"Some critics even contend that it's not possible to advance Theora without inevitably hitting a patent wall."<p>This article and the HTML 5 codec issue in general really illustrates the stifling effect that software patents are having on technical progress.<p>Are there any compelling reasons left to keep software patents around? It seems like they're doing way more harm than good.
There is no debate. Hixie removed the relevant portions from the spec. There is now no required codec. Unless the landscape changes significantly, there will be no required video codec.<p>It's unfortunate, but it isn't the catastrophe that the article implies. The vendors that are going to support Theora out of the box are going to do so <i>anyway</i>, and the vendors that are going to support h264 out of the box are going to do so <i>anyway</i>. Standardizing on either wouldn't have done nothing but dissociate the spec from reality.
An Apple representative has reached out to Xiph and their lawyers (SFLC) to make another attempt to address the (overblown, imho) submarine patent issue to the satisfaction of Apple's lawyers and so add support for Theora and Vorbis. So the story isn't over for Theora as the HTML5 video standard yet.<p><a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/theora/2009-July/002415.html" rel="nofollow">http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/theora/2009-July/002415.html</a><p>It's worth pointing out that no-one has suggested H.264 as a recommended codec, not even Apple or Google who are both shipping H.264 support. Since it is patent encumbered it simply doesn't pass the first test for getting into a W3C standard. You'd be as well to suggest Flash or Silverlight be added to the spec, it would get shot down just as quick.<p>Apple apparently tried to get one of the less advanced H.264 profiles made royalty free, so it could go into the standard, but was getting pushback from some of the other patent holders in the MPEG-LA. That would have been interesting as it would have been a "first hit is free" kind of deal, where Safari/Quicktime would be able to support the higher levels of H.264 but Mozilla/Chromium/Linux wouldn't and Opera presumably would refuse to do so on principle.
As a web developer I prefer the last option listed: allow video to use any and all codecs installed on the users computer.<p>BUT, expose this information to the server, so I know which video to serve. Add an Accept-Video-Codec and an Accept-Audio-Codec header, and that is all you need to do.<p>For extra points send some information on screen resolution in the headers, instead of making me use javascript for it.<p>The reason this is good is that <i>browers</i> don't need to support anything. They just use the media libraries on the computer. If I want more codecs, I install them, I don't need to convice the browser to support them.
The licensing fees for H.264 that go into effect next year should kill it off pretty quickly.<p>Of course, we should really just get rid of software patents.
Using "whatever codecs the user has installed" is the very non-solution that has <i>already been in place</i> for over a decade by means of the <object>/<embed> tags. The result of that was eleventy hojillion attempts to make the ultimate codec, every single one a failure.<p>Even when <object> based video worked, the plugin architecture made it slow, unstable, unpredictable and generally a horrible user experience. The <i>only</i> reason we have video at all today is because Flash provides it internally.<p>Any web video standard that fails to standardize the codec has made zero direct progress. However, it looks like the HTML5 attempt may have resulted in an acceptable defacto standard: a browser must support one or both of H.264 and/or Theora. Since the <video> tag makes it easy to provide both formats, I think this is a compromise that web developers will be able to live with.
In my eyes there are two actual conclusions from all this:<p>1. flash will remain the dominant video platform for the near future.<p>2. This stalemate between theora and h.264 is a <i>huge</i> win for chrome, the only browser that will support both.
So doesn't Theora just win? Most Mac users seem to use Firefox, so Safari has a marketshare just a touch above Chrome. Still essentially a rounding error.