Will H.264 Codec Support Come To Fedora? Nope.

[smitty3268]

No, Google dropping h264 from Chrome/Android would not make distributors go with #3. The costs of storing double videos and re-encoding their video library aside (though that's reason enough not to do it), VP8 not hardware decoded on the majority of the phones/tablets out there, so users would just be complaining about battery drain. And then go with the iPhone/iPad for their next mobile device.

Dropping h264 from Chrome on the desktop wouldn't make providers go to vp8 video either, because Chrome has first class Flash integration. So Chrome users could still watch the h264 videos, just with Flash instead of native html5 video.

Obviously if Google pushed VP8 in Android, all Android devices would have it hardware accelerated. I thought that was implied. Most current gen mobile hardware already can do this.

And on the desktop, Chrome + FF = 50% usage almost, which is enough that distributors WOULD feel pressured to supply a native solution. Either one on their own is too small and would just end up getting stuck with Flash.


Edit: also note that I'm not saying it would definitely happen if Google took these actions. I'm saying that would be a good start, and it then COULD happen. It could also still fail. Without Google taking these actions, I see very, very, very little chance of anything changing. It doesn't matter if some new codec comes out that is 100 times nicer - people will still be stuck with h264 no matter what.

[DaemonFC]

in digital cameras the RAW formats are a big mess! PNG is so much better !

i can not unterstand why they do not use a highquality format like PNG instead of crap "RAW"

and the consumers even do not have a choice no one sell a PNG cam...

same with h264 there is no webM cam. :-(

There's some truly bizarre "standards" out there that are only pushed because they're full of someone's patents who can throw their weight around to wedge them in.

SDXC uses exFAT now, and a lot of SDXC cameras still save their pictures to the JPEG format which has not changed in over 20 years. It's the picture equivalent of MP3. Microsoft is pushing them to use JPEG-XR which is a dubious improvment with a lot of patents. WebP or PNG would make a lot more sense if they were designing these things for a better USER experience instead of just tying in licensing fees to rip the end user off when they go to buy the device.

[Gusar]

And on the desktop, Chrome + FF = 50% usage almost, which is enough that distributors WOULD feel pressured to supply a native solution. Either one on their own is too small and would just end up getting stuck with Flash.

Like I said, Chrome has first class Flash integration. So count Chrome out as something that could assert pressure. Firefox, while not having such integration, does nevertheless support Flash and heavily relies on it do deliver today's videos.

What concerns the desktop, there is no pressure on distributors to move away from h264 because of the Flash fallback.

And on mobile, all Android devices out there right now can do hardware h264. What do you think the reaction would be if Google disabled h264 on them? Lots of users migrating to iDevices, that's what. No way Google would go for that. Other users would hack h264 support back in with custom roms.

[DaemonFC]

Like I said, Chrome has first class Flash integration. So count Chrome out as something that could assert pressure. Firefox, while not having such integration, does nevertheless support Flash and heavily relies on it do deliver today's videos.

What concerns the desktop, there is no pressure on distributors to move away from h264 because of the Flash fallback.

And on mobile, all Android devices out there right now can do hardware h264. What do you think the reaction would be if Google disabled h264 on them? Lots of users migrating to iDevices, that's what. No way Google would go for that. Other users would hack h264 support back in with custom roms.

You can't say anything supports Flash in a first class manner. Flash is a giant pain in the ass and difficult to manage. It has new security holes revealed on a near-daily basis, and on Linux it completely ignores the free and open source video drivers and bogs the CPU instead. And there's the small issue of it frequently misusing not only GNU libc but BSD libc implementations as well and crashing the entire browser.

The incompetence of Adobe's Flash team is staggering and the only real way to go about dealing with it is using Flashblock and whitelisting a few sites here and there.

[smitty3268]

I disagree strongly.

Like I said, Chrome has first class Flash integration. So count Chrome out as something that could assert pressure. Firefox, while not having such integration, does nevertheless support Flash and heavily relies on it do deliver today's videos.

There's nothing "first-class" about Flash integration in Chrome except that it comes pre-installed. It's not as nice as native html video for a bunch of reasons. 1 browser on it's own would get left behind, but 50% of the market is 50% of the market. If a website is looking to support HTML5 video then VP8 would be just as valid as h264 on the desktop under those circumstances. I expect some places would just use Flash, but not all of them, and WebM support could eventually grow. They would likely need more incentive than just desktop browsers, though, and that's where Android comes in.

And on mobile, all Android devices out there right now can do hardware h264. What do you think the reaction would be if Google disabled h264 on them? Lots of users migrating to iDevices, that's what. No way Google would go for that. Other users would hack h264 support back in with custom roms.

Google wouldn't disable it on old hardware - just new. Like when Android 5.0 comes out, for example. One of the hardware requirements to run 5.0 would be VP8 hardware acceleration. With VP8 Youtube videos, I think it might be possible. You could get places like ESPN to start serving up WebM streams along with h264. But this is a large step, and one that Google is obviously nervous about taking. It probably never will. It's exactly the kind of radical step that a company like Apple might do, to try and lock users into their format and push the market where they want it to go. And exactly the type of big step I think Google has been reluctant to take.

[AdamW]

Can someone explain to me the license for H.264?

I know of several free programs that use H.264 via ffmpeg and libavcodec

So why can't Fedora use it that way, too?

Disclaimer: I'm not your lawyer. I'm not anyone else's lawyer. I'm not a lawyer at all. This is not legal advice. If you want legal advice, hire a lawyer. The following is my own undoubtedly flawed understanding, based on quite a few years of experience of talking to lawyers about this stuff.

