From Clifton Park to Google to everyone
Google officially announced today that it's releasing a new format for digital video -- and it's based on technology developed by On2, the Clifton Park company Google bought earlier this year for $133 million. WebM will be open-source, which means it's free to use (Lou explains why that could be important). Google says YouTube will make use of the format. (Thanks, -S)
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open source doesn't just mean "free to use"
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is available in source code form for which the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software.
... said andrew on May 20, 2010 at 11:00 AM | link
The license is pretty clear here, it's a generous BSD-style, so not a lot to worry about, it's better than the goddamn GPL. To my opinion the worries is actually about patents, once again. As much as it is open-source, should a patent group be formed to go after On2's VP8, everyone implementing it could be in trouble. Ogg Theora is supposed to be patent free, but given the complexity of such algorithms, no one quite knows. VP8 is allegedly entirely On2's IP (therefore now Google's), and since it is more powerful than Theora, yeah for that? Except not. You would think Google would have passed on VP8 if there was a patent risk... unfortunately, it seems that it is awfully close to H.264, and we may have another patent time bomb here. Time will tell.
Did I use enough acronyms?
... said -S on May 20, 2010 at 11:37 AM | link