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Comment by yanw | Hacker News Reader

I'm not Google but I'll give it a go:

1. No, Flash isn't just about video playback, the technology is used in a variety of ways on a variety of sites and it's not analogouse to a video codec.

2 - 4. Transitioning the web to WebM encoded video is the ultimate goal but that will have to happen gradually.

5. Adobe, initially. FSF as well

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1. google ships chrome with flash, which is not necessary.

2-4. not going to happen since WebM is not as good as h.264 and probably still has patent problems (see: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377)

5. adobe only. this just forces people to to use flash.

You know, Flash. A browser plugin that allows execution of SWF objects. Which is an open, non-patent-encumbered format.

Yes, Flash, which also plays H.264 video...

And which, to my knowledge, you cannot remove.

Edit: You can disable it.

I'm puzzled by the support rhetoric this patent riddled codec is receiving, is it because Apple put it's weight behind it?

It's because it's the best codec we have for moderate-resolution video, and it already has almost %100 of the market (played back via Flash). Making it available in <video> would allow people to drop the Flash part.

Dropping Flash for video playback would be nice, yes.

But making the shift from plugin-based playback to HTML5 video is an opportunity. And it's really the only chance that the web as a whole is going to get - if Flash video dies and H.264 through <video> becomes the dominant format, then the web is going to be stuck with that, and the MPEG-LA will rake it in from anyone who wants to make a product that involves web video. That is a terrible position to be in.

The best option is to make a clean break here and now, and leave patent-encumbered video codecs behind at the same time as Flash for video playback is left behind. Playing through a Flash container is fine for legacy videos, and long-term there's no real downside to pushing unencumbered formats for HTML5.

While free is generally better than not free, the cost of licensing from MPEG-LA is relatively cheap. Terms may have changed last I looked, but it's something like twenty five cents per paid subscriber per year, the first 50,000 subscribers are free with a $1M cap. The same goes for sold encoders/decoders.

So companies like Google, Adobe, and Microsoft have to pay $1M per year at most. A smaller site that charges, like PluralSight, probably pays $0.

This really isn't about money. It's about control.

Last time I checked it was capped at roughly $5million per year and had been increasing by 10% (the maximum allowed) per year, every year since the licensing began (though in two-year steps, i.e. just over 20% each two years).

I have seen multiple people claim that it's only allowed to go up by 10% every five years. You obviously are claiming a different scheme again. Just the fact that there's so much confusion about price is in itself a mark against this method of creating (so-called) RAND standards.

You're right. The fee apparently goes up starting this year to $6.5M. Here's a link that talks about it:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/h264-patents-how-much-do-they...

Chrome ships with Flash, which is a good thing. Not because Flash is a good thing. But because if you're going to run Flash it might as well be up to date and running as a separate process in a sandbox.

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