Google's VP8 video codec (and ffmpeg)

This is awesome. Congratulations to the always-incredible developers of ffmpeg.<p>One thing is worrisome about this: <i>since H.264 (the current industry standard video codec) and VP8 are highly similar, we can share code (and more importantly: optimizations) between FFmpeg’s H.264 and VP8 decoders</i><p>So it looks like VP8 is so similar to H.264 that decoders for the two can share quite a bit of code (something Jason Garrett-Glaser suggested might be the case: <a href="http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377" rel="nofollow">http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377</a> ). Have to admit that this doesn't seem to bode too well for VP8's claim to relative freedom from patent litigation.

Sometimes I feel like C programmers don't really understand reuse, but the fact that they implemented VP8 in 1400 lines of code means that I am wrong. Excellent work!

<i>Most importantly, the spec really is a straight copypaste of the decoder’s source code. As a specification, that’s not very useful or professional. We hope that over time, this will improve.</i><p>This still baffles me. Why hasn't Google spent the effort to write up a decent spec? Are they waiting until the inevitable litigation with MPEG-LA to make their file format generic? Would this help them in litigation?

<i>since H.264 (the current industry standard video codec) and VP8 are highly similar, we can share code</i><p>Hopefully not too much similar (or defeats the whole patent dodge) !