As it is, giving away just this single, officially-blessed H.264 blob is going to cost Cisco $65M over the next decade[2].
The way this is worded implies Cisco will be paying $65 million extra on top of its existing licensing costs. Surely it's more likely to be the case that Cisco would be paying that $65 million in H.264 licensing anyway for all its existing use of H.264. Given that Cisco probably reaches the H.264 licensing cap as is, wouldn't giving away these binaries from the OpenH264 project only add the cost of the running of the project?
And does Cisco receive any income from H.264 licensing? I remember reading on Microsoft's Internet Explorer blog that Microsoft recoups half its H.264 licensing costs from the income it earns from the patent pool. So it could be that Cisco's "real" licensing costs end up being lower than $65M anyway.
Cisco's Costs
Date: 2013-10-31 03:39 am (UTC)The way this is worded implies Cisco will be paying $65 million extra on top of its existing licensing costs. Surely it's more likely to be the case that Cisco would be paying that $65 million in H.264 licensing anyway for all its existing use of H.264. Given that Cisco probably reaches the H.264 licensing cap as is, wouldn't giving away these binaries from the OpenH264 project only add the cost of the running of the project?
And does Cisco receive any income from H.264 licensing? I remember reading on Microsoft's Internet Explorer blog that Microsoft recoups half its H.264 licensing costs from the income it earns from the patent pool. So it could be that Cisco's "real" licensing costs end up being lower than $65M anyway.