Chromium Adds Support For Animated PNGs

[chithanh]

maxst
Open standard = not controlled by a single entity, fair participation rules (examples: JPEG, PNG, H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, AV1)
Proprietary standard = controlled by a single company or cartel without such participation rules (examples: APNG, WebP, VP8, VP9)

Note that open standards may be patent encumbered, and proprietary ones may have public specifications and open source implementations. This doesn't change the open or proprietary nature of the standard.

[maxst]

When the format is stable (last changes to specs happened years ago), does the "control" still matters?

[M@yeulC]

That's exactly where WebP shines; It's the webm version of images:
Lossy, lossless, transparency, Alpha channel, smaller, web-optimization, etc.

A great replacement for jpg(2000), (a)png and gif altogether.

That's true. I realize that the reality is more of a mixed bag than what transpired in my comment. Especially if you care (I do) about size, apparently.

When the format is stable (last changes to specs happened years ago), does the "control" still matters?

IMHO, patents matters more once a "standard" reaches this point. On the other hand, some could benefit of a new major evolution, and closed standards can slow such projects down.
That said, some "closed" standards can be entirely controlled by pretty "open" entities. The Linux kernel has its benevolent dictator, after all.

[chithanh]

When the format is stable (last changes to specs happened years ago), does the "control" still matters?

Yes, both control and how this standard happened to materialize matter. I think I pointed you in the last APNG thread to the bug in Google's VP9 implementation. This is now enshrined forever in the VP9 standard and all current and future implementations must exactly replicate this bug, because no other entity besides Google has any say in defining what VP9 is.

Further, besides keeping the standard and maintaining of reference implementation(s), the standards body may also work on new developments or provide clarification where needed.

[LinAGKar]

They should add FLIF instead. Or maybe a new AV1-based format.

[TheBlackCat]

Add to that the disregard for open standards which the APNG authors displayed,

They submitted for inclusion as part of the PNG standard but it was rejected due largely to philosophical differences about compatibility with existing PNGs. If that is a "disregard for open standards", what would a "regard for open standards" look like? Just giving up on having a backwards-compatible animated image format?

[maxst]

This is now enshrined forever in the VP9 standard

That's what happens when the format is considered stable. Regardless of control. Nobody controls/maintains GIF now, but all its problems are now "enshrined forever" because it's so old. You can't just go and make serious changes in there without breaking compatibility with existing decoders/encoders/old gif files. Not because someone who "controls" it will stop you.

[Mavman]

Finally!!!

It's been years i've been waiting for this!!!

Now that we all agree with something to replace GIF, lets move on and decentralize the web shall we?!

[Gusar]

APNG was submitted to the PNG Group to become part of the standard. In this process, there was a lot discussion about the format and everything between Mozilla and the PNG Group. And there are several independent implementations. (or is everyone simply using a patched libpng?)

This does not compare to VP9 at all, where there's one publicly available encoder (libvpx), where the bitstream was determined by Google without any outside consultation, which resulted in a libvpx bug now being part of the "standard" and now needs to be replicated in each implementation. And for a very long time, there wasn't even a VP9 spec! Every implementer basically needed to reverse engineer libvpx to fully understand how the format works.

So while VP9 is very much proprietary, APNG is very much... not.

[pal666]

maxstOpen standard = not controlled by a single entity, fair participation rules (examples: JPEG, PNG, H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, AV1)

both h264 and h265 are proprietary due to patents

Proprietary standard = controlled by a single company or cartel without such participation rules (examples: APNG, WebP, VP8, VP9)

you've got it backwards. here is quote from wikipedia

• VP8 – an open format competitor to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC that was made an open format by Google
• VP9 – an open format developed by Google as a competitor to HEVC
• AV1 – an open format developed by Alliance for Open Media as successor to VP9 & a competitor to HEVC
• Dirac (video compression format) – an open format competitor to the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video standard that was developed by the BBC
• Thor (video codec) – a competitor to HEVC that is being developed by Cisco
• Daala – an open format competitor to HEVC that is being developed by Mozilla Foundation and Xiph.Org Foundation