WebM was originally a proprietary codec called VP8, developed by a single vendor (On2 Technologies) with a single implementation and no real specification. It was purchased by Google, and an ersatz specification was extracted from the implementation.
I admire Google for what they are trying to achieve. But given both Windows and Mac ship with H.264 decoding support, and it is fast becoming the de facto format for mobile, the decision seems to be a no brainer.
If I have to pay royalty fees to ship an h.264 decoder, that's not open. If I have to pay royalty fees for my startup to distribute videos in h.264, that's not open.
Standardized doesn't mean "open".
[Edit: I think several people in this thread disagree what Open means. Since this is the context of a Mozilla story, I think it is fair to use "Open" in the sense of "Open Source".]
WebM is free. Good luck implementing your own encoder/decoder.
Nor does "open" mean "free".
The Mozilla people wasted a ton of energy conflating WebM with open-ness rather than directing attention to the actually problem: current patent law. As long as someone else can show up and demand money for independent work the environment will predisposed against complete openness.
I've found the VLC firefox plugin more stable than flash, downsides being it doesn't always get detected by javascript feature tests and UI integration isn't the greatest.
I guess the big question is whether H.265(6,7) could be argued to be more open than VP9(10,11). I get the feeling the former will continue down the patent route and the latter will be more likely to be a well-engineered open source success story (hopefully emulating the Opus codec effort, who by the way, opted for the code as specification route too), but you never know.
I think this is as close as we'll get to having our cake and eating it too while patents on algorithms are still recognized.
But one of the key aspects of the open web is that it is a platform that is open for anyone to access and participate in -- by creating content, or by building software to publish or consume content -- without any gatekeeper who can withhold permission or demand fees. This is why the W3C, for example, requires royalty-free licensing of members' IP that covers its standards.
This is the type of open platform that Mozilla and others were trying (but failing, so far) to create for video on the web.
Having said that, the silliness of patented codecs seems to have been recognized for lower bitrate use cases (image, speech, audio) so I guess it's only a matter of time for video.
I think a Googly approach where the encoder and decoders are assumed to be software like anything else in Chrome and updated every 6 weeks would be interesting to see.
> Losing a battle is a bitter experience. I won’t sugar-coat this pill. But we must swallow it if we are to succeed in our mobile initiatives.
Mozilla fought the good fight, and lost. Instead of standing on a street corner with a bullhorn, Mozilla is going to move on to fight the next battle. Those would be WebRTC and Google/Netflix's Web DRM initiative.
Which of these is right?
The real issue for Mozilla is that you can get great benefits (shared history, passwords etc.) if you use the same browser on both platforms and sync them. Luckily Apple and Microsoft's lock-in approach seems to be holding them back here, but I'd imagine Android Chrome will be a big driver for Desktop Chrome (and possibly vice versa).
It would be really nice to have VDPAU video playback in the browser!
