Re: [rtcweb] Opinions are fine, bypassing a vote is not (was: H.261)

[Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]>]

Gili,

I would like to push back on this a bit. Say that we had general consensus
that Theora was strictly better than H.261. I think it would be OK to remove
H.261. Obviously, if there's any significant dissent, we shouldn't, but I'm
already pretty sad about all the options, and I don't think it's bad to
winnow
the field if there is near-unanimity on something....

-Ekr



On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 10:59 PM, cowwoc <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> This post is not meant to target Stefan specifically. It is a general
> statement based on what I've noticed over the past 200+ posts on this topic.
>
> I am ... concerned ... by the apparently attempt by certain individuals to
> have options removed ahead of a possible vote. It is one thing to explain
> your opinion in order to encourage/discourage people from voting for it. It
> is another matter to imply that an option is a "waste of time" because only
> a "vocal minority" seems to care about it or that "given the choice between
> what you are proposing and X, most developers would prefer X". If no one is
> in favor of H.261 "except for a vocal minority" or "most developers would
> prefer X" then you have nothing to worry about. Let the community vote and
> see where the chips land. I don't think it's safe to rely on "vocal
> minorities" to gauge what the community at large prefers. The only way to
> find out is to ask them (and that's what the vote is all about).
>
> Everyone should be free to express their opinion for/against an option,
> but no option should be removed ahead of a vote.
>
> Just my 2 cents.
>
> Gili
>
> On 22/11/2013 4:14 PM, Stefan Slivinski wrote:
>
>> Why don't we add the "must support both H.264 and VP8 decode and must
>> support at least one of H.264 or VP8 encode" to the list of options and ask
>> for a show of hands as to what people are in favor of.  This would be
>> non-binding, simply a status check.  Maybe no one is in favor of H.261
>> except for a vocal minority in which case we're wasting time arguing about
>> it.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: rtcweb [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Basil Mohamed
>> Gohar
>> Sent: Friday, November 22, 2013 12:57 PM
>> To: [e-mail]
>> Subject: Re: [rtcweb] H.261
>>
>> On 11/22/2013 03:44 PM, Stefan Slivinski wrote:
>>
>>> Thank you for the link.
>>>
>>> The point I'm trying to make is H.261 will harm the proliferation of
>>> webrtc far more than it will help.  This is purely a technical argument
>>> speaking to quality and error resiliency.
>>>
>>> Has anyone listed the concerns surrounding H.264 and have these been
>>> raised with mpeg-la to see if they can make adjustments to the license
>>> agreement.  They have certainly done so in the past.
>>>
>> Believe it or not, the MPEG-LA is currently trying to establish a
>> royalty-free subset of H.264 called "Constrained Baseline Profile", which
>> is very similar to the most commonly-used subset of H.264 features out
>> there.
>>
>> The problem is, it's not done yet, and there's no indication whether or
>> not it will be successful or not.  This would require all existing
>> stakeholders in H.264 licensing to agree to this royalty-free variant for
>> it to matter.
>>
>> There's another effort to do the same with one using MPEG-1 as a base.
>>
>> The problem is, none of these formally exist in royalty-free forms as of
>> yet.  Everything else we've discussed, though, does, including H.261.
>>
>> And, for what it's worth, I disagree about H.261.  Yes, H.264 and/or VP8
>> (and a whole list of other codecs) will look *better*, but I think being
>> able to communicate via video over H.261 is better than not being able to
>> all.
>>
>> And we are at a point where "not at all" is going to happen because the
>> WG is effectively split over using VP8 and H.264.
>>
>> --
>> Libre Video
>> http://librevideo.org
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