Google Opens Up VP8, Launches New Container Format

[benmoran]

There is still plenty of reason to embrace a free alternative.

[etnlWings]

Just had to dig this up.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100825006629/en

Well at least one good thing has come of VP8: it got MPEG-LA to stop being coy about their intentions.

For end users? Unless I'm reading something wrong, that's not true. It's free for whomever is serving AVC videos on the web for free (which may not include services that include advertisements).

Which is blatant sophistry, as they're necessitated to make a loss and forbidden from minimising those losses. 'Free' suddenly becomes rather costly.

[Apopas]

You can not imagine how uncomfortable and confusing is that the english language can not separate free libre from free gratis...

[etnlWings]

There's no confusion on that point at all.

[deanjo]

All I can say is that I had an educated suspicion that this would happen, it just came sooner then I anticipated.

h264 could just as easily remain under the current terms come 2015.

Maybe I should have rephrased that to include the word "confirmed" back then.

[Apopas]

There's no confusion on that point at all.

Oh there is. The word free has double meaning and thus we always have to explain if it is free speech or free beer. Thus sucks since the difference between is vast.

[nanonyme]

You can not imagine how uncomfortable and confusing is that the english language can not separate free libre from free gratis...

Then again, libre and gratis are a poorly defined concepts that can mean various things and so it's hard to sum it up with a single word in a fashion that would actually mean anything useful. Namely
libre: "with few or no restrictions" What constitutes a restriction? How much is few?
gratis: Is it about money? Is it about having no obligation to be useful in return?
Being more verbose is a good idea.

[Apopas]

Then again, libre and gratis are a poorly defined concepts that can mean various things and so it's hard to sum it up with a single word in a fashion that would actually mean anything useful. Namely
libre: "with few or no restrictions" What constitutes a restriction? How much is few?
gratis: Is it about money? Is it about having no obligation to be useful in return?
Being more verbose is a good idea.

Hehe if you could speak greek you would be surprised how easily these two can be defined