Web Development
Growth Market in Theora FUD
In my last post, I mentioned one of the big problems for the Theora video codec: an active whisper campaign regarding its potential for patent infringement. It certainly wasn't surprising to hear that people in the MPEG-LA licensing group were trying to trash talk Theora's vaunted IP-free status, but this week the group of Theora haters picked up an unexpected new member: Steve Jobs. A blogger named Hugo Roy posted a piece called An Open Letter to Steve Jobs in which he picked on Steve a bit about the openness of H.264. A few valid points were made, but most interestingly, Hugo then posted an email response he says came from Steve himself, which included the following inflammatory quote:If this is true, it is bad news for Theora indeed. Can the Mozilla foundation afford to hang a giant "Kick Me" sign on the next version of Firefox? Can they afford to litigate against even a single patent lawsuit, much less this consortium Steve is quoted as knowing of? Defenders of free and open will no doubt be working hard on a strategy to handle this supposed threat, but it looks very bleak from where I sit.A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other ";open source"; codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn't mean or guarantee that it doesn't infringe on others patents.
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