So your theory is people pay for it...why?
Seriously...GOOGLE before making claims like this. It took me 15 seconds to get a list of H.264's owners. 15 seconds.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
MPEG LA Declares H.264 Standard Permanently Royalty-Free
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
So your theory is people pay for it...why?
Seriously...GOOGLE before making claims like this. It took me 15 seconds to get a list of H.264's owners. 15 seconds.
They don't pay for H.264. They pay to license the patents it uses.
Where is your list? Did 15 seconds to look it up not leave you enough time to post a link? My guess is that you've just found a list of patent holders or a list of the current committee members. Neither group owns H.264.
Like I said, they pay to use H.264.
Really. REALLY? You're going to come in here, randomly post misinformation, and you refuse to look yourself, either before or after it's pointed out you're misinformed?
REALLY?
Indeed. H.264 simply exists as a combination of different patents owned by different companies that work as a committee to determine it's overall licensing agreements. Nobody, not even one company "owns" H.264. At best they would only own the portions that are covered by their patents.
It's like GSM - nobody as an individual owns GSM - just the multitudes of patents associated with it.
As many of us have said: open!=free.
No, they pay for a usage license. Paying for H.264 implies it's ownership which I assure you does not happen.
Like I said, they pay to use H.264.
If I pay a toll to use the New Jersey Turnpike, I pay for it's usage, not for the turnpike itself
Like I said, they pay to use H.264.
MPEG LA is not affiliated in any way with the standards committee that developed H.264. They collect license fees on the patents, not the codec.
I'm not misinformed. You said you found the list after 15 second of Googling. My Googling shows that such a list does not exist.
Proprietary: A technology belongs to one company only that company alone. All specification and documentation are hidden from the public. Unless 3rd parties that want to make use of that technology must acquire a license and pay royalties to that company. ie(Sony memory sticks, SDKs, Ports such as Apple 30-pin connector).
Open source: A documentation, technology, or specification that can be freely modified, viewed by the public for one's own benefit as well as for the community. See Linux, GNU, OSS.
Open standard: A technology, documentation, or specification that allows the general public, commercial and industrial to freely obtain and use and implement but not be necessarily free as in free beer. USB ports, Protocols, Network Interfaces, W3C, SD cards, XML, PNG, NIV Bible.
Software PATENTS: "Anyone who uses my patent must pay me royalties regardless if its an open standard, otherwise I consider it as stealing my idea".
MPEG (MP3, MPEG2, H.264, etc) = OPEN STANDARD + Full of PATENTS =
Open source: A documentation, technology, or specification that can be freely modified, viewed by the public for one's own benefit as well as for the community. See Linux, GNU, OSS.
Open standard: A technology, documentation, or specification that allows the general public, commercial and industrial to freely obtain and use and implement but not be necessarily free as in free beer. USB ports, Protocols, Network Interfaces, W3C, SD cards, XML, PNG, NIV Bible.
Software PATENTS: "Anyone who uses my patent must pay me royalties regardless if its an open standard, otherwise I consider it as stealing my idea".
MPEG (MP3, MPEG2, H.264, etc) = OPEN STANDARD + Full of PATENTS =
This is the wrong definition of open source, I'm sorry to say. You'll need to educate yourself some :
http://www.opensource.org/osd.html
And if you want to talk about Free software, this is the proper definition :
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Your definition would be called something like "available source". It's not open source because you forgot to define the proper terms of distribution of your derivative work, which is an important part of both Open Source and Free Software definitions.
There was plenty wrong with it. Read the linked sites to find out why it is you are also wrong. I posted evidence and yet you went and ignored it and just posted this rebuttal that doesn't even address many of the points in the links I posted... Wow.
Again : Distribution terms. This is a very important aspect. Proper open source software grants freedom to distribute your derivative work.
I read your link, and I agree that it is a very complete definition of what they consider open source. It is not the only definition.
He was providing an explanation, not an authoritative definition. It hit the main points. Freely modified. Freely viewed. For your benefit and the community.
Yes it is. Opensource.org is the official site for the Open Source Initiative which represents the whole of the community. Their definition is the only accepted definition for Open Source software as written by Eric S. Raymond.
This comment, more than anything, tells me you've never been around the open source community before and don't really know about it.
He missed one of the main points, one of the major main points. The most important one : Distribution rights. Freely modified means nothing if you can't distribute your modification. Seeing the source means nothing if you then can't do anything with it because you're then "tainted".
