Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
What I mean is that unlike the case for other browser vendors, it won't
cost us anything in patent license fees.
Ah, right. So you want MPEG because it gives Apple (and Microsoft, I
guess) a financial competitive advantage over other browsers.
The problem is not that it's $5 million, it's that the amount is
unknown and unmeasurable. They have no "fixed fee above a certain
number of units" licensing policy. And even if they did, a Mozilla
license wouldn't cover other members of that community.
Actually, they do have a license cap, and I overestated it.
Indeed; as noted in my follow-up email. Apologies.
It's not immediately clear to me that a Mozilla license would not cover
redistribution, for instance the license fees paid by OS vendors
generally cover redistribution when the OS is bundled with a PC. I think
someone would have to look at the legal language of the agreement to see
if it covers redistribution.
But the issue is not solely the legality of our mirror network or of
putting Firefox on a magazine CD. The point is that every free software
browser, from Firefox to Iceweasel to Konqueror would have to pay the
$5M because they have no way of counting the number of downloads or
users. The license is per-enterprise; Mozilla codebase derivatives
shipped by other people would not be covered.
Let's be clear what we are looking at here - the possibility that, for
the first time, there would be parts of core web standards covered by
patents for which royalties needed to be paid. That's a massive shift.
Let me add other reasons why Mozilla (for whom, again, I am not
speaking) might want to specify Theora/Dirac:
- They have a strong commitment to interoperability
I don't think Theora (or Dirac) are inherently more interoperable than
other codecs. There's only one implementation of each so far, so there's
actually less proof of this than for other codecs.
The other meaning of interoperability - the one that means everyone can
implement it.
GIF encoding was highly interoperable, in the sense that there were lots
of implementations of it in various proprietary graphics apps. But it
was not interoperable, in the sense that there was a lot of software
which was not able to implement it - and so lots of people, using that
software, who couldn't create or edit GIFs.
- They appreciate that there are a wide variety of distribution models;
for browsers, and do not want to choose technologies which work only
for some of those;
Unfortunately, Ogg does not work for some browsers either.
What is it about the distribution model of Safari that is incompatible
with shipping Ogg?
Of all of the points you put forward, lots were "why MPEG4 is good for
us", but only one could be construed as saying "Ogg does not work for
us" - and that was the submarine patent point. Is this what you are
referring to, or is there another reason specifying Ogg "doesn't work"
for Safari?
- If they think a royalty-free patent policy for standards is a good
idea in one place (the W3C) then they think it's a good idea
everywhere.
The problem is that the main standards bodies for video (such as the
ISO) do not have the same norms about RF vs. RAND patent licensing as
the W3C.
That's entirely beside the point. (I'm not arguing that, for
consistency, you should be telling the MPEG-LA or the ISO to license
their patents royalty-free.)
Here's my point. The W3C has a RF patent policy for web standards. Apple
is a member, and worked on (and so presumably endorses) that policy. So
either RF is a good idea for web standards, or it isn't. It can't be a
good idea in the W3C but a bad idea in the WHAT-WG.
It's not as if there are no codecs available where all known patents are
RF. We do have a choice over what to pick.
So, just to be clear: you believe interoperability is best promoted by
having no codec specified in the spec?
I think if the spec mandates a single codec, that part of the spec will
be ignored by at least some parties.
The current proposal is for a SHOULD, not a MUST. Do you object to
SHOULD as well as to MUST?
Can you please explain how you believe not specifying a codec at all
promotes interoperability?
You and I both know that this would result in dominance for whatever
codecs got shipped by default on major operating systems. Content
producers will not choose codecs for 5 or 10% better quality or
bitrate, they will choose them for user convenience - because if their
site is harder to use than their competitors, they'll fail.
Isn't this basically admitting that Ogg Theora would fail in the market
if not legislated in the spec?
You assume that, absent legislation in the spec, all of the world's
codecs would be competing on a level playing field. That's clearly not
the case.
Also, even if Theora did eventually win the marketplace, there would be
a lot of pain for content authors in the mean time, as they attempted to
support the different codecs implemented by different browsers.
I'm sure that any help Apple would be able to give in this area would
be much appreciated. How do you suggest we begin?
One good first step might be for someone to obtain a copy of the
existing license terms and determine how they would apply to a freely
redistributable product.
I think that's already been done in this thread, unless you think the
analysis is flawed.
http://www.mpegla.com/avc/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that different terms would be
required in order for MPEG4 to be implementable in free software. Is
Apple offering to help approach the MPEG-LA?
You again assume that only recalcitrance prevents some parties
implementing any particular codec stack. As I understand the
situation, Firefox would have to stop being free software in order to
ship an MPEG4 implementation.
I don't think that is true, but it would depend on the details of the
MPEG-LA license agreement.
For an MPEG4 implementation in Firefox to be free software, anyone would
have to be able to take it and put it in their device - effectively
ending the ability for the MPEG-LA to charge licensing fees. I somehow
suspect their current license agreement does not permit this.
Also, at most the MPEG4 implementation would
not be free software, this would not have to affect the rest of Firefox.
That's like saying "if I chain your arm to this pipe, you can still move
the rest of yourself around, so it's not so bad". If one bit of Firefox
has restrictions, that puts restrictions on the whole thing.
Konqueror, for example, is under the GPL, and so can't link with
non-free code. Some projects take the Firefox code under the GPL option,
and are so in the same position.
And, as someone else pointed out, that's without considering the MPEG
audio codec also, which would add further cost and problems.
Gerv
