Hail WebM, goodbye H264

[kwokyinc]

This should be a vital step to make the web more open. Good job Google.

Let's hope Mplayer, VLC...etc will support this format soon.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20...=2547-1_3-0-20

[Snowhog]

Re: Hails WebM, goodbye H264

Interesting.

[dibl]

Re: Hail WebM, goodbye H264

Good job Google.

Let's hope Mplayer, VLC...etc will support this format soon.

+1

[GreyGeek]

Re: Hail WebM, goodbye H264

+1

Looked at the SDK and it doesn't look like it should take too long to encorporate WebM into either Konqueror or FireFox.

It's a good thing that Google owns YouTube. That gives it an upper hand in the video codec war. IF Microsoft or Apple owned it they wouldn't take too long to make sure that only IE and Media Player would work.

[lcorken]

Re: Hail WebM, goodbye H264

GreyGeek said:

It's a good thing that Google owns YouTube. That gives it an upper hand in the video codec war. IF Microsoft or Apple owned it they wouldn't take too long to make sure that only IE and Media Player would work.

Don't get me started! Sorry, too late. Those ... bad-guys! Thank god for google ,until they go to the dark side, hope they haven't already. Some would say ... well, that's another story.

About 2 years ago the wife and I bought a new 42 in. LCD HDTV after reading about the wonders of HD. We thought "great we now finally have HDTV". NOT!! As it turned out Sony and Someone else was still duking it out over the best format (blue ray or HDDVD or whatever). Come on, guys how long do we have to watch crap TV on an HDTV! We now have some HD content with Satellite but I still want to boycott blue ray until I get over it. Yea, I know, grow up Ken.

Sorry for the tirade. Picked a hell of a time to quit drinking. Oh well. I like my computer better than TV anyway.

Ken.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Hail WebM, goodbye H264

So do I, especially since PBS.ORG has started putting their NOVA and other shows online.

[miKeyBabid]

Re: Hail WebM, goodbye H264

further information on Google's open sourcing of webm:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05...n_google_webm/

[GreyGeek]

Re: Hail WebM, goodbye H264

Interesting...

It looks to me like the WebM license is along the lines of the BSD license,

Software License

Copyright (c) 2010, Google, Inc. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

*

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
*

Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
*

Neither the name of Google nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

which means that one could add to the source, distribute binaries, and the only requirement is to include the copyright notice with the binary. There is no requirement to return the source code modifications back to the community, and no requirement that those who receive a binary have a right to the source code which produced that binary. In that regard it is similar to the LGPL, which allows linking proprietary binaries to what is otherwise GPL code.

The obvious reason why they are using this type of license is to promote the adoption of the WebM codec by proprietary video application developers. But, they still need to release that codec under the GPL as well.

BTW, it was (still?) the OSI policy that vendors monitor their own compliance with the OSI definition of "Open Source". I doubt that Google will have any trouble meeting OSI standards for the WebM. But, as I've said before, I believe the OSI is a license jungle trying to hide the GPL in a forest of pseudo GPL license definitions. Bluntly, if the license doesn't support the Four Freedoms it is NOT, IMO, Open Source.