Comments on: Strict Open Source Policies Lead to Fail http://www.apreche.net/strict-open-source-policies-lead-to-fail/ One geeks thoughts on the geekeries of the world. Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:32:41 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: James http://www.apreche.net/strict-open-source-policies-lead-to-fail/comment-page-1/#comment-41224 James Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:20:37 +0000 http://www.apreche.net/?p=1148#comment-41224 "Willingness?" I'm not sure H.264 support has *that* much to do with ideology. Opera has stated that they won't include H.264 support because the licensing fees are too expensive. I'm sure that factored into Mozilla's decision. When Chromium ships in a lot of distributions, it won't support H.264 either; distributions will have to strip it out due because of the legal issues. Fedora is considering starting work on integrating Chromium with Gstreamer in order to have a legal way to distribute the browser for free and let the user plug the codec in without Fedora Project or Red Hat getting sued. Or maybe everyone will just download licensed binaries from Google. Hardly ideal, but hardly unlikely, either. *shrug* YouTube decided to go with H.264 over two years ago; I think up until now it's mostly been used for Apple TV and iPhone (and other mobile phones?). Given that relations with Apple have been weakening somewhat as of late, it's not completely ridiculous to postulate that they'll start moving toward Theora in the future. I dunno. It's pretty similar to the Linux MP3 situation, which hasn't drastically changed much in recent years. “Willingness?” I’m not sure H.264 support has *that* much to do with ideology. Opera has stated that they won’t include H.264 support because the licensing fees are too expensive. I’m sure that factored into Mozilla’s decision.

When Chromium ships in a lot of distributions, it won’t support H.264 either; distributions will have to strip it out due because of the legal issues. Fedora is considering starting work on integrating Chromium with Gstreamer in order to have a legal way to distribute the browser for free and let the user plug the codec in without Fedora Project or Red Hat getting sued. Or maybe everyone will just download licensed binaries from Google. Hardly ideal, but hardly unlikely, either. *shrug*

YouTube decided to go with H.264 over two years ago; I think up until now it’s mostly been used for Apple TV and iPhone (and other mobile phones?). Given that relations with Apple have been weakening somewhat as of late, it’s not completely ridiculous to postulate that they’ll start moving toward Theora in the future.

I dunno. It’s pretty similar to the Linux MP3 situation, which hasn’t drastically changed much in recent years.

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