Published at LXer:

"Dear Steve Jobs, Having read your Thoughts on Flash, I could not agree with you more. Flash is not the Web, and I am glad Apple seizes the opportunity of open standards to build better products for their customers."

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"A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now." -- Jobs

Does he actually believe that Theora infringes somebody's patents, or is it just Microsoft-style FUD to try to kill an inconvenient open codec?

While Apple does give back to the BSD community, from what I understand, I do wonder how much and if Apple takes more then they give. Apple is great on one hand but over the years they have become more and more like Microsoft (With the business practices, etc,) in my opinion.

Now Google, love them or hate them, they have and keep changing the playing field. I think they will have more to say about HTML5 then Apple or Microsoft, a lot more. Google of course is still a corporation interested in profit, which in itself is not a bad thing. But despite some practices and choices on Googles part, I still think they will be a huge, positive factor.

I would love to see Apple take a more open source approach, as well as Google (which yes they do and no they don't. I think Google is bi-polar at times, lol.) If Apple really embraced, in whole not parts here and there, BSD and Google embraced, in whole not parts here and there, Linux then I can see Microsoft finally going away, though it will take time of course. Google is better then Apple in my opinion and everything is better then Microsoft. MS is so outdated and they use an old business model, they are really going to pay for it in the near future. If this happens to MS then what will happen to other companies that have similar or exact practices...

A world where *bsd and Linux ruled, I can only dream!

This, of course, is what I see and my opinions only.

I have to ask; what kind of retarded logic is that? What patents does Theora violate? Jobs would do well to either list those, or retract that statement immediately (using his ipad).

I can only think of Darwin, where Apple has given back to the community. It seems however Apple likes to pick and choose when it comes to open source/standards. On the one hand it is great when it gives them a boost, after that, it is something to be rid of afterwards. Apple treats open source/standards as something just for their gains wherever that may be, and then to be killed off when it no longer serves their own purposes. It is like they are cherry-picking with OSS.


I can't believe I am saying this, but at least with Microsoft you know where they stand, with Apple, it is rather ambiguous.

Yeah, I just searched and searched and searched. I am not really seeing anything other then Darwin. A few articles several years old touch on things here and there but nothing major. I will still look into it some more.

That is very true. MS has always been upfront about their intentions. Well I was considering buying my first Mac soon but I am not sure I want to support them at this point. I think I will just stick with PC's with Linux and *BSD on them. Maybe in the next couple of years Apple will see the error of their ways and stop trying to destroy things like Theora, etc.

I don't understand why companies don't focus more on hardware and advancing that rather then trying to squeeze every last cent out of people with software patents, etc. Our technology would be so much greater and advanced if they stopped those types of practices and put all their time, effort and money (they spend on laws suits, etc,) into the hardware side, especially Apple.

Actually, I'm quite positive that even tho Theora claims to be patent-free, it actually DOES infringe some software patent somewhere. It's inevitable, there is so much code that is patented, I'm sure they'll be able to find something similar.

However, I don't know of any case where software patents have stood up in court ... do you ? Well, we'll see.