Google’s recent decision to drop h.264 support from Chrome has scared and infuriated the web! People on both sides are laying down their arguments.
The short version of my stance is I am for it. I think h.264 is set up to make MPEG-LA’s partners a lot of money and I find it scary.
I asked MPEG-LA a while back what was involved in licensing an open source implementation of h.264 (x264/ffmpeg, for example). They were very quick to get back to me and said they’d send me the contract with all the details.
A few days later I got the contract, a beautifully presented document that arrived by Fedex (I would have been happy with a soft copy that would have cost them practically nothing to send).
The document is big – 56 pages long. Here’s a quick photo:
Not sure how many small software developers – or anyone of the many, many people using open source video encoding solutions – have the time or inclination to wade through and agree to a contract like that.