Ogg Vorbis / Theora Language Removed From HTML5 Spec 395
Rudd-O writes "It's official. Ogg technology has been removed from the HTML5 spec, after Ian caved in the face of pressure from Apple and Nokia. Unless massive pressure is exerted on the HTML5 spec editing process, the Web authoring world will continue to endure our modern proprietary Tower of Babel. Note that HTML5 in no way required Ogg (as denoted by the word 'should' instead of 'must' in the earlier draft). Adding this to the fact that there are widely available patent-free implementations of Ogg technology, there is really no excuse for Apple and Nokia to say that they couldn't in good faith implement HTML5 as previously formulated."
An alternative... (Score:5, Interesting)
If HTML5 gets adopted (Score:5, Interesting)
For one, it will mean the death of any lightweight web browser. Web will become something like a TV where you are fed with content you cannot filter (because the TV is too complex to hack). Monopoly through complexity.
A simple new format that is designed from the start for vector graphics and that doesn't try to be backwards compatible with HTML would be the best way for the new web.
"Should" vs. "Shall" (Score:1, Interesting)
Repeat after me:
Shall=imperative
May=permissive
That's it. "Should" means "we want it, but making it a requirement will cause a problem, so if you don't do it we're going to whine, but there's nothing we can legally do about it"
Of course, then there's the whole "Shall" vs. "Will" thing, but I don't want to talk about it.
Pragmatism vs. Ideallism (Score:1, Interesting)
HTML 5 is designed to be a pragmatic markup language, and neither Apple nor Nokia felt that Ogg was of practical use. The "intellectual purity" of ogg pales in comparison with the benefits of MPEG-4 and H.26x codecs. (To name a few: superior compression, less processing power for decoding, specialized chip support, and DRM hooks).
Re:An alternative... (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesn't make sense... (Score:5, Interesting)
This wouldn't be a story if Microsoft had done it, trying to force WMP codecs into the standard - I'm actually kind of surprised they hadn't yet... but Nokia? wtf
Re:Microsoft, Google, Apple (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple has always been evil, but the suave evil (with a few flaws in it's act) that makes other think it's not so bad. But in the end, it's evil nature is what got it such a low market share in the 90s. There recovery has been more due to improving thir suave act, rather than pretending not to be evil.
MS is a known evil and doesn't hide it, sometimes it's better to face a known evil, than an entity with unkowns.
say ogg WAS official (Score:5, Interesting)
make ogg official, and business will ignore it, and marginalize the standard. do we really want the standards ignored?
so allow the businesses their moronic formats, and use ogg anyways
it's silly if anyone thinks the war against proprietary formats is going to be won by a standards body. at the very best, business will embrace standards because the standards body play footsie with business desires, which is what happened, which is good!
at worst, the standards body ignores business on some ideological crusade, so businesses just ignore the standards as well, and we have a worse tower of babel on our hands
folks: this is the best possible outcome, where best possible outcome = ugly begrudging accomodation of moronic business desires. you can't do any better than what happened, unfortunate, but true
Ummmm..... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:An alternative... (Score:4, Interesting)
Does that mean that HTML5 should specify PNG exclusively for image content? This isn't so much about a specific standard as it is about *open* standards. Nokia and Apple are hand-wringing and whining because the standard specified a specific format other than quicktime (and whatever format Nokia has up it's sleeve). Provided Apple and Nokia are putting forward new codecs licensed under the same terms as Ogg (or at least in-line with the spec's recommendation), what's wrong with letting them then compete on their technical merits?
I'm not saying I want windows media, quicktime, and realplayer to be considered, but if there was an incentive to honestly open those formats to implementation by anyone, for free, with no catch, I'd be fine with allowing them.
It's not beating around the bush that's causing the document format controversy, it's exactly the same issue that's present here. There's no place where it says "hey, if you create a document, it has to be in a format that has these attributes". *Because* of this controversy, organizations, companies, and governments are actually looking at the issue of access and seeing that open standards matter.