Distribution is the main point. The "Copyleft" clause which grants you rights beyond what Copyright law does.
Again, you're arguing something you obviously have no clue about. Stop now. Read the sites. Accept you're wrong and move on.
As usual, you are willfully ignoring the distinction I made. Google "open source definition". There are many, many definitions of the term. OSI is not the only authority in what the term means.It is one of the main points to the OSI. I can release open source software completely independent of them and their ideals. It would still be open source.
It is one of the main points to the OSI. I can release open source software completely independent of them and their ideals. It would still be open source.
It won't be Open Source, nor will it be accepted as such by the community unless your license is certified as Open Source by the OSI.
If you want to argue that you can call the sky yellow because you think your definition of yellow is better than the accepted convention, then that's your perogative, but you're still wrong. OSI is definitely an authority to anyone that matters in the industry. It's one of the reasons Microsoft always called their stuff Shared Source. Again, calling your stuff Open Source while not adhering to OSI's definition is plainly wrong.
Now I remember why you were on my ignore list. Back you go.
I'm not talking about certified Open Source by OSI. I'm not talking about being accepted by "the community" (which you seem to be implying has a monolithic view of what open source is.)
I don't think my definition is better. I simply acknowledge that there are different definitions. Heck I even acknowledged that the OSI definition is better.
Fantastic, and if we were limiting the definition of open source to "the industry", you might have a point.
Now I remember why you were on my ignore list. Back you go.
Are you going to take your ball with you?
Yikes. Yikes yikes yikes.
I...surely I don't need to respond to this?
Yes, and those patents are owned by the patent holders, obviously. It is not free, it is not open, it's proprietary. The fact that you have to pay money to use it shows it's proprietary, though something could be proprietary even if royalties aren't assessed.
YIKES.
No, there's no part of the definition of proprietary software that says only one company has to own it.
That's not part of the definition either. Completely irrelevant whether the rights holders show off their code and specifications.
Which happens with MPEG products.
Already addressed great by KnightWRX.
MPEG (MP3, MPEG2, H.264, etc) = OPEN STANDARD + Full of PATENTS =
Again, if you use the definition *super* loosely that might count, but by more useful definitions, something isn't an open standard if it's encumber by patents.
How can you call something "open" when it's owned by someone else, and even requires money exchange hands to use?
By this definition, Windows 7 and OS X are "open".
You are confusing the patents with the codec. Patent licensing does not give you ownership of the technology that utilizes your patent. Linux likely violates some patent, somewhere. That doesn't make it proprietary.
And yet you still refuse to post a link or a list of the owners of H.264.
How about the FSFE and Certified Open definition?
http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.en.html
You are confusing "open" with "free". H.264 is openly licensed and openly controlled. That is what is meant by "open" in the context of the claim the H.264 is an open standard.
And again, it is not owned by anyone.
No, they are not. They discriminate in their licensing, for example.
Maybe the comparaison is a bit rough but think of something like a monument or a museum exibition.
It's "open" to the public who can look at it as long as they pay a fee.
Some monuments are "closed to the public" who can't have a look inside no matter what.
H.264 is open,you can access the spec and know how exactly to code and decode a H.264 video,if it weren't open an encoder like x264 wouldn't exist because the devs wouldn't have access to the knowledge of how to create an H.264 video.
An exemple of a "closed" codec would be codecs developed by On2 before google released them.
Take VP7 , only On2 devs knew exactly how to make a VP7 video,that info hadn't been released to the public so if you wanted an encoder or decoder you HAD to get it from On2.That is not the case with H.264 there are many different encoders and decoders that work with H.264
Another exemple is the Apple Prores codec (used in video editing),you can only get an encoder or decoder from apple,no one else.
As a matter of fact, OS X and WIndows 7 are generally considered to be "open operating systems", in that the authors have published all the necessary specifications and information to write applications that can run on top of those operating systems.
They distribute those specifications freely to any interested party, without discrimination, and they do not exercise control (editorial or otherwise) over which 3rd party applications are permitted to execute on which users' computers.
This can be contrasted with truly "closed' systems such as most video game consoles, or many smartphones, which place editorial restrictions on application distribution.
"Open specification" and "open source" really are two very different things.
H.264 is an open standard because the documentation which describes its implementation is available to everyone. That you may have to pay to actually produce software that implements the standard is a separate issue.
UbuntuOne is a proprietary standard because the specification of the back-end server implementation is hidden from the public. That the client code which accesses it is GPL'ed and can be used without fee is a separate issue.