Patents: Biz as usual or try something new?
The MPEG group has never really had an interest in free and open standards. However, due to the pressure of good quality codecs that are not encumbered with active patents, it will be interesting if they try to push for business as usual, or try a less restrictive approach.
I think they should consider limiting royalties to the hardware implementations, (Pay for the things you are already paying for) not software implementations, which in addition to blocking many Open Source implementations, also can slow adoption and encourage format wars. This can be accomplished by tying the payments back to devices like AV hardware, and video cards. Allow the hardware license to act as a blanket to cover any software implementation. Then an open driver and player can be built to implement support for the licensed hardware, and once the patents are expired, allow fully open implementations.
This is also more fair then making an end user effectively pay royalties on multiple implementations of the protocol on the same device(for example if Chrome, Windows Media Player, Adobe Premier and a dvd/bluer-ray player all supported the codec.)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
