Bonum Certa Men Certa

WebM/VP8 is Not Open Source

"Based on years of conversations, I am convinced that part of the cause of the problem is the tendency to call the system Linux rather than GNU, and describe it as open source rather than free software."

--Richard Stallman



Summary: MPEG-LA/H.264, Apple, and Microsoft appear to be the only prominent opponents of WebM/VP8; The OSI explains why Google needs to refine the licence

PERHAPS we congratulated Google a little prematurely [1, 2]. There are improvements to be made to Google's unusual licence, but first, let's look at the good sides of VP8.



Joe Brockmeier is optimistic about Google's WebM, Adobe added support for VP8 and Moovida's support of VP8 is mentioned by Martin Kaba, not to mention Opera's support (Opera was also a major backer of Ogg).

Looking for a media player to playback your videos converted to open WebM with Miro Video Converter, then grab Moovida media player. Open Source Moovida media player formerly known as Elisa is one of the first media players to boast support of the open source VP8 codec.


There is already fairly widespread support for VP8.

A browser that supports WebM content isn't much use if there's no WebM content to play, and Google has that covered too. Anyone opting into YouTube's HTML5 front-end will be able to use WebM for video playback by appending "&webm=1" to the URL.


The exceptions, as expected, are Apple and Microsoft, not to mention MPEG-LA. IDG puts it like this:

Google faces off against Microsoft, Apple over Web video standard



[...]

"We now have a great format for video," added Hakon Wium Lie, Opera's chief technology officer. "We all have video cameras in our pockets. Let's use them, let's back WebM."


"Microsoft tepid in its support for Google's WebM video plan," say Microsoft bloggers as Microsoft promotes H.264 and other problematic codecs.

I've been using Real Alternative for years. It works well and is 100% transparent, that is, it doesn't bug you about anything, ever. It just registers itself as a DirectShow filter (Microsoft-speak for a codec) and with your browsers, then decodes virtually any Real Media file ever created. It's good enough that I haven't even considered installing RealPlayer in years.


From South Africa we have:

Unsurprisingly, Apple and Microsoft are among the companies licensing the use of H.264, so stand to make money, and lots of it if the format is widely adopted.

The only other competitor to H.264, until a couple of days ago, was Theora, an open source format favoured by Mozilla, Google and Opera. But the chances of Theora succeeding have always seemed very slim, particularly as Jobs has already made it clear that Apple was looking at hitting Theora hard with patent suits.

Apple and Microsoft have also made it very clear that they wouldn't be supporting Theora in their future browser releases.


Other competitors of VP8 are spreading FUD, some of which is worth attention. There is another new comparison between VP8 and H.264:

VP8 is now free, but if the quality is substandard, who cares? Well, it turns out that the quality isn't substandard, so that's not an issue, but neither is it twice the quality of H.264 at half the bandwidth. See for yourself, below.

To set the table, Sorenson Media was kind enough to encode these comparison files for me to both H.264 and VP8 using their Squish encoding tool. They encoded a standard SD encoding test file that I've been using for years. I'll do more testing once I have access to a VP8 encoder, but wanted to share these quick and dirty results.


Diego's latest rant is actually not much of a rant. He addresses the alleged FUD that's mentioned above.

Now, Dark Shikari of x264 fame dissected the codec and in part the file format; his words are – not unexpectedly, especially for those who know him – quite harsh, but as Mike put it “This open sourcing event has legs.”


Perhaps the only real disappointment is that VP8/WebM is not Open Source, according to Michael Tiemann (OSI). Was it too good to be true?

This note from Apple was like a rabid dog barking at the pound, for it seemed to set off a flurry of patent-rattling from all corners, with Microsoft quickly claiming that Salesforce.com infringed nine of their patents, Nokia claiming that Apple infringed 5 more of its patents, HTC getting into the fray, etc.

And then along comes Google. And instead of piling on to this patent suit scrum, they offer immunity instead. Which is astonishing.

I have to give some props to the FSF for asking for precisely what Google seems to have decided to do. They wrote an open letter asking Google to free VP8 and use it on YouTube. The bigger part of that decision now seems to have been effected. Which, to use the FSF's own adjective, is amazing. And cause for both gratitude and celebration.

And of course this is not the end of the story, but the beginning. The license Google wrote for VP8 smacks of OSD goodness, but it has not yet been submitted to the OSI for approval. Should the OSI approve yet another license? Should the OSI treat a patent grant attached to a license we've already approved as two separate items, a patent grant (which is great) and a license we've already approved? Clearly Google is trying to do the right thing. We are trying to do the right thing. What remains to be seen is whether the H.264 are going to do the right thing and offer all their patents as required by the Open Standards Requirements (OSR) or whether Apple will do the right thing and defend, rather than attack, the open source community and its right to enjoy watching a movie on the laptop of their choice.


