[MPlayer-dev-eng] Sorenson 3 encoding :)))))

[D Richard Felker III]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 07:21:59PM +0100, gabor wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 19:04, Balatoni Denes wrote:
> > Hi!
> > But hopefully they don't care about mplayer/ffmpeg, as it was said before me.
> > And hopefully xvid is kind of legal. And xiph.org will come up with something 
> > great soon maybe, and we can all forget about patents.
> 
> as i know xiph. org is playing with theora or which is basically putting
> on2's VP3 codec into the ogg container format...
> 
> vp3 is free ( some parts are patented by on2, but they made an
> irrevokable whatever that states that you can use it freely to do
> anything ).
> 
> the question is:
> 
> does anyone have any experience with VP3? how does it compete with
> mpeg4?

Giving up and using a crappy codec (vp3) is called losing. It's not
being smart or making a political statement or anything, it's just
plain losing. Standing up for the right to write any code you please
(free speech!) is the only honorable course of action.

If there were a patent-free codec nicer than mpeg4, there wouldn't be
much of a practical problem here anyway, but regardless of whether
mpeg4 is better or worse than patent-free alternatives, anyone should
(and does!) have the right to write code that can be used for encoding
or decoding mpeg4 and to discuss, document, or publish that code
however he or she pleases.

Rich