The issue with h.264 is not the copyright license under which implementations are released - there are several freely-licensed h.264 encoders and decoders, like ffmpeg, as you noted - but the fact that the compression techniques used by the h.264 standard are heavily patented, and there is a body which is very active in enforcement of those patents (MPEG-LA).

You're not going to get sued for copyright infringement by the ffmpeg developers if you re-distribute the ffmpeg source code. But you may well get sued for patent infringement by MPEG-LA if you re-distribute ffmpeg binaries (the status of source code with regard to patent law is an...interesting topic). Effectively, patent-encumbered free software is no longer free, because you cannot exercise the freedom to redistribute it which the copyright license attempts to grant you.

It's possible to pay for a patent license in a way which allows software freedom to be properly exercised, and some patent holders are actually willing to do this; companies like Red Hat (for whom I work) have done such deals from time to time. It requires the patent holder to grant a perpetual, non-conditional, irrevocable and inheritable license to the patent - a license of a form which allows all the redistribution rights that are usually associated with F/OSS to be exercised.

But the more typical form of patent license, and the form MPEG-LA requires for the codecs it controls patent rights to, is fundamentally incompatible with free software. In these licenses, some body pays for the right to distribute software which uses a patented technique - but that right is not inherited by those to whom the software is distributed. When you buy a copy of Windows, Microsoft pays for a patent license for you for various formats covered by MPEG-LA patents - but that license doesn't include the right for you pass it on. If you copy your copy of Windows and give it to someone else, aside from both of you infringing Microsoft's copyright, you're infringing MPEG-LA's patent. Obviously, this kind of licensing just doesn't work for free software.

[DaemonFC]

Disclaimer: I'm not your lawyer. I'm not anyone else's lawyer. I'm not a lawyer at all. This is not legal advice. If you want legal advice, hire a lawyer. The following is my own undoubtedly flawed understanding, based on quite a few years of experience of talking to lawyers about this stuff.

The issue with h.264 is not the copyright license under which implementations are released - there are several freely-licensed h.264 encoders and decoders, like ffmpeg, as you noted - but the fact that the compression techniques used by the h.264 standard are heavily patented, and there is a body which is very active in enforcement of those patents (MPEG-LA).

You're not going to get sued for copyright infringement by the ffmpeg developers if you re-distribute the ffmpeg source code. But you may well get sued for patent infringement by MPEG-LA if you re-distribute ffmpeg binaries (the status of source code with regard to patent law is an...interesting topic). Effectively, patent-encumbered free software is no longer free, because you cannot exercise the freedom to redistribute it which the copyright license attempts to grant you.

It's possible to pay for a patent license in a way which allows software freedom to be properly exercised, and some patent holders are actually willing to do this; companies like Red Hat (for whom I work) have done such deals from time to time. It requires the patent holder to grant a perpetual, non-conditional, irrevocable and inheritable license to the patent - a license of a form which allows all the redistribution rights that are usually associated with F/OSS to be exercised.

But the more typical form of patent license, and the form MPEG-LA requires for the codecs it controls patent rights to, is fundamentally incompatible with free software. In these licenses, some body pays for the right to distribute software which uses a patented technique - but that right is not inherited by those to whom the software is distributed. When you buy a copy of Windows, Microsoft pays for a patent license for you for various formats covered by MPEG-LA patents - but that license doesn't include the right for you pass it on. If you copy your copy of Windows and give it to someone else, aside from both of you infringing Microsoft's copyright, you're infringing MPEG-LA's patent. Obviously, this kind of licensing just doesn't work for free software.

Anecdotally, I've heard the figure of $25 for each copy of Windows is the amount that Microsoft has to pay to license third party patents and pay out judgements/settlements for their own infringements.

I don't know if that's true or not but it sounds plausible.

[smitty3268]

It's possible to pay for a patent license in a way which allows software freedom to be properly exercised, and some patent holders are actually willing to do this; companies like Red Hat (for whom I work) have done such deals from time to time. It requires the patent holder to grant a perpetual, non-conditional, irrevocable and inheritable license to the patent - a license of a form which allows all the redistribution rights that are usually associated with F/OSS to be exercised.

It's instructive to see how Google licensed h264 support for Chrome. They have bought a license for all official copies of the Chrome binaries that get downloaded from google servers. (which gives the mpeg la a hard count of licenses to charge for)

But if you get the code yourself and build Chromium on your own, then you have no patent license, which is why Chromium has the h264 support in it disabled by default.

[ChrisXY]

You can't say anything supports Flash in a first class manner. Flash is a giant pain in the ass and difficult to manage. It has new security holes revealed on a near-daily basis, and on Linux it completely ignores the free and open source video drivers and bogs the CPU instead. And there's the small issue of it frequently misusing not only GNU libc but BSD libc implementations as well and crashing the entire browser.

The incompetence of Adobe's Flash team is staggering and the only real way to go about dealing with it is using Flashblock and whitelisting a few sites here and there.

Not entirely true.

 ~ % cat /etc/adobe/mms.cfg
#Hardware video decoding
EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=0

Flash beta 11.2.202.221


"accelerated video rendering". Finally.

But you'll notice that all skin colors are blue... Flash.

[DaemonFC]

It's instructive to see how Google licensed h264 support for Chrome. They have bought a license for all official copies of the Chrome binaries that get downloaded from google servers. (which gives the mpeg la a hard count of licenses to charge for)

But if you get the code yourself and build Chromium on your own, then you have no patent license, which is why Chromium has the h264 support in it disabled by default.

Don't worry, Chrome spies on you and gives them enough personal information to sell to advertisers that it offsets the cost of the MPEG-LA cartel licenses.