FSF New "High Priority Projects" List: Phone OS, Security, Drivers, More Inclusivity

[andreano]

My suggestion didn't make it to the list: Freely implementable video format for the web

I just wish FSF could make a more visible standpoint on this. They have been fighting de-facto web formats before, such as GIF and Adobe Flash, only after the fact – they should be similarly interested in having an acceptable format win whenever there is a format war (such as now). Simply making their standpoint known is all a software organization really has to do about that. But they are also actively campaigning with PlayOGG, and stop DRM in HTML5, and this is something in the middle.

Maybe they didn't prioritize it for the list because it has some attention outside FSF.

[ldo17]

My suggestion didn't make it to the list: Freely implementable video format for the web

.

There are any number of candidates for such a thing. The problem is the patent vultures will go after anything that looks like it might be successful. Even if they would lose a patent lawsuit, the nuisance and pain of fighting them in court is often worse than simply paying them some money to make them go away. And that’s what they count on.

[bridgman]

My suggestion didn't make it to the list: Freely implementable video format for the web

Did you mean exactly what you said, or was there an implied "with performance not much worse than modern standards" at the end ?

The former is probably do-able, the latter not so much.

[andreano]

patent vultures

Don't worry: Tim Terriberry – Progress in the Alliance for Open Media (jan 2017), 11 minutes in:

Defensive termination clause: If you sue someone over using our codec, you lose our license. (…) The AOM members have patents too, (…) and we should use those patented things that make our license stronger.

Basically arming up for a patent cold war where no-one dares to sue anyone.

[andreano]

was there an implied "with performance not much worse than modern standards" at the end ?

I'd say no, that's not the FSF's job (which is to draw attention to their concerns), but yes, even the FSF would agree that performance and efficiency (which are two different things) are also criteria in this world, as long as the world is at format war. It's just that the FSF's concerns are drowning in headlines about performance and efficiency – it suffices that everyone else cares about those.

Here is the problem: If judging by the vocal majority of Apple fanboys, the world is uninformed about the concerns for implementability in free software (and the idea that this might matter for a web standard), thus leading to the popular misconception that 4K playback on contemporary battery powered units is the only concern for a web standard.

If with performance, you mean hardware acceleration, I think we can thank the hardware industry for betting all cards on HEVC and failing to foresee the success of VP9 (which takes them years to turn around) – everything is doable if they wake up and see where the world is going.