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Comment by randomfool | Hacker News Reader

Strongly disagree.

> As far as they're concerned they get money from Google now, plus all the fees from everyone else.

They get money from Google now (presumably, but we don't know the details), and they get money from h264 users- but they do not get anything from any other VP8/9 users. H264 users are now paying for something that VP8 users get for free.

Just when h265 is nearing release, MPEG-LA is effectively giving up all claims to the competing technology- VP9. I see no way that this does not eat into h265 adoption and h265 is going to have to be technologically far superior to VP9 to justify the licensing fees.

> doesn't mean that there are winners and losers

There's a clear winner- you and I. There's now a completely free alternative to h264.

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> completely free alternative to h264

As a user H.264 was already free. As a developer H.264 was already free.

There are licensing costs built into OSes shipping h264, devices built with HW decoders, online movies rented with it, etc.

So by having VP8 I save a few cents off the price of an OS upgrade or new device.

And in exchange I get significantly poorer quality video.

For every copy of Windows 8 Basic sold, Microsoft saves $2 by not including. That adds up!

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/142796-how-to-play-dvds...

Nothing is stopping you from paying for h.264 for better quality (although the difference is far from what you try to portray).

Meanwhile those who doesn't want to pay for the priviledge of the better quality h.264 offers (and likely h.265 in comparison with vp9) will be able to use a free codec, hopefully one which will be standarised under HTML5 and thus supported across all HTML5 compliant software.

See, it works out for everyone.

And if you're a content creator or video professional?

Or try to make a website that serves a lot of H.264 video and then come back and tell us how free H.264 is.

More generally, this is a video format we're talking about. "Free as in speech" is a huge deal. Speech is what it's for, for crying out loud.

Depends on what you are using it for e.g. renting TV shows or for cut scenes in video games.

They also reserved the right to start charging for free videos (you remember when Apple fought against the MPEG-LA when they tried that with AAC audio codec, right?). They only made that permanently free a few months after WebM was announced.

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