MPEG LA Declares H.264 Standard Permanently Royalty-Free

[Elliott]

They tried to standardise on one format, but the H.264 backers didn't support it.

While the format's still locked up behind patent pools and multi-million dollar yearly licensing fees, it can't be included in any web standard or by open source browsers (Neither open source versions of Chrome or WebKit support H.264)

Then we're going to have a split for the foreseeable future. If WebM wants to be taken seriously, it has to step up its game. We need hardware acceleration that can run on existing H.264 decoders right now. Unless that happens, the big dogs (Microsoft and Apple) aren't going to even consider shifting.

That, or just 5 million of Firefox's users have to donate one dollar a year if they want to support Linux. Doesn't seem so farfetched to me.

[Mr. Gibs]

They tried to standardise on one format, but the H.264 backers didn't support it.

While the format's still locked up behind patent pools and multi-million dollar yearly licensing fees, it can't be included in any web standard or by open source browsers (Neither open source versions of Chrome or WebKit support H.264)

Can't they re-license it under the Apache license? That way the product can still be open-source but can have extensions that aren't.

[HawkMan]

Flash video is H.264 these days, the Flash player even takes advantage of hardware H.264 decoding support.

Windows 7 and OS X you mean, while MS will soon bring the H.264 decoder to Vista in an update, the fact remains that currently only one version of Windows out of the 3 supported ones actually supports H.264 out of the box.

Vista got an update witht he same codecs just now though. and XP is 10 years old.

[rawr_boy81]

Just found out that this means its free for end-users ONLY. Mozilla will still have to pay the MPEG-LA $5m/yr to include h264 in firefox. Quite a chunk of money, i hope they do this, maybe they could ask google, microsoft and apple to donate 1/3rd each :)

Here is the confirmation that this is true and not just a rumour that h264 will be free forever: http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/231/n-10-08-26.pdf

There is nothing stopping Mozilla from using the built in h264 CODEC's provided by Windows 7 and Mac OS X with Linux users having to manually install the gstreamer plugin as required. As for Windows Vista I'd say that the h264 codec will arrive with Internet Explorer 9 which will hopefully bring a 'Media Foundation' CODEC to support h264.

[hdood]

A decoder is already available in beta for Vista, but you're still not really getting it. Mozilla likely opposes it because they want the web and their product to be open and free and accessible to as many people as possible. H.264 is covered by patents in many parts of the world (meaning gstreamer could be illegal regardless of whether you are in the US or Norway.) It's okay to disagree with this position, but it's pretty obvious that it's what they care about. It's not that there is any technical obstacle.

[rawr_boy81]

A decoder is already available in beta for Vista, but you're still not really getting it. Mozilla likely opposes it because they want the web and their product to be open and free and accessible to as many people as possible. H.264 is covered by patents in many parts of the world (meaning gstreamer could be illegal regardless of whether you are in the US or Norway.) It's okay to disagree with this position, but it's pretty obvious that it's what they care about. It's not that there is any technical obstacle.

Who said anything about bundling a h264 decoder? the decoder they would be using is the one included with the operating system - they're no less open or free by using a decoder bundled with the operating system than they are when they take advantage of the many proprietary API's that are included with Windows. Are you going to kick up a fuss because they take advantage of Direct2D/DirectWrite/DirectX? of course not, that would be ridiculous to do so. The issue at stake is a group of dogmatic programmers who would sooner screw over end users than swallow their dogmatic pride and provide what the end user requires. Btw, the issue of h264 should be the least of their worries when compared to CSS bugs that are over 10 years old and still not fixed.

[hdood]

Who said anything about bundling a h264 decoder? the decoder they would be using is the one included with the operating system - they're no less open or free by using a decoder bundled with the operating system than they are when they take advantage of the many proprietary API's that are included with Windows. Are you going to kick up a fuss because they take advantage of Direct2D/DirectWrite/DirectX? of course not, that would be ridiculous to do so.

The difference is that Windows APIs are not exposed to the internet (although Microsoft has tried.) HTML 5 is.

The issue at stake is a group of dogmatic programmers who would sooner screw over end users than swallow their dogmatic pride and provide what the end user requires.

Adopting H.264 and accepting it as the de facto standard for something that is supposed to be open and usable by all would also be screwing users, since only the big commercial players would be able to legally support it. Others would have to rely on illegal solutions that can't ship with the actual product. This seems to be what Mozilla cares about. It has nothing to do with the technical side of things, which seems to be the only thing you are capable of seeing.

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

Still not enough. It's still patent encumbered, it's only the very last link in the chain (actually displaying the content on the end-users' devices) that's now gratis. Building decoders still costs.

This article explains it better than I can: http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/08/hold-the-h264-celebrations/index.htm

[PreKe]

MPEG LA Declares H.264 Standard Permanently Royalty-Free

It does not. This really changes nothing. You still have to pay in most cases.