HAL must die!

[Chad Perrin]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 11:12:09AM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 5:43 PM, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> > The largest possible paying audience is generally everybody capable of
> > using an open standard.
> 
> Since we're talking about video, though, it's worth noting that there
> don't appear to *be* any truly open video compression standards.
> They're *all* patent-encumbered.  Google tried with VP8, but it looks
> like that may infringe patents as well.  (It hasn't been settled in
> court, so it's hard to be sure, but some competitors are making
> rumblings about suing over it.)

It's certainly true that video is a bit of a "sticky widget" with regard
to open standards.  The moment someone develops something that is
verifiably free of patent encumbrances for video and doesn't just *suck*,
I expect that either it will achieve escape velocity in mere moments to
become the most widely deployed type of video in the world, or the guy
who created it will die under mysterious circumstances and his heirs will
somehow arrange to dummy up a patent application in his name with the
help of whoever's going to buy the patent from those heirs.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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