I'm okay with Flak, and I really do believe in shipping free/unemcumbered software (see our lgpl discussion earlier). That said, I dislike when I'm accused of being reprehensible by another browser vendor. It seems unfairly nasty to me.
Thinking out loud: One thing that was mentioned in an earlier post: Vorbis. I am also of the mind that Vorbis is of higher quality/mb/sec and statically than is mp3. The only real problem is that people don't pirate with it, so the demand isn't there, but I think it is a superior codec. For video, I worry that for theora to become 'better' than h264, it will need to infringe on the same patents it is designed to avoid. That said, I feel like I've been threadjacking this list for too long now, and for that I apologize, it seems like we're gong down a codec rathole that may or may not have any relevance for the spec in the end. Chris On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Robert O'Callahan<rob...@ocallahan.org> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 12:42 PM, Chris DiBona <cdib...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> I'm perfectly calm, what people need to realize is that this issue is >> actually not about submarined patents (more like aircraft carrier >> patents) or tricky corner cases for the lgpl., but that the internet >> users prefer more quality in their codecs/megabyte/second. So long as >> this is true this issue will not be resolvable cleanly and the kind of >> puritism that Robert mentioned is achievable only upon expiration of >> said patents or dramatic quality improvements of the free codecs. >> >> You can claim Humians as much as you like, the rest of us are trying >> to ship software here. > > > Historically a lot of the Web standards community, even many people at large > for-profit companies, have felt it very important that Web standards be > usable royalty-free. There were big battles when that situation was > threatened in the past. I personally care about it just as much as "shipping > software". In that context, helping make H.264 an essential part of "the > open Web" is reprehensible. > > If your only goal is to ship software with the best bitrate/quality > tradeoff, OK, but you can't complain when you get flak. > > Rob > -- > "He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; > the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are > healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his > own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." [Isaiah > 53:5-6] > -- Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc. Google's Open Source program can be found at http://code.google.com Personal Weblog: http://dibona.com
