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0 pointsmieses16y ago0 comments

They should care because the H264 patent expires in 2025. If we were looking at a few years then you might be right not to worry. It's odd that MPEG LA supporters are coming out of the woodwork on this issue, seemingly to prevent HTML5 from starting out on the right foot.

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DarkShikari16y ago· 2 in thread

the H264 patent

"The" H.264 patent? I have, sadly enough, the MPEG-LA agreement here, and there have got to be 25 pages at least simply listing patent numbers, with expiry dates ranging from very soon to a long time from now.

MPEG LA supporters

So everyone who is against Mozilla's attempt to force crappy software on us using the excuse of patents is an "MPEG LA supporter"? Some of us simply don't care about patents, as hard as it might be to believe for some.

miesesOP16y ago

I understand. But you could have a replay of the Unisys GIF situation except that it will last a very long time. Most developers and web services (vimeo, youtube, etc) are only thinking about how to improve their product in the short term. The best short term move is to choose H264. They're free to do what they want. So is Mozilla. Those same web services will screw themselves if they make Mozilla irrelevant. But again, short term thinking.

heresy16y ago

How will they screw themselves by making Mozilla irrelevant?

It's not like Mozilla in any way had any influence on their websites becoming popular, nor will they be affected at all if browser user agents change from Firefox -> Chrome.

Interesting leap of logic.

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