To me, this type of change serves to drag the issue that remains unobvious to most people straight into the light of day. If Nokia and Apple take issue with the changed language, then they have to discuss the differences in licensing between their preferred formats and Ogg before they can do anything else. That ain't a bad thing.
Re:Wierd. (Score:5, Interesting)
The submarine patent threat. Ogg claims to be unencumbered, but until somebody big starts using it and lawsuits start flying in the Eastern District of Texas, nobody actually knows whether it's unencumbered. And companies which are already carrying a significant risk of submarine patents from other more popular/profitable codecs don't have much incentive to assume even more risk for sake of a codec that's hardly used and doesn't present compelling technical advantages.
Some people think this is FUD. I think those people don't pay attention to patent-related news in the US; the only safe position right now is to assume something is encumbered until someone else has spent millions of dollars litigating it to be sure, which is why you get development models like SQLite: SQLite refuses to accept or use any code based on algorithms or techniques that are less then 17 years old, so that they can prove they're using technologies which couldn't possibly be patent encumbered.. Patent reform would be a nice thing to have for cases like this...
what a horrible summary (Score:3, Interesting)
"Widely available patent-free implementations of Ogg".
First, saying "Ogg" means Ogg Vorbis to most people. This is about Ogg Theora.
Second, whether something is patent free is not determined by the implementation. You're thinking of copyright!
Ogg Theora uses patented technology. We don't want to enter into a Rambus-type situation where once something becomes popular a company can come back and start dinging people for money.
And the icon doesn't make sense. This isn't about trying to patent existing or trivial things, it's about whether a standard should make mandatory a patented codec that isn't even widely used.
Re:Well, these companies show their true colors (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a little ironic, given we have two companies whose browser team (both use WebKit, after all) love to blog about 'why can't we have some solid standards,' and about how there is no one true standard for images, embedded documents, etc. I think Apple and Nokia are shooting themselves in the foot here rather than taking the opportunity to run with standardizing other things (image formats,
But I think this is less nefarious/evil and more just short-sighted focus on one problematic area of implementation rather than on the overall gains.
Yeah, that's FUD (Score:5, Interesting)
1) That is in comparison to h264. And I call it 'embarrassing' because Theora *could* easily be just as good, but it isn't right now. That document is a call to arms and because of it, a new encoder is rapidly taking shape. Its improvements are already making it back to mainline. We'll catch up rapidly.
2) "It's safe to say that MPEG4 and it's codecs have been more thoroughly researched than Theora" Bullshit. MPEG is simultaneously inefficient and narrow in their focus. MPEG-4 / h.264 is a decades old chassis with a few recent research papers tacked on. _Several of the items I identified as 'embarrassing' and 'obsolete' ironically apply to MPEG-4 too_.
3) "I absolutely, positively promise you that Youtube serves more video than Wikipedia, and they don't stream Theora." Irrelevant. This is an argument against Google (Altavista dwarfed them), Microsoft (IBM and even Apple dwarfed them), Toyota (GM dwarfed them), etc.
"As much as I like the idea of Theora, I'm glad we don't have to be saddled with the reality of it."
Why does everyone here think this is a battle of individuals? These are huge multinationals and your puny insignificant selves don't even appear on their radars. Sure, the public will indeedy benefit from a standard multimedia codec set with no proprietary/encumbered strings attached, but that is entirely irrelevant in the process of making money. They're *for profit corporations* doing what for-profit corporations do. Making money. And that is entirely orthogonal to morals, public good, or even competent engineering. They don't have any interest whatsoever in what you think.
Although we're a non-profit (and exist on behalf of the common good), our argument in this battle happens to concern rallying all the sub-$100M companies that will be frozen out by the very biggest players getting their way. When big companies win, little companies generally lose. Although the little compaines greatly out-mass the big companies, they tend to be fragmented. If we can get them all together to fight for a uniform technology recommendation, way more people win.
But you might want to run for cover, 'cause Godzilla has his squishin' boots on.