Re: [rtcweb] Proposal for Theora baseline codec

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

On 03/29/2012 10:33 AM, Stephan Wenger wrote:
> Hi Monty,
> Couldn't it be that no one went after Vorbis and Theora because the
> rightholders had no real incentive to do so?  For example, because the
> products implementing Vorbis, in their vast majority, also included MP3
> and/or AAC, and the rightholders would have to deal with patent exhaustion
> arguments and whatnot after having gotten their money; and because theora
> deployment never reached a critical mass because it was a) not good enough
> technically, and b) felt to be too risky?
> I would turn your argument around: the (comparatively speaking) lack of
> commercial success of vorbis and theora, and the success of royalty
> bearing standard codecs, suggest to me only that no one was fooled, except
> perhaps the enthusiastic followers of those folks who keep pushing out one
> "free" codec after another...
> Stephan
>
Stephan,

Monty already pointed out that sabre-rattling already happened.  Had
there been any meat to the threats, then it would have been ridiculous
not to have pursued them.  Mozilla implements both Theora and Vorbis in
browser, and do not implement MPEG-related codecs, and they're a
lucrative target (they're getting around $1 billion from Google in the
coming few years).  They *do* have a commercial entity that could be the
target, as well.

The real threat was that these formats posed a risk to the other formats
monopolistic adoption, and the FUD that was spread every time these
formats were presented in a standard or appeared poised to be adopted
more widely, the sabre-rattling began again, and no real threats
materialized.

It's arguing by saying, "You never can be sure...".

-- 
Libre Video
http://librevideo.org