Simon Phipps (OSI) also has a problem with that licence and in IDG he writes:

The announcement last week at Google IO of the creation of the WebM project and the release of the VP8 codec was a positive and welcome development, finally offering an alternative for online media to the royalty-liable H.264 and to Theora. WebM arises from Google's purchase of ON2 last year and had been widely anticipated

Google did their homework, securing endorsements from competing browser vendors Opera and Mozilla and even from Adobe (possibly in exchange for Google's endorsement of Flash on their TV platform) and, weakly, from Microsoft. The parade is now in full swing, and we can expect many more announcements of support like the one from the Miro Project. Only Apple was painfully absent, pushing the Google-Apple tension further into the spotlight

[...]

Despite their claims that WebM was been checked for patent risks when ON2 was acquired, Google has neither made its research available nor does it offer a patent indemnity. Google has expressed extreme confidence in the patent safety of WebM, yet has failed to create a patent pool with its other endorsers and grant free and indemnified licenses to WebM contributors.

That means the path is open for those hostile to digital liberty, such as the MPEG-LA licensing cartel, to 'tax' VP8 users - they have already declared an intent to do so. Google should rapidly create "WebM-LA" with $0 licensing terms for those willing to commit to digital liberty.


This was also covered by The H:

According to OSI board member Simon Phipps, the VP8 codec, which Google released last week as part of the WebM project, is "not currently open source". In a blog posting, Phipps notes that the licence used by Google has not been submitted to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) for approval and that it "possibly can't be approved". The problem is that although the licence Google uses for VP8 is based on the Apache licence, it includes a "field of use" restriction in the patent grant section which is limited to "this implementation of VP8".


Matthew Aslett wrote about the subject and heard back from Bruce Perens, who argued: "It really isn’t an open source license, due to an unfortunate word choice in the patent grant language, which is the main chance from the BSD-style license they started with. If you modify the VP8 implementation, you become a patent infringer."

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Brett Wilson LLP Sent Over 5 Kilograms (or Over 12 Pounds) of Legal Papers! Because Writing About Microsoft Abuses is 'Illegal'.
How do you guys sleep at night? On a big pile of Microsoft money?
Extremism as a Weapon Against GNU/Linux (Microsoft Lunduke)
He ought to know the Halloween Documents. Wasn't he a Microsoft employee when these came out?
 
