I mean the Java language is now owned by Oracle, which claims to be a strong supporter of OpenSource software. One would think that supporting Java’s growth would prove positive for Oracle; however their lawsuit could have the opposite effect.  Go ahead Oracle, stifle Java’s growth and drive programmers elsewhere.

It really smells like control, greed, unprincipled market leaders shooting each other, regardless of violating the principles they claim to stand on….”freedom, openness, using open source freely as a means for individual success”.

Watch out…the open source world is undergoing a civil war.  Job security for lawyers. Maybe all Americans should be lawyers so we can take turns suing each other. Yeah! What a way to do business. Who needs enemies….

World leaders watch as American companies sue each other to death.  Lets see the storyline: A company named Oracle gets rich using open source software…Google gets rich using open source….Apple gets rich on a customized BSD variant of Unix……now they shoot each other in court……..or so we think……..the plot thickens. Tune in tomorrow for the next episode of greed and deceit, where we find out that all these companies are really together conspiring to milk the masses in the form of a “digital tax”.

There’s been a big hoopla about what the next worldwide video codec is going to be, and Apple has bet the farm on the H.264 video codec.  Which video codec will win out? Why does that matter?  I believe it boils down to money.

Define Codec

First of all, lets define codec = [ A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding and/or decoding a digital data stream or signal. ]  When making a video, the content is encoded using certain algorithms to compress the file down to a reasonable size while hopefully retaining the best quality possible. The opposite happens when you want to play the video, it is then decoded– co  dec  = encode / decode.

To Make a Codec

The codec is first designed and financed by some, one, or many, and then sets out to become the next worldwide standard.  Once the video codec is accepted as “the standard”, the group that is responsible for it,  then Patent’s it.  After the patent is complete, they can charge license or royalty fees to recoup their cost in making it. $$

To Make a Buck

The current worldwide standard video codec, the H.264 codec, is currently licensed by the MPEG-LA, a Denver-based firm that licenses patent pools.  Microsoft and Apple are among the many members of the MPEG-LA. The MPEG-LA charges royalties to companies that make products which encode and/or decode using their codec. The firm also charges royalties to companies which sell content that was encoded using their patents — the person who sells the encoder and the person who sells the content are the ones who have to pay.  For example, if Mozilla Firefox were to ship an H.264 decoder with their web browser, they would have to pay approximately $5 million a year. [4] Imagine what YouTube (Google) and Adobe have to pay in royalties.

To Save a Buck

Google recently purchased a video codec software company called On2 Technologies for $124.6 million.  Not long after Google’s purchase they gave the software to the world–making it open source–free. [5] Immediately they announced their switch to using the new codec to encode all of their video’s on YouTube, as well as a new web video project called webM. The webM projects goal is to provide a royalty free video codec for use on the Internet.  Adobe immediately embraced Google’s new codec and are incorporating it into their video products–including Flash. [6]

Gee. I wonder how long Apple knew about this before it became public knowledge? Just before Google’s move became public knowledge, Steve Jobs made several attempts to stamp out his foes.

Empire Strikes Back

As soon as Google offered up the new codec, the MPEG-LA announced their intent to include it into their “Patent Pool”. This might mean that the new codec, offered to the world freely by Google, will possibly require royalties. [7] Who would the royalties be paid to?  The MPEG-LA, of course.

The Vision

Google, as well as the rest of the world’s consumers, would like to have an open, royalty free codec to incorporate into the newly revised HTML standard–otherwise known as HTML-5.  The new standard in HTML, HTML-5′s goal is to allow web developers to directly embed video in a website using the new <video> tag. Without royalties, companies, including Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and versions of Linux would be  able to include a standard video codec into their software. This would free up the Internet by creating a universally standard video codec, and allow development to explode.

Isn’t it great how our society gets creative and invents things? Then after we create it we don’t want anyone else to make it better?

Apple seems to be the epitome of this. Their IPhone and IPad have their limitations, for example, they can’t run more than one application at a time, but Google and others have set out to make mobile phones better–more open. What do you think Apple did when Google came out with the Android OS?  They’re suing them, of course.

Apple wants to stand alone in a proprietary world…against all competitors. That’s fine, until they begin trying to “control” the spirit of ingenuity. I think their greed and ugliness will ultimately end up having a negative impact on their bottom line.

If companies can patent anything– like speech, walking, touching, etc –  then I guess everyone must learn how to walk and talk differently. Maybe someone will patent the alphabet and we’ll have to make a new one. What Progress.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/02/apple-vs-htc-a-patent-breakdown/

Ted Patrick writes about their bumpy experience getting 295 sessions posted.