Steve Jobs Notes that a Patent Pool is Being Assembled Against Theora?

[kepardue]

Okay, I don't know how to qualify whether or not "emails from Steve Jobs" are actually emails from Steve Jobs, but maybe more enlightened minds can look at this and tell? http://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo/2010/04/open-letter-to-steve-jobs/

Text (without headers):

From: Steve Jobs
To: Hugo Roy
Subject: Re:Open letter to Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash
Date 30/04/2010 15:21:17

All video codecs are covered by patents. 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.

Sent from my iPad​

If so, it's remarkably, remarkably interesting and only serves to add yet another twist to the HTML5 video debate.

Edited to add a link to the email, with headers: http://hugoroy.eu/jobs-os.php

 

[Compile 'em all]

Steve Jobs: "A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora"

Check this out, a rather very intriguing reply from Jobs to an email concerning open video codec and flash:

http://hugoroy.eu/jobs-os.php

 

[-aggie-]

What could possibly be up with that link that my work won't allow me to open it?

 

[ChazUK]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1-update1; en-gb; Nexus One Build/ERE27) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17)

Here you go Aggie:

"From: Steve Jobs To: Hugo Roy Subject: Re: Open letter to Steve Jobs: T on Flash Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 06:21:17 -070

All video codecs are covered by patents A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other "open source" codecs now. Unfortunately, just becaus 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.

Sent from my iPad"

The link has all the email headers included but it'd be too much for me to post.

 

[-aggie-]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1-update1; en-gb; Nexus One Build/ERE27) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17)

Here you go Aggie:

"From: Steve Jobs To: Hugo Roy Subject: Re: Open letter to Steve Jobs: T on Flash Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 06:21:17 -070

All video codecs are covered by patents A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other "open source" codecs now. Unfortunately, just becaus 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.

Sent from my iPad"

The link has all the email headers included but it'd be too much for me to post.

Thanks. My iPhone is in my left pocket (didn't think to check it).

So, does Theora do what Jobs is saying (never used that codec to my knowledge)?

 

[mkrishnan]

So, does Theora do what Jobs is saying (never used that codec to my knowledge)?

I don't think that's something you can eyeball... the claim is that some aspect of the video decoding/encoding/compression technology that Theora uses may actually be a patented process or technique that someone else owns. One would have to look at the source code to know....