WebM Community Cross-License announced

In case folks have missed it (or worse, read about about it on Ars Technica)...

The WebM folks have finally finished up their work on the WebM Community Cross-License project and announced the license launch. This is a FOSS defensive license/pool similar to what a couple other groups are trying out (and similar to the defensive patent license that Xiph is already using for our parts of Opus within the IETF).

The basic idea of the cross-license is:

"Everyone is free to use any known or unknown WebM patents. Unless you sue over patents related to WebM. In that case, we all agree to yank your license."

In short, it's sort of a NATO for FOSS patents; a free license with an agreed-upon mutual defense clause that tries to enforce everyone playing nice. This strategy is not a new idea, but it's interesting that several different FOSS groups, Xiph and WebM included, are finally trying the idea for real in practice.

A Ghost update! For... last month!

Not actually last month, but pretty close at this point.

I never publically released the my previous Ghost update delivered internally to Red Hat at the beginning of the month because I hadn't finished some of the diagrams I wanted to do for the last section on chirp coding. Well, the diagrams are done! Here's the latest Ghost demo update, just in time for the next one to almost be due!