Il giorno Wed, 30 Oct 2013 12:28:50 +0000
"Jonathan Rosenberg (jdrosen)" <jdrosen@cisco.com> ha scritto:

> I'd like to make an announcement material to the conversations around
> MTI video codecs in rtcweb.
> 
> Cisco is announcing today that we will take our H.264 implementation,
> and open source it under BSD license terms. Development and
> maintenance will be overseen by a board from industry and the open
> source community.  Furthermore, we will provide a binary form
> suitable for inclusion in applications across a number of different
> operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux x86, Linux ARM and Android
> ARM), and make this binary module available for download from the
> Internet. We will not pass on our MPEG-LA licensing costs for this
> module, and based on the current licensing environment, this will
> effectively make H.264 free for use on supported platforms.
> 
> We believe that this contribution to the community can help address
> the concerns many have raised around selection of H.264 as MTI. I
> firmly believe that with H.264 we can achieve maximal
> interoperability and now, do it with open source and for free (well,
> at least for others - its not free for Cisco :)) More information on
> the open source project can be found at http://www.openh264.org,
> which is sparse now but more coming soon.
> 
> 
> Thx,
> Jonathan R.
> 
> --
> Jonathan Rosenberg, PhD
> VP, CTO Collaboration
> Cisco Systems
> jdrosen@cisco.com
> 


Am I really the only one not that enthusiastic about this?

Don't get me wrong, I appreciated Cisco's statement. I just don't think
it changes anything. It doesn't make H.264 more open (or less closed,
if you prefer) than it was before. It just says that, if you download
their module from them when installing your stuff, your applications
can use it to encode/decode H.264 and not worry about fees (hoping with
your fingers crossed that the platform is supported, that is). I still
cannot use x264, ffmpeg, randomsuperawesomeopensourceH264codec or even
a version of Cisco's H.264 code I compile myself: at least, not if I
don't want (or just can't afford) to pay license fees, that is. Which
means we're back to step one again. Under those premises, I still think
it's not MTI material.

The problem is, I don't want to rely on Cisco's generosity[*] (or
anyone else's, for that matter) to work with video, especially when
we're building an (allegedly) open web communication framework. What if
their module sucks? I'm sure it won't, but I still don't have any
choice, there are no free alternatives. Besides, we have no assurance
at all that this is something we can rely on. If Cisco wakes up in a
couple of months and decides it's all not worth it and shuts all of
this down, what happens to WebRTC implementations, to companies that
decided to depend on it, to their clients/customers? We wait for
another generous "mecenate", while big companies thrive? We complain on
social networks? We cry at the moon?  And this is not such a remote
possibility: after all (and I'm quoting one of Jonathan's latest tweets
here), "We cannot say forever but unless things change we will continue
this indefinitely". If this is supposed to convince me H.264 is now the
best solution as MTI for WebRTC then, especially as a developer, I'm
not convinced.

I see this opening more as the (welcome, no denying that) software
equivalent of daddy pinching you on the cheek and giving you a coupon
for your "free ice cream (for a while)". Everyone loves free stuff, I
do as well. But IMHO it's not more than that, a free gift to convince
the unconvinced. Ancient Romans would have called this "Panem et
Circenses", and according to all the enthusiastic posts on Twitter and
the like, I guess it still works: people are entertained.

Make the codec REALLY free, without any license fee required at all,
and then you'll entertain me as well.

Lorenzo


[*] I must shamefully admit I sniggered a bit when I read the "it's not
free for Cisco" part, as if you were really paying for this. I have
trouble thinking Cisco doesn't already pay the infamous cap every year.
You're doing something you really don't have to (and we really
appreciate this, make no mistake), but that's not the same thing.