Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

“The move was not unexpected. Google began trying to acquire
VP8’s creator, the codec shop On2, months ago, and speculation
began even before the acquisition was final. The public reaction to
the WebM launch was not unexpected, either. MPEG-LA, the commercial
sellers of license for the competitor H.264 codec, suggested that
anyone who used VP8 would get sued for patent infringement. An
independent H.264 hacker quickly attacked VP8 as inferior on all
technical counts, and surely in violation of multiple H.264 patents
as well. H.264 proponents and general news sites began circulating
that blog post, more so when Apple’s Steve Jobs allegedly forwarded
a link to it in response to an email asking his opinion on VP8.

“Responses from the open source community itself have come in
two flavors. The first was a long line of multimedia projects and
companies announcing support for VP8 and WebM; some (like Mozilla
and Collabora) were in the know before the deal was made public and
working on their code, while others just reacted swiftly following
the unveiling.”

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