Re: [rtcweb] Proposal for Theora baseline codec

[Basil Mohamed Gohar <[e-mail]>]

On 03/29/2012 10:09 AM, Monty Montgomery wrote:
> If we're suggesting ten+ year-old codecs with low patent risk, let's
> choose an obviously higher performance example.  Dare I say it...
> Theora?
>
> I think we've gotten off track.
>
> Twelve years ago, oblique threats were made against the nascent Vorbis
> by Thomson and the whole world decided it was a patent risk.  It never
> was.  Fool me once, shame on you.
>
> In the mid 2000s, people started picking on Theora the same way, and a
> few years ago Steve Jobs [and Larry Horn, et al] informed the world he
> was coming after us. Nothing came of it.  Fool me twice, shame on me.
>
> Now we have the same substance-less muttering about VP8, suggesting
> that it's better to use leftover crumbs from 20 years ago.
>
> Fool me three times, I should begin to wonder if I have the requisite
> capacity to be engaging in technical endeavors.
>
> Monty
> Xiph.Org
+1

VP8 is the only option that makes any sense for WebRTC going forward. 
It is high performant, it has optimizations for realtime usage (in the
reference implementation), it is already implemented in a wide variety
of software (Skype, browsers [Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera]),
and it is also implemented in hardware (as well as supported by the
Android OS).

No one can say something will never be the target of a lawsuit.  But
there *are* legal protections against organizations that assert patents
against a standard after its adoption when they had the ability to make
the standards body aware of it ahead of time (estoppel).