Occam's razor would suggest they see potential profit in WebRTC, and interoperability is essential to WebRTC succeeding. I do believe that Cisco see themselves as being the good guys here, and taking one for the team (in the interests of profit down the line). Cisco is not really concerned with Free or Open Source beyond misusing those terms in their press releases. But that's not to say I think they're trying to be sneaky.
>Also, if some players (Apple and co?) would just ignore IETF if they are to mandate VPx, why would they change their mind in case of Opus and Daala let's say?
That's a good question, and a real concern. But we can see that, eg, Apple has not engaged in any obstructionism or FUD regarding Opus as far as I know. Opus also has the advantage of being technically compelling in a way no competing codec is, so much so that it's disrupted a parallel MPEG effort (USAC). We also developed Opus in the open and answered Opus's IP critics promptly, forcefully, and apparently successfully. There's no significant IP-based pushback against Opus, and in general the press opinion of Opus is full of warm fuzzies.
We'll be using the same strategy with Daala.
And where did VP8/9 go wrong? Several commentors in the mainstream press noticed that I mentioned VP8 in my post only in passing, and VP9 not at all. Exactly why could fill a several page blog post, but the short version is: The IPR story (not the reality, the story) around VP8/9 is... pretty bad.
On2/Google took a strategy that was risky where the press was concerned. VP8/9 are not copies of the MPEG codecs, but they have identical basic architecture. This backfired in the press immediately when Jason Garrett-Glaser published his infamous 'VP8 is a copy and must be infringing' blog post and Google never answered it.
Google's not publicly addressed any of the ongoing assertions of infringement in any convincing way. Instead, their strategy was to wait for the lawsuits and win decisively in court. As a result, the MPEG side ('VP8/9 are dirty copycat infringers') has ruled the story from the beginning. Google is finally winning the first court cases years later, but that's hardly bolstering their argument now-- now the public thinks VP8 is both infringing _and_ a lawsuit magnet, and why would they expect VP9 to turn out differently?
And really, that's only the half of it. Just about everything that could go wrong with Google's press story around VP8/9 has gone wrong. They took a risky path and rolled several critfails right out of the gate. At this point even mentioning VP8 or VP9 in our own press seems like a mistake, and that's too bad. The VP codecs didn't deserve this outcome.
Re: This is about the WebRTC standard
Date: 2013-11-06 10:54 pm (UTC)Occam's razor would suggest they see potential profit in WebRTC, and interoperability is essential to WebRTC succeeding. I do believe that Cisco see themselves as being the good guys here, and taking one for the team (in the interests of profit down the line). Cisco is not really concerned with Free or Open Source beyond misusing those terms in their press releases. But that's not to say I think they're trying to be sneaky.
>Also, if some players (Apple and co?) would just ignore IETF if they are to mandate VPx, why would they change their mind in case of Opus and Daala let's say?
That's a good question, and a real concern. But we can see that, eg, Apple has not engaged in any obstructionism or FUD regarding Opus as far as I know. Opus also has the advantage of being technically compelling in a way no competing codec is, so much so that it's disrupted a parallel MPEG effort (USAC). We also developed Opus in the open and answered Opus's IP critics promptly, forcefully, and apparently successfully. There's no significant IP-based pushback against Opus, and in general the press opinion of Opus is full of warm fuzzies.
We'll be using the same strategy with Daala.
And where did VP8/9 go wrong? Several commentors in the mainstream press noticed that I mentioned VP8 in my post only in passing, and VP9 not at all. Exactly why could fill a several page blog post, but the short version is: The IPR story (not the reality, the story) around VP8/9 is... pretty bad.
On2/Google took a strategy that was risky where the press was concerned. VP8/9 are not copies of the MPEG codecs, but they have identical basic architecture. This backfired in the press immediately when Jason Garrett-Glaser published his infamous 'VP8 is a copy and must be infringing' blog post and Google never answered it.
Google's not publicly addressed any of the ongoing assertions of infringement in any convincing way. Instead, their strategy was to wait for the lawsuits and win decisively in court. As a result, the MPEG side ('VP8/9 are dirty copycat infringers') has ruled the story from the beginning. Google is finally winning the first court cases years later, but that's hardly bolstering their argument now-- now the public thinks VP8 is both infringing _and_ a lawsuit magnet, and why would they expect VP9 to turn out differently?
And really, that's only the half of it. Just about everything that could go wrong with Google's press story around VP8/9 has gone wrong. They took a risky path and rolled several critfails right out of the gate. At this point even mentioning VP8 or VP9 in our own press seems like a mistake, and that's too bad. The VP codecs didn't deserve this outcome.