Today MPEG LA announced that the H.264 CODEC will be royalty-free in perpetuity.
What does this mean?
The new HTML5 needs a standard for playing video. Mozilla wants the open-source Ogg Theora. Apple wants H.264. Google wanted H.264 and change to VP8 their own CODEC because of H.264s encumbrances. Now that MPEG LA has made H.264 free there are no impediments to using it for HTML5.
Why should we care?
We are talking about standards here. Without standards you would not know which wrench to use on your car. There would be no number 2 pencils to use when you take a test. We need to finish work on this standard so the Internet can move forward.
Lets hope all the parties agree and this is the last word on this subject.
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