Wait, is Stallman right again?
AGAIN?
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
201 points (98.6% liked)
Technology
83449 readers
3543 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
tiny bit clickbait, small companies are still at $100,000 unchanged
 |
not that that should exist, either
Here's why it doesn't matter:
"AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format initially designed for video transmissions over the Internet. It was developed as a successor to VP9 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia),[3] a consortium founded in 2015 that includes semiconductor firms, video on demand providers, video content producers, software development companies and web browser vendors."
Here's why it does matter
Most server hardware thats out there right now doesn't support av1 encoding, so all of those, literally tens of thousands of them in thousands of spread out data centers have to be replaced with brand new +$1,500 a pop cards that do support it before they can use it
I was gonna say, I like AV1, but my Plex server says otherwise.
And those servers are what process your Twitchs, your YouTubes, your Netflixs and etc services
Most hardware can't decode it either which is very important. Also it's currently being sued over patents
Can't be too sure about that: https://sh.itjust.works/post/57524423
The whole patent system should just be abolished. And if we can't achieve that, at least software patents.
Nah, we've seen what happens with patents. from medical, to agriculture, to automotive to software. The system isn't working even slightly as originally intended in almost all scenarios and should be dismantled
“Nah”? You seem to be agreeing
Maybe the nah was to the just software patents part
Honestly probably a good thing long-term, lots of platforms have been dragging their heels in adopting better newer codecs, so maybe this will finally give the justification required to put in the engineering hours.
The patents have expired everywhere except USA, Brazil and Malaysia.
This is a blatant money grab before they expire everywhere.
But you then are forced to move to the US
open formats is the way to go. Patents seems more and more like a scam
Software and business method patents have always been bullshit.
Patent the machine, not how you use it. Software is just instructions to a machine.
It's an outdated legalism. 250 years ago, the patent office operated as an incentive to record and register ideas to the public in exchange for exclusive commercial license.
Now that simply isn't an issue
Perhaps patients have their place but software patients make no sense. One big issue is that it is not practical to avoid writing a system that already exists because there are many, many ways to describe the same software system. It's so difficukt to search that multiple people could have already patiented the same thing and be unaware the other exists.
Figures. Patents are the backbone of capitalism. Some say it invented capitalism as we know it.
I mean, I get the idea of patents. If there were no protection of "ideas", some random person could have one, try to bring it to market but could just be outplayed by a big corporation with enough money to copy this idea and sell it everywhere before he can even start production. They have more resources and money, but might not have had that idea. There should be some protection. Problem is, that these are also abused by the big corporations, so... Maybe we need to fix this somehow.
Sure for physical things that need prototypes and materials. That is not a thing with software.
Software algorithms should not be patentable.
You should be able to own the right to bring a novel idea into production, after it’s generally available then it should have no protection.
Basically if you come up with an idea, you get to get the first initial rounds of profits to make it worth your while, that’s it.
thats a patent
Patents are a (relatively speaking) newfangled trick to turn ideas into legal "capital." In the same way that a corporation "is" a person.
The backbone of capitalism? I'm not following that.
quietly
Stop putting "quietly" in your fucking headlines, you hacks. This wasn't "quiet", it was very publicly announced.
Slammed
slammed
Stop putting "slammed" in your fucking comments, you hacks. This wasn't "the WWE", it was very obviously Lemmy.
Blast
Blast
Stop putting “blast” in your fucking comments, you hacks. This wasn’t “NASA”, it was very obviously a user.
Shocked.
😡
I’m pretty sure most of the H.264 patents expired or are set to expire next year. Maybe it’s one last cash grab before the best codec ever made is liberated
Last attempt to squeeze some money before these formats are abandoned in favor of competition, I guess.
Last attempt to ~~squeeze some money before~~ get these formats ~~are~~ abandoned in favor of competition, I guess.
FTFY
Thing that bothers me is these guys are claiming to have patents over AV1.
The whole point of av1 is it supposed to be free of this bullshit.
fuck the authority, chaining down anything digital because the law is far behind the relative breakneck speed of technological progress.