The
<video tag>, as defined by the HTML5 spec, is an element "used for playing videos or movies". Which
codec those videos or movies are in is currently undefined, with the two contenders being the free open source
Ogg Theora and the proprietary
H.264. With the unveiling of
Internet Explorer 9 both Microsoft and Apple are supporting H.264 in their browsers, and
comparisons of the standards seem to bear out H.264 as the better of the two. However Mozilla have taken a stance against incorporating H264 into Firefox on the grounds that it is
patented and has to be licensed. Arguments are now being made
for and
against Mozilla sticking to its ideals.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball points out that Firefox already supports proprietary formats such as GIF.
Um, perhaps not the best example.
posted by Artw
on Mar 21, 2010 -
140 comments
The W3C's RAND Patent Policy commenting deadline has been extended. At first glance, the new policies seem to encourage software patents, but after reading the whole thing and the W3C's response to current comments, it looks, to my admittedly naive eyes, as though the W3C is trying to make it so that companies using proprietary software are going to
have to make it available to other people for licensing. Why is this new structure potentially a bad thing?
posted by cCranium
on Oct 2, 2001 -
8 comments
Web-related software patents are starting to look like the new cyber-squatting equivalent. People are patenting all sorts of mundane things like "electronic shopping carts" and "making secure purchases via the internet." My guess is in 3 or 4 years, after many of these silly patents have been awarded, we'll see a restructuring of the US patent system.
posted by mathowie
on Feb 22, 2000 -
2 comments
