Re: [rtcweb] Finishing up the Video Codec document, MTI (again, still, sorry)

[Mohammed Raad <[e-mail]>]

Bravo!
On 6 Dec 2014 06:19, "Ron" <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 05, 2014 at 03:13:48PM -0800, David Singer wrote:
> > Hi Ted
> >
> > > On Dec 5, 2014, at 14:32 , Ted Hardie <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi David,
> > >
> > > On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 1:42 PM, David Singer <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > (Much snipped)
> > >
> > >> It really is not similar.  Maybe there are licenses that one or other
> does not carry:  in the Cisco case, we are unaware of any “unwilling to
> license”, whereas for VP8 there is a clear statement that no license can be
> had.
> > >>
> > > In both cases, the participant needs to assess whether they know of
> all the salient IPR, whether they have all the licenses for that IPR which
> they need.   While I am not a lawyer, I imagine that in both cases that
> would involve making a determination of the relevance of the claim as well
> as an analysis of its license terms.  It also involves an assessment of the
> risk that there are other claims which may later arise.
> > >
> > > To my lay person's eyes, the two assessments do look pretty similar.
> It appears, honestly, that you disagree with the results' of others
> assessments, rather than that the assessments do not need to take place in
> both cases.  But I may be misunderstanding your point.
> >
> > OK, let me see if I can persuade you of a qualitative difference.  For
> > each ‘must’, what is the nature and availability of licenses that I
> > might need from those claiming IPR?
> >
> > * H.264: all those claiming IPR offer licenses, though most of them
> > ask for payment * VP8: almost all offer licenses that are either free
> > or effectively so (pre-paid, in the case of the MPEG-LA), but there is
> > one for which no license is available (and it’s not an insignificant
> > company, or one not active in the field, or a small set of patents)
>
>
> Ted was doing such a good job explaining this, that I was just going to
> leave it to him.  But if you're going to call me out to be your champion,
> to make your point here, then ...  ok :>
>
> > For me, that is a major difference.  Clearly for others (e.g. Ron who
> > has said as much), the cost is more significant than the license
> > availability.
>
> No.  You've clearly missed the point here, and you've missed it on the
> order of Astronomical Units, not Barns.  You're going have to repeat
> Free Software 101 I'm afraid.  I've never said anything of the sort.
>
> Let me see if I can explain to you the qualitative difference ...
>
> I'd gladly pay to be able to use VP8.  This isn't about money at all.
> There simply is no amount of money that can remove the real crippling
> costs of being burdened with or indentured to H.264 at present.
>
> This is about Freedom.  The availability of a license for Freedom even.
>
> The freedom to not have to count and track the users of my software.
> The freedom to not have to ask permission to do what I need to do.
> The freedom to not have to worry about anticompetitive patent abuse.
> The freedom to interoperate with anyone else who values freedom.
> The freedom to actually be able to get on with doing genuinely
> interesting things instead of dealing with dinosaur legalese from
> companies that no longer know how to do that.
>
> I could go on, but that's probably enough for you to be able to
> google the concept from there as your first homework assignment.
>
>
> Do you want to know the really fun part about where I learned how
> important these things were?  You're going to get a kick out of
> this.  Go find a manual for an apple][ and turn to the back page!
>
> When you're done studying its schematics and the source for its
> ROM, we can get together for a beer and reminisce about where it
> All Went So Sadly Wrong. :)
>
>
> > I think inserting the ‘must’ here means that companies will either
> > ignore it, or claim not to be a WebRTC Browser, neither of which
> > advance the cause of interoperability at all.
>
> So far we have something like 75% or more of the browser user market
> share on board.  The only players in that game who aren't, are a
> company that won't even tell us whether they plan to implement this
> or not (which clearly makes their opinion vitally important!), and
> another company who at some point at least seemed quite determined
> to fork this effort and go off and do something completely different
> all on their own.
>
> That seems like a pretty good base to start from to me.
>
> Maybe the holdouts will want to come play with us eventually, and
> maybe they won't.  But we can't wait for them forever while they
> learn to tie their shoelaces.  Enough people made that mistake
> with SIP, let's not repeat it again here.
>
>
>   Fiducially,
>   Ron
>
>
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