I'm genuinely curious --- how come nobody thought of doing this (being some kind of platinum member and just putting it out there for all to use) all these years during the fighting about h.264 vs the open web and yada yada?
What Cisco did seems to have put an end to all those debates, and h.264 is available for all, with patents intact, etc.
No, it hasn't put an end to debate at all. This is an ugly workaround and still requires Cisco to build binaries on your behalf. It's quite a stretch of "open" and certainly not "free" (not that it claims to be).
There is still ongoing work to create a better, free standard.
Now is a great time for the next generation if VP9 really is patent free or fully licensed OR Daala is ready to take on H.265 AND that Free solution matches or beats H.265 AND that Free solution can get itself in hardware (particularly mobile) solutions in the same timeframe as H.265.
The other possibility for the Free next generation solution is if H.265 licensing is unreasonable (as H.263 was and H.264 wasn't).
For the current codec generation the ship has sailed, the deployed base of H.264 devices means the battle is over.
* Due to the nature of patents, “patent-free” tech does not exist.
* At scale H.264 is crazy cheap. It costs $6.5 million for YouTube to serve 72 billion hours of video. Still, it is infinitely more expensive than free.
I'm actually sceptical that VP9 will be good enough and patent safe enough to dislodge H.265. From what I've read about Daala I suspect it will too late to the battle. I suspect hardware support for H.265 is already well under way that a convincing improvement would be necessary to stop H.265 dominating the next decade. The advocates for Free codecs need to forget about H.264 and focus on a compelling argument to beat H.265 and get their chosen answer into hardware developments NOW. In 12 months it will be too late if it isn't already.
That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the development of these and other codecs, they are a factor in keeping the license prices reasonable.
But I suspect you're right about VP9/H.265 decisions being made now, and royalty free alternatives keeping prices down even when the alternatives don't win a lot of market share (could say the same about the never-winning "linux desktop" -- it gets negligible seats, but may have shifted $$$ from Microsoft profit to consumers over the years).
That might be the plan for Daala but it really needs to be MUCH better to make another generational change worthwhile.
I don't think VP9 can win the current fight to be honest. I doubt it is patent free, or good enough. I also wonder if Google can cooperate in the way required to build support for it outside of its Android family.
Even if Google fails to play nicely with Microsoft and Apple (who are both well known for their enthusiastic embrace of open and royalty free formats) it's still a fact that Android accounts for more than half of "smart connected device" sales (i.e. phones + tablets + desktops + laptops) and is growing that share rapidly.
Having VP8/9 support shipping on those devices is a major (though probably not fatal) blow to H.264 and 5 and will probably weigh heavily on the minds of the people currently figuring out how much they can charge for H.265 patents.
Though personally I think H.264 (particularly x264) being "good enough" and massively deployed might be a bigger issue for H.265 uptake.
1) I think that was VP8. I don't know if those patents are licensed for use with other codecs or the extent to which VP9 uses the same technology.
2) MPEG LA doesn't have patents they invite patent owners to contribute them to patent pools for a cut of revenue. Where companies have not been involved with the development of standards they are not obliged to license them on FRAND basis so there is more reason not to join a pool. Nokia at least is in the pool for various MPEG standards but not VP8, there may be others waiting to troll if large scale use occurs.
3) Nokia hadn't joined the VP8 pool and was actually using a VP8 relevant patent against an Android manufacturer. I don't know the current status of this case but if you have a link to recent news I would be grateful.
2) Yes, that's why agreements with the MPEGLA are actually with the member companies (as mentioned in [1])
3) That was Nokia asserting against HTC three times. The first one was dismissed, the second one was rejected[2]. I'm having trouble finding any information about the third (which is at the ITC, not in a court), so it may still be ongoing.
1) According to that link the VP8 patents are licensed for use in VP9 (which I had forgotten or didn't know) but there is still the possibility of new patent from existing licensees in addition to additional patent holders coming forwards.
3) The reference you give is to one of the patents but there are more than one involved. As far as I know it is still an ongoing open issue.
as for 1), it's also possible that there are h.264 patents that aren't part of the pool.
Thomson created what is essentially an MP3 license pool, and yet, Sisvel cleaned out Cebit (one of the larger electronics fairs) booths every year (with the help of German customs) because some asian vendors showed unlicensed MP3 players.
It's still possible that some non-MPEGLA party stumbles over a patent that covers some tiny aspect of h.264.
Its possible but it is now improbable that there are strong critical patents in H.264 which aren't either in the pool or at least owned by a company that participated in the standards setting (and are therefore bound by FRAND commitments). The reason I believe it improbable is that anyone in that position has hit the jackpot and are entitled to fees related to virtually every phone, television and blu-ray player currently being produced - there is no reason to wait further they can cash in now.
VP8 has not been widely deployed (at least in hardware) to anything like the same extent so the possibility of lurkers is greater.
Getting products pulled from Cebit (and German Customs helping) is for me a completely wrong on so many levels I can barely describe (at least if the products weren't for sale to the public).
Interesting enough Youtube has removed the HD WebM formats and only offers 360p for WebM and higher quality is mp4 only. Strange decision baring in mind that Google is behind pushing WebM.
It costs Cisco $6 million a year to do this. I wonder if any of the beneficiaries (Firefox, etc) are pitching in.
That sounds like loose change, but probably stuck up in bureaucratic decision-making at anyone who thought of this before. ("Why are we spending $6 million a year to make it free for everyone else again?")
EDIT/UPDATE: In the second paragraph, I was referring to other companies and why they didn't do this earlier. It clearly brings Cisco quite a bit of goodwill to do this, and to see more video flowing on the web.
I doubt it costs Cisco anything extra because they probably need the distribution rights for other products they develop (for example WebEx.) Besides it a good PR benefit for them with minimal incremental cost.
It costs Cisco lots (I work at cisco) as we were not close to paying the 6.5 million cap before this. Mozilla has been contributing to the code and making sure the project runs well but not towards any MPEG-LA payments. There are probably a bunch of reasons Cisco did this but making interoperable video just work on the internet would be at the top of the list. That's good for Cisco and others.
That reads more like the GPL than a definition of what open source means. What, then, do you call code that provides the source but does not allow you free distribution of both the source & binaries? "The source is open but it's not open source"?
Fluendo does this with MP3, but that license is only $50K instead of millions.
People proposed this idea repeatedly to Mozilla back in the day but they rejected it. Maybe they feel their hands are somehow cleaner if Cisco is paying instead of them.
cisco pays 6mi, and them mpegla returns 3mi to them for their patents in the pool. and if the format becomes ubiquitous, they get any few billions from this same pool from their competitors when they also license it.
I'm still confused why Cisco is even allowed to do this. Do they pay a flat license fee to MPEG-LA for unlimited usage? I would think they would pay per-seat like most video codecs.
What Cisco did seems to have put an end to all those debates, and h.264 is available for all, with patents intact, etc.