Ask HN: How can the BPG format be so much better, why isn't it widely supported?

4 pointsnkkollaw4 comments

The BPG image format is so much better than all the other formats, packing better quality in smaller file sizes.

How can the difference between it and the rest be so huge, and why isn't it getting a lot of traction (that I know of)?

> Based on the examples shown, BPG certainly has the makings of a useful image format. The catch, however, is that it is derived from HEVC, which is patent-encumbered and royalty-bearing. That poses a major problem for free-software projects in any jurisdiction that recognizes the patents—meaning most of them.[1]

I hadn't heard of this format before; after some cursory research, I believe the above quote provides a likely explanation.

[1]: https://lwn.net/Articles/625535/

I see.

It's truly amazing, though. With 50k of JavaScript you can save your visitors megabytes.

This came up a while back and I remember thinking...

If you were Google or Cloudflare, and you were paying for transit on petabytes of traffic associated with images, at what point would a strategy of "buy the patent, release it, encourage people to use it" pay for itself many times over?

I thought the same thing and I can't figure it out.

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