[whatwg] on codecs in a 'video' tag.

Henri Sivonen schrieb:
> When Nokia guys show up Open Source meetings, the FAQ about Maemo is why
> they don't ship Vorbis support. The manager of the Maemo operation has
> said that Nokia is afraid of Vorbis having some Fraunhofer-owned stuff
> in it after all, so Nokia does not want to ship Vorbis support until
> their own people have vetted Vorbis for patent issues. It is entirely
> unclear to me if they are actively vetting it.

I guess a very old story (2001) is again doing its damage here:
http://news.com.com/MP3+rival+attempts+to+shield+developers/2100-1023_3-253253.html

There a Thomson guy was quoted as saying:

"We continue to follow Ogg Vorbis," said Henri Linde, vice president of
new business at Thomson . "I would say we continue to have some thoughts
that it is very likely that they are using some of the
Thomson/Fraunhofer solutions in the project...But it's not part of our
daily concern."


What is missing is that that spokesperson was led to believe that Vorbis
was a reworked MP3 with a few changes here and there to work around
patents (I can't quote sources, but I think I read that on the Vorbis
mailing list). It is not. To this day neither Thomson nor Fraunhofer
made any patent claims and they did not issue any more statements
concerning the patent status of Vorbis, but still this old old old story
is doing its damage.


Maik Merten

Received on Wednesday, 28 March 2007 12:47:27 UTC