It looks like we are much closer to a solution for WebRTC in browsers. Over the lifetime of the WebRTC spec, there has been a battle between competing codecs – VP8 and H.264.
VP8 champions noted that the codec was “free”, however the IPR related to the codec looked like it was not in the clear (Nokia amongst others claiming patent rights on some of it)
H.264 champions noted that H.264 is widely deployed in video equipment today, but there is a cost.
Cisco went on to open source their H.264 codec and offer a binary to all who wanted it, which Cisco would pay the royalties for. Firefox, as an example, includes the resulting Open264 codec in their freshly released WebRTC implementation..
Well, the battle is about over… Both H.264 and VP8 were effectively chosen as mandatory to implement codecs in browsers… This clears one of the biggest hurdles in delivering real-time communications natively and browsers… and now the sky is the limit.
Jeremy Laurenson 