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Comment by wissler | Hacker News Reader

No matter how many times I'm downvoted, it's still not unencumbered. It's simply not in the nature of our patent system that something this complex can be unencumbered, unless it's with respect to an expired patent.

I know my position causes a lot of cognitive dissonance with people, because it implies that the system is fundamentally unfair. Well, you can either take the red or the blue pill.

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> No matter how many times I'm downvoted, it's still not unencumbered.

Who said you were wrong? Quite the opposite, I strongly agreed with you - anything can be encumbered, and anything includes this.

But the point is that Opus is as safe as you can possibly be from being patent encumbered. Everything is potentially encumbered, but there are things with higher or lower likelihoods. And there isn't any lower than Opus. If this is still too worrying for you to use, then you can't use any software at all.

Come on, it's only 45kloc. Do you go around insisting every non-trivial piece of software on hacker news is encumbered?

And in most those cases people were not making a special effort to avoid being effectively encumbered, while Opus was.

if its a non-trivial peice of software, it almost certainly is encumbered, don't forget about idiotic patents like 1 click, there are likely millions.

I believe the system is fundamentally unfair, but also think that you are the one that's bought into their propaganda to the point that you're not thinking straight.

Particularly as you naively think that an expired patent is enough to protect you from the system.

"Particularly as you naively think that an expired patent is enough to protect you from the system."

Note that I said with respect to...

It is unencumbered, unless someone proves that it is encumbered.

It is unencumbered, unless there's a ton of money to be made by suing them. Same goes for Theora. When some deep-pocketed hardware manufacturer dares put one of these "unencumbered" algorithms into its hardware, then we will see. But I doubt they'll dare.

Let them present their patents and try to sue, then you can say something is encumbered. Until now they engaged in empty threats and demagogy. They make tons of money by dominating the market, and when some potential completion shows up they try to prevent its adoption by spreading empty FUD. So it has nothing to do with patent encumbrance, it's just about their greed and thirst for market domination.

They won't present their patents until there's a big haul of cash to be extracted. There won't be a big haul of cash to be extracted until some deep-pocketed manufacturer implements the algorithms. Which they likely won't do because they understand the same thing I do -- the system is rigged.

They won't present their patents until there's a big haul of cash to be extracted.

Algorithms are already implemented and software which uses them is distributed broadly. Where are their court cases? Until those patent trolls (trolls as in spreading FUD) actually show what those patents are, they can't say that anything is encumbered. And they themselves have no idea about what they are. So whatever lies they spread now, even if it comes from Jobs, is simply irrelevant.

Show me an entity, any entity, that could be sued for lots and lots of cash, that is using these "unencumbered" algorithms.

You can easily find VP8 used on Youtube. Not big enough? Those predators wouldn't hesitate to sue, if they'd have something to bite with. But they have no teeth.

It's way too early to be suing with merely YouTube, no network effects. Google can easily switch away.

You can come up with any kind of arguments or guesses about why they don't sue, but the bottom line - they didn't provide any proofs, so their FUD doesn't worth anyone's time, and these codecs can be considered unencumbered and free to use (and that's what's happening to their displeasure).

I think you're engaged in wishful thinking. I wish you were right too.

According to another comment further down the page, Tegra 3 and OMAP4 have "hardware" VP8 decoding support. I've also heard that a patent holder can't sue for damages that occur long after they were made aware of infringement (it would be nice if one of HN's regular lawyers would jump in and define estoppel).

There are far more interesting and HN-worthy things to discuss than the non-Opus-specific fact that the patent system is broken, like its potential applications in WebRTC, the hybrid design that merges Celt and Silk, the fact that having a conversation with someone 50 feet away using Opus can have lower latency than just shouting at them (as demonstrated by Mumble's use of Celt beating the speed of sound down a hallway), etc.

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