Cisco offering a FLOSS H.264 codec

Reading the comments at http://blogs.cisco.com/collaboration/open-source-h-264-removes-barriers-webrtc/ seems to clarify what is actually going on:

"We will select licensing terms that allow for this code to be used in commercial products as well as open source projects. In order for Cisco to be responsible for the MPEG LA licensing royalties for the module, Cisco must provide the packaging and distribution of this code in a binary module format (think of it like a plug-in, but not using the same APIs as existing plugins), in addition to several other constraints.

This gives the community the best of all worlds – a team can choose to use the source code, in which case the team is responsible for paying all applicable license fees, or the team can use the binary module distributed by Cisco, in which case Cisco will cover the MPEG LA licensing fees. Hope that answers the first part of your question – Nadee, Cisco PR"

So, use the free version of the codec, violating the patents, or use the proprietary binary. I thought the free software community already wrote a free (though patent-violating) codec for h.264.

Does anyone know where Daala is compared to H264?

"Cisco offering a FLOSS H.264 codec"

We already had a FLOSS H.264 implementation in the form of x264. Cisco's announcement hasn't changed that to reduced any of the patent problems that it faces.

As people have figured out:

* Cisco is providing source for an H.264 implementation but is not covering the license fees for the version with source code

* Cisco is covering the license fees for the binary-only version, which is non-free of course since it's just a binary.

* Even if you use the non-free binary only version (and you shouldn't), MPEG LA says that only H.264 encoded internet video that distributed at no charge won't be charged royalties. This obviously excludes video that you charge people for or that isn't being distributed over the internet. So, if you're doing one of those two things you'll still need to contact MPEG LA for a license to distribute any videos you make (yes, MPEG-LA expects royalties for distributing videos that you make.) Being royalty free needs to apply to all use cases, not just those that someone else decides they need to do in order to compete with the ones that really are royalty free (VP8, etc.)

* Nothing I've seen obligates Cisco to continue doing this going forward (perhaps one day they'll tire of paying these multi-million dollar royalties) so even if the patent encumbered formats are royalty free (for some limited use cases only) who can say that they will stay that way going forward?

* Mozilla's decision to add support for this is shortsighted because H.264 is not going to be free of patent problems for everyone. Given that patents remain a problem for H.264 I would have preferred Mozilla to take a stronger stand in favor of unencumbered formats. As it is, Mozilla only gets the patent protection by Firefox using non-free software (the binary-only thing I mentioned above.) This make Firefox even more non-free than it already was.

* This only covers the video codec, H.264. No audio codec is included. Most people probably want to have sound, and that leaves people encoding video using H.264 open to patent issues from the audio codec side if things because H.264 is not commonly used with an unencumbered audio codec, although it is technically possible.

So, as people are seeing, not very much has changed.

There are other things to consider too but this covers most of them I think.

H.264 still patent encumbered. It's still problematic. Cisco doesn't even make an attempt to hide that their real motivation is nothing less than getting a patent-encumbered codec selected for use in WebRTC because they want everyone to be using stuff that reads on their patents (see http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx for a list of licensors, which includes Cisco.)

So, what can be said? "You may hear something about H.264 from Cisco. I urge you to ignore it and continue to promote free and unencumbered formats."

I think they are doing this for WebRTC and letting Opus handle the audio. I'm in the boat where I feel Daala is the future (not VP9), but companies like Apple and Microsoft won't include it with their OS even if it is patent and royalty free.

But that is an old mentality where desktop apps matter. Everything is going to the web and if the browsers support the codecs, then we are in a better situation. Just have to convince them to not use IE or Safari. IE not supporting a codec like Opus is silly considering it uses a Skype related codec (SILK) and they own Skype.

Sorry, but unless the patents are licensed to everybody, royalty-free, or until the patents expire, no free software codec can possibly not violate them, and developing a new one just won't help. This new codec is either basically proprietary or definitely a patent violation, depending on what you download. It's not even legal to obtain that source code if these patents exist in your country, so even just checking the source code and trusting that the binary is the same would be a patent violation.

There is no solution to software idea patents except abolishing them, unfortunately.

Wanted to share http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/61927.html