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: Extreme Testing and Golang Documentation in Geminispace
Links for the day
Vice President of the European Patent Office (EPO) Complains That Techrights Gives Visibility to Legal and Technical Issues at the EPO
"Follow-up on enquiries relating to Dir. 1218 and 1001"
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com and Various Slopfarms That Lie About "Linux" and Are Promoted by Google News
Google does not seem interested in tackling this problem
Links 09/07/2025: War Updates and Microsoft Moving to India to Cut Costs
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Was Always a 'Movement' of Inclusion of Tolerance
Even the licences themselves remove access barriers
Links 09/07/2025: "Subprime AI Crisis" and "OpenAI May Be in Major Trouble Financially"
Links for the day
Huge Piles of Legal Papers ('Paper DDoS') Do Not Impress Judges and Regulators
they just make judges and regulators even more suspicious of the eagerness to resort to 'paper DDoS'
Lunduke Isn't Even Hiding His Anti-Linux Agenda (From "Linux Sucks" to "Linux is Pedophiles")
just trying to make a lot of trouble
Some People Use Computers to Get Actual Work Done
Tolerance and inclusion must extend to acceptance that some people don't agree with you, might never agree with you, and imposing what allegedly works for you on them is unreasonable
Example of "Old" Things That Still Work
The notion that something being "old" implies it must be discarded is typically advanced by those looking to sell more of something
Some Scheduled Maintenance Later Today
Typically the most vulnerable service during short interruptions is IRC
Computers Are Just a Tool
People don't get married because they love weddings, folks don't join the army because they love war, and most drivers don't drive to work because they love cars
Apple Way Past Its Prime
Apple deserves a decline
The FSF's SysOps Team Recovered From Serious Hardware Issue Within Hours
About half a day ago I noticed that all/most GNU/FSF sites were not reachable and thus reached out to a contact for any details
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 08, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 08, 2025
Slopwatch: Turning Bugs Into FUD About "Linux", Getting Basic Facts Wrong
all the screenshots are of fake articles; we don't want to link to any
Technical Reasons, Not Politics: With Wayland "it feels a lot like Linux from 20-25 years ago, which is horrendously frustrating, because it feels like we wasted one or two decades of progress and stability"
Lately, quite a few benchmarks were published to show Wayland compares poorly compared to what we had
PCLinuxOS Recovering From Fire
It looks like a nightmare scenario, where even backups onsite get destroyed
Links 09/07/2025: More Heatwaves, Officials Culled in Russia
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: XScreensaver and Resurrection
Links for the day
Links 08/07/2025: "Cyberattack Deals Blow to Russian Firmware" and "Cash Remains King"
Links for the day
FSF40 T-shirt message
by Alex Oliva
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Creativity, Gotify with NUT Server, and Sudo Bugs
Links for the day
More on "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
"pepe the frogs"
Links 08/07/2025: Sabotage of Networking Infrastructure, Microsoft XBox Game Pass Deemed “Unsustainable”
Links for the day
Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
Many Lawyers (for Microsoft) and 1,316 Pages to Pick on a Litigant in Person Who Exposed Serious Microsoft Abuses
Answers must be given
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Ancillary Justice and Small Web July
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 07, 2025
Layoffs and Shutdowns at IBM, Not Just Microsoft
Same as Microsoft
The FSF's (Free Software Foundation, Inc.) 2025 Summer Fundraiser Already Past Halfway Line
This is where GNU/Linux actually started
With Workers Back From a Holiday Weekend, Microsoft Layoffs Carry on, More Waves to Come
Now it's Monday and people are bad to work, even some journalists
Mozilla Had No Good Reason to Outsource Firefox Development to Microsoft
What does Mozilla plan to do when GitHub shuts down?
Mozilla Firefox Did Not Die, It Got Killed
To me it'll always look like Mozilla got killed by its sponsors, especially Google, which had a conflict of interest as a sponsor
You Need Not Wave a Rainbow Flag This Month to Basically Oppose Arseholes Looking to Disrupt and Divide the Community
Don't fall for it
Dan Neidle, Whom Brett Wilson LLP SLAPPed (on Behalf of Corrupt Rich Tax Evaders), Still Fighting the Good Fight
Neidle fights for the poor people
What Miguel de Icaza and Microsoft Lunduke Have in Common
Similar aims, different methods
Wayland Should Start by Dumping Its Very Ugly Logo
Wayland wins the "ugliest logo" award every year
Stop Focusing on Hair Colours, Focus on Corporate Agenda
If someone commits a crime, it does not matter if his or her hair was mostly white or there was no hair or a wig or whatever
Links 07/07/2025: Science, Conflicts, and a Fictional K-pop Group
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/07/2025: Being a Luddite and Announcement of Gotify
Links for the day
Links 07/07/2025: XBox Effectively 'Dead', DMCA Subpoena Versus Registrar
Links for the day
The 'Corporate Neckbeard' is Not the "Good Guy"
Works for IBM
The Nasty Smear (and Stereotype) of "Neckbeard" or "Greybeard" is Ageism
This is the sort of stuff they might try to volley at critics of Wayland
Why Many of Us Use X Server and Will Continue to Use It For Many Years to Come
Don't make this about politics
Microsoft's Nat Friedman Became Unemployed the Same Time the SLAPPs Against Techrights Started Coming From His Friends (Weeks After We Had Exposed Scandals About Him and the Serial Strangler, His Best Friend, Who Got Arrested a Few Days Later)
Nat Friedman is not "Investor, entrepreneur"
Brett Wilson LLP Uses Threats to Demand Changes to Pages or Removal of Pages Without Even Revealing Which Staff Member Does That (Sometimes People From Another Firm!)
This has been in the public for years
Dan Neidle Said "It Really Then Became a Job of Tormenting" Lawyers Like Brett Wilson LLP (Who Threatened Him for Exposing Crimes, Just Like They Threatened My Wife a Few Months Later)
he and his wife decided to take on the evil people and their evil lawyers
Large Language Models (LLMs) Externalise Their Cost to the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
"The forty-sixth Free Software Bulletin is now available online!"
Weeding Out Extremism in Our Community
To me it seems like Microsoft Lunduke is rapidly becoming like a "hate preacher" who operates online, breeding an extremist ideology or trying to soften its image
Censorship Versus Fact-Checking and Quality Control
It's not censorship but a matter of quality control
Reinforcing the Allegations Some More, Bryan Lunduke Digs His Own Grave
In his latest episodes he merely repeats his own lies, which I debunked using evidence right from his own mouth
Global Warming and Free Software as a Force of Mitigation
we'll need to think about Software Freedom, not just brands like "Linux"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 06, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 06, 2025
Gemini Links 07/07/2025: BaseLibre Numerical System and TUI Rant
Links for the day