"Suffice it to say that h264 is a very sophisticated technology that is the product of many contributions by many people and companies over a long period of time."

h.264 is transform coding with motion compensation, really old technology. Most of the patents are on little tweaks. The whole thing is really a rip-off, designed to pay off the major players and keep competitors off.

"but video codecs are a pretty clear example of a piece of software that are very expensive to develop and probably do need some kind of patent protection."

h.264 is valuable because it's a de-facto standard and because people have invested a lot of effort into tuning its implementations.

Outside the US there are no software patents, therefore h.264 can't have any patent over it, therefore MPEG-LA can't threaten anybody for anything.

What makes you think these are software patents? A lot of the devices involve hardware patents.

The issue with h.264 has always been the US,

Many of the patents are held by European and Japanese corporations and research labs.

(in most of the world copyright lasts for 50 years, for instance, but try finding a book online before its US life+90 copyright expiration date).

Wrong. The Berne conventions (as in Berne, Europe) created much of the current insanity, eliminating the requirements for registration and copyright notices, recognizing so-called "moral rights", and creating a lot of other restrictions. Berne required life + 50 years as the minmum term from all signatories. Europeans started copyright insanity and threw their imperialist weights around to impose it on the US and other nations. The US and the UK tried to resist for decades, but eventually just gave in. Today, many publishers and media organizations behind the current push are European. The patent situation is similar: the insanity started in Europe in the 19th century, was imposed on the rest of the world, and Europeans play the political eand economic game really well, benefitting greatly while blaming the US. And software patents are far from dead in Europe. either.

This is at least as much a European problem as it is an American one. But European politicians are masters at shifting the blame.

That much is true. Another avenue might be buying a machine from Dell, or buying the Fluendo codec pack, which is surprisingly affordable.

You're just not getting it, are you? Nobody is trying to kill h.264. You can watch all your flat-nosed blue aliens in h.264 all you want.

It's about ensuring that everybody has a means of recording, viewing, and distributing video that is not subject to the control of an association of big corporations, an association that effectively determines what devices, systems, protocols, etc. can and cannot be used with their video format.

We need a codec that everybody can use without having a legal relationship (directly or indirectly) with anybody, just like everybody can write on paper and publish HTML.

Clearly, because I agree with Apple on one issue, I must be an Apple fanboi

I was just giving you the benefit of the doubt. I accept that your intellectual problem is evidently worse.

Another avenue would be either civil disobedience, or moving to countries which don't have patent laws.

That's not civil disobedience. Civil disobendience means taking a public stance and a public risk in order to cause positive change. You're just being lazy.

And the HTML5/h.264 debate isn't about whether patents are good or bad. If you want to use a patented video codec, that's fine. I use h.264 all the time myself. The debate is about creating a free, unencumbered standard that people can fall back to.

In typical Steve Jobs fashion, he has misdirected the debate by turning into the question of which codec is better and uses less power and dragging in Flash and all sorts of other stuff. But his agenda is to ensure that h.264 becomes the single de-facto standard so that people don't have a choice but to use Apple's codec of choice, from a select club that Apple managed to get a membership ticket for.

Ogg isn't a codec. Ogg is a container. Theora is a codec.

Well, I'm glad you're paying attention, Mr. Nitpick. Now what about paying attention to what actually matters?

Nope, he's telling GNU people to go fuck themselves. There's a difference.

It's not a GPL vs the rest of the world issue. Mozilla is not a GPL project, yet they have been pushing hard for an open, unencumbered codec. This is just as much an issue for any other open source software and commercial software vendors.

and they're both plugged into a Dell, running Linux.

Well, then you better hope that other people are smarter about licenses and open systems because than you if people had your kind of attitude, Linux wouldn't exist.

Who, exactly, am I supposed to be a fanboy of?

I'm sorry, I thought you were confused, but obviously, you're merely incompetent.

Apple owns exactly one patent on h.264. The hardware might be a factor,

Well, so they are not particularly innovative, but it only takes one to be part of the club. And it's not just the hardware, it's also the fact that they have no expertise implementing other codecs; they'd be on a level playing field.

VP8 might be a solution.

Solution to what? Apple isn't going to give in. The argument that h.264 is better is a red herring; it has nothing to do with their opposition to open codecs.

