"What would Apple lose if they added WebM to Safari and/or Quicktime as the
codecs are royalty free and under a permissive BSD license? Nothing."
I suspect that they're not doing it because of their connection to MPEG-LA:
They get patent royalties for H.265/HEVC and H.264 abd MPEG-4, etc. See
http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/HEVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx
I suspect their recalcitrance comes from not wanting to see royalties
decline.
However: Microsoft & Cisco get patent royalties too and they're onboard with
supporting free codecs:
http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx
I suspect that Apple hasn't yet realized that they have more to lose more
than they gain from the software patent system. Hopefully that will happen
one day. Here's a possible way for that to happen:
http://jxself.org/calling_all_patent_trolls.shtml
