Today I discovered -via -digi.no that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement, -yesterday -announced plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 <video> in -the browser. The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely -open" codec technology. If you believe H.264 was free for everyone -to use, I recommend having a look at the essay -"H.264 â Not The Kind Of -Free That Matters". It is not free of cost for creators of video -tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the -terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from -licensing the patents needed for H.264. Some background information -on the Google announcement is available from -OSnews. -A good read. :)
- -Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to -promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on -the Internet. This can only be done by publishing using free and open -standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support -for these free and open standards. At the moment there seem to be two -camps in the web browser world when it come to video support. Some -browsers support H.264, and others support -Ogg Theora and -WebM -(Dirac is not really an option -yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet -and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for -H.264 to not reach all potential viewers. -Wikipedia keep an -updated summary of the current browser support.
- -Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep -promoting H.264, and John Gruber -presents -the mind set of these people quite well. His rhetorical questions -provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions -presenting -the issues with H.264. Both are worth a read.
- -Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free, -they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin. This -argument was covered by Simon Phipps in -todays -blog post, which I find to put the issue in context. To me it -make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the -browser while still allowing plugins.
- -I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest, -is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy -feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse. A lot of TV -broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot -of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they -could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web -publishing. Suddenly this belief is shaken.
- -An interesting question is why Google is doing this. While the -presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only -present the argument if the change make sense from a business -perspective. One reason might be that they are currently negotiating -with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the -feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and -Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google. -Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having -to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a -video format not requiring royalties at all. A third reason might be -that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the -Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome. -I guess time will tell.
+Arbeidet med å få på plass NUUGs +Fiksgatami-tjeneste går videre +uten stans. Den vil som tidligere nevnt bruke de beste +kommunegrensene vi har klart å få tak i, fra OpenStreetmap.org. Ofte +vil unøyaktighetene ikke har mye konsekvenser, da kommunegrenser ofte +går lagt fra der det bor mye folk, men av og til vil det påvirke +flere. Kom over et eksempel i dag, der grensestreken går midt i +tettbygd strøk og henvendelser via FiksGataMi nok vil bli feilsendt +pga. at det offentlige nekter å fortelle oss på maskinlesbart format +hvor kommunegrensa går.
+ +Grensa mellom Tønsberg og Nøytterøy er +i +dag tegnet opp slik at den gÃ¥r midt igjennom Ollebukta marina og +lar Ãrsnes ligge i en kommune mens Ãrsnesalleen gÃ¥r over to kommuner. +Min erfaring med kommuneoppdeling fÃ¥r meg til Ã¥ tro at dette neppe +stemmer.
Vi får bare håpe at noen med lokalkunnskap går inn og korrigerer +grensestreken i OpenStreetmap.org slik at den blir mer nøyaktig, eller +at det offentlige snur og publiserer i hvert fall +kommunegrenseinformasjonen på maskinlesbart format uten +bruksbegresninger, slik at FiksGataMi har større sjanse til å sende +informasjon til riktig kommune.+ +
Det går mot at det settes hardt mot hardt og en rettsak om temaet, +og +i +går ble det kjent at NUUG +Foundation støtter Fri Geo +Norge-prosjektet med deler av kostnadene forbundet med en rettsak +for å få tilgang til kommunegrensene fra kartverket. Jeg gleder meg til +fortsettelsen.