There's almost very little point to opening up the VP8 standards process. It seems pretty much designed to challenge H.264 but avoid its patents (how well? TBD). Its severely bound in what it can be by trying to avoid H.264's existing patents.
> Its severely bound in what it can be by trying to avoid
> H.264's existing patents.
Yeah probably - ask the Theora guys how hard its been ;-) The upside is that it could very much, out of necessity, drive some considerable advancement in video compression algorithms.