FW from FSD
Foss in market?
Openpen letter to Google: free VP8, and use it on YouTube
<http://www.fsf.org/share/?u=http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community>
Dear Google,
With your purchase of On2, you now own both the world's largest video site
(YouTube) and all the patents behind a new high performance video codec --
VP8. Just think what you can achieve by releasing the VP8 codec under an
irrevocable royalty-free license and pushing it out to users on YouTube? You
can end the web's dependence on patent-encumbered video formats and
proprietary software (Flash).
To sit on this technology or merely use it as a bargaining chip would be a
disservice to the free world, while bringing at best limited short-term
benefits to your company. To free VP8 without recommending it to YouTube
users would be a wasted opportunity and damaging to free software browsers
like Firefox. We all want you to do the right thing. Free VP8, and use it on
YouTube!
*Why this would be amazing*
The world would have a new free format unencumbered by software patents.
Viewers, video creators, free software developers, hardware makers --
everyone -- would have another way to distribute video without patents,
fees, and restrictions. The free video format Ogg Theora was already at
least as good for web video (see a
comparison<http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html>)
as its nonfree competitor H.264, and we never did agree with your objections
to using it. But since you made the decision to purchase VP8, presumably
you're confident it can meet even those objections, and using it on YouTube
is a no-brainer.
You have the leverage to make such free formats a global standard. YouTube
is the world's largest video site, home to nearly every digital video ever
made. If YouTube merely offered a free format as an option, that alone would
bring support from a slew of device makers and applications.
This ability to *offer* a free format on YouTube, however, is only a tiny
fraction of your real leverage. The real party starts when you begin to
encourage users' browsers to support free formats. There are lots of ways to
do this. Our favorite would be for YouTube to switch from Flash to free
formats and HTML, offering users with obsolete browsers a plugin or a new
browser (free software, of course). Apple has had the mettle to ditch Flash
on the iPhone and the iPad -- albeit for suspect reasons and using abhorrent
methods (DRM) -- and this has pushed web developers to make Flash-free
alternatives of their pages. You could do the same with YouTube, for better
reasons, and it would be a death-blow to Flash's dominance in web video.
But even some smaller actions would also have an impact. You could interest
users with HD videos in free formats, for example, or aggressively invite
users to upgrade their browsers (instead of upgrading Flash). Steps like
these on YouTube would quickly push browser support for free formats to 50%
and beyond, and they would slowly increase the number of people who never
bother installing Flash.
If you care about free software and the free web (a movement and medium to
which you owe your success) you must take bold action to replace Flash with
free standards and free formats. Patented video codecs have already done
untold harm to the web and its users, and this will continue until we stop
it. Because patent-encumbered formats were costly to incorporate into
browsers, a bloated, ill-suited piece of proprietary software (Flash) became
the de facto standard for online video. Until we move to free formats, the
threat of patent lawsuits and licensing fees hangs over every software
developer, video creator, hardware maker, web site and corporation --
including you.
You can use your purchase of On2 merely as a bargaining chip to achieve your
own private solution to the problem, but that's both a cop-out and a
strategic mistake. Without making VP8 a free format, it's just another video
codec. And what use is another video format with patent-limited browser
support? You owe it to the public and to the medium that made you successful
to solve this problem, for all of us, forever. Organizations like Xiph,
Mozilla, Wikimedia, the FSF, and even On2 itself have recognized the need
for free formats and fought hard to make it happen. Now it's your turn.
We'll know if you do otherwise that your interest is not user freedom on the
web, but Google's dominance.
We all want you to do the right thing. Free VP8, and use it on YouTube!
--
FOSS Nepal mailing list: [email protected]
http://groups.google.com/group/foss-nepal
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
Mailing List Guidelines:
http://wiki.fossnepal.org/index.php?title=Mailing_List_Guidelines
Community website: http://www.fossnepal.org/
