# Google officially open sourced VP8 codec under BSD license



## everypot (May 19, 2010)

http://webmproject.blogspot.com/
http://newteevee.com/2010/05/19/google-open-sourcing-vp8-as-part-of-webm-project/

Today(5/19/2010): 





> Google announced at its i/O developers conference that it is open sourcing its VP8 video codec under a BSD-style license. The move is part of a wider open source initiative dubbed WebM that is supported by Chrome, Firefox, Opera and a number of other players. Google Vice President, Product Management Sundar Pichai made the announcement early on in  he keynote and was then joined by Mozillaâ€™s VP of engineering Mike Shaver, who said that the format will be supported by Firefox, with nightly builds being available starting today.





> VP8-encoded video will also be available on YouTube starting *today*. ..the format will be supported by Firefox, with nightly builds being available starting *today*..





> ... NVIDIA is always looking to enable users with the best video experiences, whether itâ€™s creating, viewing or broadcasting. We support Googleâ€™s efforts to drive broad adoption of the VP8 codec and new WebM format.





> It continues to be an exciting time for the development of web technologies on the ARM architecture...Today sees an advancement in video for the web with ...the contribution of the VP8 video codec, free of royalties to Google. ...the fact that the VP8 codec is already optimized for Cortex-A/v7A class processors with the NEON SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) engine.


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## everypot (May 19, 2010)

Google and Adobe really want to screw with Apple!


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## Beastie (May 20, 2010)

> With regard to patents, VP8 copies way too much from H.264 for anyone sane to be comfortable with it, no matter whose word is behind the claim of being patent-free.
> 
> VP8 is definitely better compression-wise than Theora and Dirac, so if its claim to being patent-free does stand up, itâ€™s an upgrade with regard to patent-free video formats.
> 
> ...


(source)

So it's Yes! , No! , Yes! , No! 

Okay, I'll just sit back and watch the show.


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## atomicplayboy (May 20, 2010)

everypot said:
			
		

> Google and Adobe really want to screw with Apple!



In regards to Adobe, I know they've quickly put their support behind the VP8 codec in flash, but I have to wonder who will bother making flash video players if the WebM container is heavily adopted with the HTML5 video tag. If anything, I see this more as a threat to Adobe than Apple.


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## graudeejs (May 20, 2010)

atomicplayboy said:
			
		

> In regards to Adobe, I know they've quickly put their support behind the VP8 codec in flash, but I have to wonder who will bother making flash video players if the WebM container is heavily adopted with the HTML5 video tag. If anything, I see this more as a threat to Adobe than Apple.



those who know flash, and don't want to learn new stuff


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## kpedersen (May 20, 2010)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> those who know flash, and don't want to learn new stuff



... should not be near a computer


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## tingo (May 20, 2010)

Anyway, this (VP8 news) is a good thing.


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## aragon (May 21, 2010)

kpedersen said:
			
		

> ... should not be near a computer


Or the internet.


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## oliverh (May 21, 2010)

Beastie said:
			
		

> (source)
> 
> So it's Yes! , No! , Yes! , No!
> 
> Okay, I'll just sit back and watch the show.



Well, it's a x264 developer talking about a competitor. 



> I eagerly await a more unbiased analysis of VP8 and WebM, since the x264 developers are hardly impartial in this matter; they are in the middle of an effort to re-license x264 so they can start charging money for it. In other words, Google is a competitor here.



http://www.osnews.com/story/23334/The_In-depth_Technical_Analysis_of_VP8_Counterpoints


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## everypot (May 22, 2010)

What Google is doing is forcing MPEG-LA's hand to expose its monopoly of patents, whereby all codec use technology they patented (whether its true or not because of the generalization and limited approaches to video encoding).

Whether software should be patentable is another matter entirely. But by having them expose their monopoly, then anti-trust measures can be taken.

MPEG-LA think they own everything related to video encoding because of their patents. It's about time they were stripped of all their trivial patents and generalizations as it's now limiting so many different industries and all innovation in the area.





			
				oliverh said:
			
		

> Well, it's a x264 developer talking about a competitor.
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.osnews.com/story/23334/The_In-depth_Technical_Analysis_of_VP8_Counterpoints


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## john_doe (May 23, 2010)

So, VP8 is no longer vapourware...





			
				&quot said:
			
		

> the x264 developers are .. in the middle of an effort to re-license x264 so they can start charging money for it.


Can someone provide source for this? Oh, they're not


			
				&quot said:
			
		

> We are not planning to relicense, but rather to add another option. The reason for this is that a ton of companies would love to use x264, but they use proprietary solutions instead because of the GPL â€” so in order to increase adoption of free software, we need to add an option more suitable to companies who canâ€™t use the GPL. x264 will always be GPL; it just may also be available under other licenses too. And it will never be forked, i.e. a different version available under different licenses.


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