VP8 may be a "solution" in the sense that Google has enough of the mobile market that they can simply switch over YouTube and tell Apple to get lost.

Because Apple is quaking in their boots over Linux...

Yes.

Besides, if so, it's a pitifully weak attack on Linux. After all, nVidia already has an API to use hardware h.264 decoding on Linux. If you have the right video card, Firefox could theoretically play h.264 on Linux, not only legally

Many machines don't have nVidia cards. The nVidia drivers themselves are closed source and proprietary. And people need to do other things with video besides playing it. But I doubt you understand any of that, coming from an Apple mindset. Perhaps that's why Mac desktop machines have been eeking out such a marginal existence in the market.

but faster than Flash does.

Faster? Video always plays at the same frame rate, and modern machines are fast enough for real-time decoding.

Thirdly, supporting Theora and only Theora is self defeating for Firefox. Sites and users will simply ignore the browser, or hack around the limitation by using Flash. Either way Firefox loses.

Mozilla doesn't want to eliminate h.264 or Flash or plugins. They are already supported by plugins. There's nothing to be opened up or done.

The discussion surrounding HTML5 has been about the definition of a patent-unencumbered video codec that's supported by every browser, in addition to all the proprietary solutions that are already there.

Pay some attention before you participate in discussions.

It gives them the option to either break the law (because they don't agree with patent law), or find a vendor to take care of it.

In different words, Steve Jobs is telling open source developers to go fuck themselves.

I mean, they couldn't be pushing h.264 because they feel it's better than Theora, with a proven track record.

That doesn't make sense. Ogg was merely proposed as a universal baseline codec, something one can count on in any browser, not as the exclusive video standard.

If Ogg were as bad as you say and h.264 were as universal as you say, then Apple would have had nothing to fear from it, since everybody would be choosing h.264 anyway.

The only logical explanation for Apple's resistance is that they realize that (even) Ogg is more than good enough for most video needs and that if it were guaranteed to be present in HTML5, everybody would just be using it. Apple could kiss their investment (including hardware) and patents in h.264 goodbye. Because they don't want that, they keep pushing their proprietary standard. Great for their bottom line, bad for users.

Please, explain how that works.

It works because Apple is evil and you are too much of a fanboy to see it.

Please - you need to differ from what the EU want and the people of EU want.

Europeans let themselves be paid off by their governments through massive social services, and that's why nobody protests. It's the same dangerous attitudes that brought fascism to Europe a century ago.

The people is never asked about anything

If you don't like what's happening at the EU level, vote for different national leaders, leaders that don't sell out your rights to "an elite".

Typical: Apple developed none of the basic coding technology in h.264 but they are getting litigious over patents.

How does handing it off help? The problem with h.264 is that it's proprietary and patent encumbered; that's not fixed by handing it off to anything.

Apple's push for h.264 is simply an attack on Linux, nothing more. There is no technical or legal justification for it.

So incorporate it into XUL, or write another layer.

And how does that help users whose OS doesn't have h.264?

The problem with h.264 is that the patent holders become gatekeepers for content. And there's no reason to use it.

Apple is pushing h.264 because it hurts Linux and they are afraid of Linux.

Underdogs can't be FUD purveyors?

Apple is no underdog; they are a luxury brand.

Somebody needs to tell Mozilla that, given their FUD about H.264.

No FUD there: h.264 is proprietary and it's unnecessary since there are good and free alternatives.

Microsoft is. Apple is likely the largest proponent of open standards and open source, outside of primarily open source companies and organizations, on the planet.

Apple takes advantage of open source, but they really look down their nose at it and try to undermine it.

Unistrokes is even faster and simpler than either G1 or G2. Unfortunately, we're stuck with lousy on-screen keyboards courtesy of Apple and all the Apple imitators.

Palm was very successful in the 1990's and had good products. What killed them was their arrogance. Instead of developing a Linux-based phone and PDA around 1999 (like many people told them they should), they went off and did their own proprietary stuff and failed miserably.

Part of their arrogance was that they considered themselves "brilliant". Like Apple, much of what went into Palms was invented elsewhere, Palm was just the first to make a really successful product out of it. Like Apple, Palms were also a pain to program, although you wouldn't have known it from their hordes of loyal developers. But you're right: it's marketing that killed Palm and that is saving Apple.