‘Free VP8 and use it on YouTube’
p2pnet view P2P | Advertising:- Giant online advertising company Google snapped up ON2 Technologies, the creators of high-quality video compression technology, for $106.5 million, said p2pnet last August.
On2’s technology powers client online and desktop apps including Adobe, Skype, Nokia, Infineon, Sun Microsystems, Mediatek, Sony, Brightcove, and Move Networks, said ReelSEO .
“That’s a pretty big list of heavy hitters”.
Indeed. But, “With its purchase of the On2 video compression technology company having been completed on Wednesday February 16, 2010, Google now has the opportunity to make free video formats the standard, freeing the web from both Flash and the proprietary H.264 codec”, says the Free Software Foundation in an open letter, going on >>>
Dear Google,
With your purchase of On2, you now own both the world’s largest video site (YouTube) and all the patents behind a new high performance video codec — VP8. Just think what you can achieve by releasing the VP8 codec under an irrevocable royalty-free license and pushing it out to users on YouTube? You can end the web’s dependence on patent-encumbered video formats and proprietary software (Flash).
To sit on this technology or merely use it as a bargaining chip would be a disservice to the free world, while bringing at best limited short-term benefits to your company. To free VP8 without recommending it to YouTube users would be a wasted opportunity and damaging to free software browsers like Firefox. We all want you to do the right thing. Free VP8, and use it on YouTube!
Why this would be amazing
The world would have a new free format unencumbered by software patents. Viewers, video creators, free software developers, hardware makers — everyone — would have another way to distribute video without patents, fees, and restrictions. The free video format Ogg Theora was already at least as good for web video (see a comparison) as its nonfree competitor H.264, and we never did agree with your objections to using it. But since you made the decision to purchase VP8, presumably you’re confident it can meet even those objections, and using it on YouTube is a no-brainer.
You have the leverage to make such free formats a global standard. YouTube is the world’s largest video site, home to nearly every digital video ever made. If YouTube merely offered a free format as an option, that alone would bring support from a slew of device makers and applications.
This ability to offer a free format on YouTube, however, is only a tiny fraction of your real leverage. The real party starts when you begin to encourage users’ browsers to support free formats. There are lots of ways to do this. Our favorite would be for YouTube to switch from Flash to free formats and HTML, offering users with obsolete browsers a plugin or a new browser (free software, of course). Apple has had the mettle to ditch Flash on the iPhone and the iPad — albeit for suspect reasons and using abhorrent methods (DRM) — and this has pushed web developers to make Flash-free alternatives of their pages. You could do the same with YouTube, for better reasons, and it would be a death-blow to Flash’s dominance in web video.
But even some smaller actions would also have an impact. You could interest users with HD videos in free formats, for example, or aggressively invite users to upgrade their browsers (instead of upgrading Flash). Steps like these on YouTube would quickly push browser support for free formats to 50% and beyond, and they would slowly increase the number of people who never bother installing Flash.
If you care about free software and the free web (a movement and medium to which you owe your success) you must take bold action to replace Flash with free standards and free formats. Patented video codecs have already done untold harm to the web and its users, and this will continue until we stop it. Because patent-encumbered formats were costly to incorporate into browsers, a bloated, ill-suited piece of proprietary software (Flash) became the de facto standard for online video. Until we move to free formats, the threat of patent lawsuits and licensing fees hangs over every software developer, video creator, hardware maker, web site and corporation — including you.
You can use your purchase of On2 merely as a bargaining chip to achieve your own private solution to the problem, but that’s both a cop-out and a strategic mistake. Without making VP8 a free format, it’s just another video codec. And what use is another video format with patent-limited browser support? You owe it to the public and to the medium that made you successful to solve this problem, for all of us, forever. Organizations like Xiph, Mozilla, Wikimedia, the FSF, and even On2 itself have recognized the need for free formats and fought hard to make it happen. Now it’s your turn. We’ll know if you do otherwise that your interest is not user freedom on the web, but Google’s dominance.
“We all want you to do the right thing”, says the FSF, adding:
“Free VP8, and use it on YouTube!”
(Cheers, Frank)
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
p2pnet- Google gobbles up ON2, August 7, 2009
ReelSEO – Google Gets ON2 Video Compression, August 6, 2009
Free Software Foundation – Open letter to Google: free VP8, and use it on YouTube, February 19, 2010
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“What`s that mean for the video web? One can never be certain, can one?”
On2`s technology powers client online and desktop apps including Adobe, Skype, Nokia, Infineon, Sun Microsystems, Mediatek, Sony, Brightcove, and Move Networks, says the post.
“That`s a pretty big list of heavy hitters,” it says. Google has agreeds to purchase On2 for about $106.5 million, not too shabby to say the least.”
February 22nd, 2010 at 11:56 am
First, Flash is never going to go away. There are too many idiot web designers who seem to think that Flash is a complete replacement for HTML. Seriously, I recently tried to visit the page for a new HBO show and it was nothing but Flash. Literally the entire site was just one giant Flash app.
Second, unless I’m mistaken, browsers don’t come with their own embedded media player. To play videos requires installing a plugin in order to embed a player in the browser. Flash embeds a Flash player. To play videos using other codecs, presumably you would need a plugin for some kind of media player. Also presumably, users would be encouraged to install a free, possibly open source video player, such as MPlayer, or VLC (Yuck!). The problem with this, from a corporate viewpoint, is that such players can’t be controlled. There’s no way to guarantee that the player won’t allow the user to save a copy of the video. In case nobody noticed, preventing users from saving online videos is quite important to most video sites.
Yes, there are ways around most anything, but the point is that movie studios and TV networks aren’t going to allow their content to be put on a web site in a format that isn’t locked down and proprietary. For YouTube and others to be able to use VP8, there would have to be a special player designed to only stream the content, but not buffer or save it. Then you’re right back to the same problem as Flash, although with probably a more efficient codec.
February 22nd, 2010 at 1:23 pm
I don’t use Flash for anything, but I do watch a lot of videos by those who do. People who think it’s actually some sort of web standard, written in stone and here to stay forever, always make me chuckle.
If Adobe would listen to users and actually fix all the bugs it has, I probably wouldn’t hate it as much. For example, people have to use a hex editor just to get rid of the “Press ESC to exit fullscreen mode” message that is often stuck in the middle of the video you’re trying to watch. It also means I can’t update to the newest version because nobody has figured out which bit of code to edit. The animated loading symbol is something else I often see stuck on screen during playback, even when nothing is wrong. As if bugs weren’t bad enough, privacy and security are also valid concerns with the Flash plug-in, which include (but not limited to) allowing websites to bypass browser settings.
Firefox already supports OGG without needing plug-ins and it is a fantastic format, especially in regards to audio due to its excellent psychoacoutsic processing (easily blows away MP3 and the rest). If a big site like YouTube were to switch away from Flash, I think we would see a huge impact on the rest of the web over time. Being open source and popular means built-in browser support and thus no need for a plug-in.
The only other alternative I can see would be a third party creating their own free Flash player for the web, not unlike what we saw happen with the PDF format. I haven’t used the bloated ill-performing Adobe Reader for many years now and have never felt any regret about ditching it, all thanks to a couple of good free readers. While not ideal due to their closed sourced nature, they are still a far better option than using Adobes monster.
The only thing better is indeed an open source replacement, but sadly this is the one area that the RW above has it correct. The bigger industries involved with creating content will never want to give up the ability to control all aspects of its distribution and use, even if that control is only an illusion. Flash is still a good idea and has its uses, but video has never really been one of its strong suits IMHO. It will be interesting to see what happens with time. Remember, nothing lasts forever.