“Addressing a call by Free Software Foundation Europe to use the open-source codec for plugin-free video, Jobs warned that it may infringe on patents and could face a lawsuit, though not necessarily from Apple,” Electronista reports. “He suggested that H.264 fit the definition of an open standard and admitted it wasn’t necessarily what open-source advocates would expect.”
Electronista reports, “‘All video codecs are covered by patents,’ Jobs wrote from his iPad. ‘A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other ‘open source’ codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn’t mean or guarantee that it doesn’t infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.'”
Full article here.
