sentences:

- Technical quality: Close enough that it doesn't matter.
- IPR conditions: Different enough that it matters.

Different people have made different qualitative evaluation of "which 
one is best". I have not yet heard anyone say "if X is N% better on 
measurement Y, I will support that one".

Given what lawyers say when I ask them if I can say anything about legal 
topics (including opinions about other people's licensing terms), it'll 
be hard to have a meaningful discussion on the point that matters.

This is a problem. I don't know how to resolve it. But I'd rather be 
discussing SDP than having 150 minutes of discussion on the stuff that 
doesn't matter because we can't come to grips with the stuff that matters.