Subject: [codec] Individuals and hats

From: Thorvald Natvig <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 23:37:15 -0700

I see from cursory googling that there is an overlap between some of the
proponents of the impossible test plan and developers of MPEG USAC,
which seems likely to become one of the most patent encumbered codecs in
history.

There seems to be clear royalty-based gain to be had for individuals and
companies if this workgroup should fail. Everyone in the IETF wears the
hat of an individual, but it might be better to be upfront about the
motivations for helping the workgroup succeed when there is such a clear
conflict of interest.

Sincerely,
Thorvald

---

From: "Roni Even" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:03:50 +0300

Hi,
I do not appreciate your comments since it accuses people of behaviors which
you cannot prove. I can say on the same path that there are people who do
not care about how it is done but they want a "good enough" codec that will
be royalty free developed by the IETF.

Personally I am not involved in MPEG work at all. I had past experience with
standardizing of G.719 which is a royalty free codec and I can also point
that Anisse was also part of this work.

Now for the codec work. My view is that if there is a claim that the codec
has better quality than other codec it need to be tested using well
established procedures that has been used to compare codec quality. There
was a request from the people who had experience with codec quality testing
to produce a proposal for test procedures and when they did they are
attacked for their motivation by some (I want to note that there are some
discussions about the proposal itself).

I do not mind if the WG will decide to remove the quality claim and continue
with developing  a royalty free codec with "good enough" quality not saying
it is better than other codecs. 

I just think that it should be clear from the charter and requirements what
is the purpose of the work. 

Regards
Roni Even
With individual hat

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf
> Of Thorvald Natvig
> Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2011 9:37 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: [codec] Individuals and hats
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> codec mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/codec

---

From: Stephen Botzko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:01:13 -0400

I am sitting at the beach, sipping my margarita while my patent royalties
are just rolling in.  I hear the steel drum band in the background, and
beautiful women are all around.  One offers me another drink, a second a
massage....

This is just fantasizing - I have no such income.

So let's get back to work

Stephen Botzko

---

From: "Timothy B. Terriberry" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 07:11:41 -0700

> that Anisse was also part of this work.

Thanks. I wasn't actually sure who Thorvald was referring to since he 
was considerate enough not to mention any specific names, but you've 
just saved me a bunch of Googling.

As for unprovable accusations... the only claim I saw was that some 
people were not being upfront about potential conflicts of interest. 
This is just good professional conduct, and clearly verifiable.

---

From: Steve Underwood <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 22:18:44 +0800

Hi Roni,

> that Anisse was also part of this work.
I am interested in that statement. The last time we checked, Polycom 
were making their patents on G.719 royalty free, on the same conditions 
as their patents on G.722.1. Ericsson were not. Has that changed?

Steve

---

From: Stephen Botzko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:24:37 -0400

Please see the announcement posted to this list (11 November 2009)  I've
cut/paste the text for your convenience.

Stephen Botzko
Hi

I have the following announcement regarding G.719

Ericsson offers a royalty-free license under Ericsson's G.719 standard
essential patents for end user products.
The license agreement can be obtained by contacting patent.licensing@
ericsson.com

Regards
Ingemar

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 10:18 AM, Steve Underwood <[email-masked]>wrote:

> I am interested in that statement. The last time we checked, Polycom were
> making their patents on G.719 royalty free, on the same conditions as their
> patents on G.722.1. Ericsson were not. Has that changed?
>
> Steve
>
>

---

From: Stephan Wenger <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 07:42:22 -0700

There was an email to this very list, 11/11/2009.

It appears to me that a possible user of G.719 needs to contact both
rightholder companies to obtain a license.  The Polycom license contains
certain "attribution" requirements.  This requirement makes the license
compatible with some, but by no means with all business models (or open
source licenses, for that matter).  That is one reason why I argued so
strongly in the past to bear in mind aspects other than monetary
compensation--the RF dimension is only one of many when it comes to
limitations of use.

I don't know what the Ericsson license requires; I have not seen the
language.

(And I do not want to learn on this list any facts or rumors about the
practicalities and enforcement of licenses such as the two mentioned
above, except perhaps information that has already been published
elsewhere.)

Stephan

---

From: Steve Underwood <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 22:46:15 +0800

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for the info. I must have missed that announcement. G.719 really 
hasn't got much traction so far, and there is always the risk of other 
patent claims surfacing, so the incentive to implement it still seems weak.

Steve

On 04/14/2011 10:24 PM, Stephen Botzko wrote:
> Please see the announcement posted to this list (11 November 2009)  
> I've cut/paste the text for your convenience.
>
> Stephen Botzko
> >>>
> Hi
>
> The license agreement can be obtained by contacting 
> [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>
>
>
> Regards
> Ingemar
> >>>
>
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 10:18 AM, Steve Underwood <[email-masked] 
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Roni,
>
>
>     I am interested in that statement. The last time we checked,
>     Polycom were making their patents on G.719 royalty free, on the
>     same conditions as their patents on G.722.1. Ericsson were not.
>     Has that changed?
>
>     Steve
>
>
>     [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>

---

From: Stephen Botzko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:57:37 -0400

Well, we have our own opinions of course, but any analysis of that sort is
up to you.

I'm not sure why you are discussing this on the list though, it seems
off-topic.  If you want to go deeper, contact me directly.

Stephen Botzko

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 10:46 AM, Steve Underwood <[email-masked]>wrote:

>> On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 10:18 AM, Steve Underwood <[email-masked]<mailto:
>> [email-masked]>> wrote:
>>
>>    Hi Roni,
>>
>>

---

From: "Michael Ramalho (mramalho)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:36:14 -0500

+1 to Roni's comments.

Other commentary below (with "MAR:").

Michael Ramalho

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf
Of Roni Even
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2011 5:04 AM
To: 'Thorvald Natvig'; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [codec] Individuals and hats

Hi,

I do not appreciate your comments since it accuses people of behaviors
which
you cannot prove. I can say on the same path that there are people who
do
not care about how it is done but they want a "good enough" codec that
will
be royalty free developed by the IETF.

MAR: I too do not appreciate those comments in the thread below.

MAR: To imply a motive to the individuals who actually created a test
plan (that needed to be created) to test the validity of a design
quality goal (to be not worse than or better than X, Y, Z) that is
specified in the requirements ... is not appropriate.

MAR: Commentary on the reasonableness of such a test plan IS APPROPRIATE
(and others have reasonably done so).

MAR: But to assign pejorative adjectives to the test plan, such as "the
impossible test plan", I think is childish at best.

MAR: Don't take your marbles and go home ... work to create a "more
possible" test plan ... or other alternative (such as deleting the
quality claim in requirements late in the development process). I might
add that others may attribute negative motives to the latter suggestion
as well.

Personally I am not involved in MPEG work at all. I had past experience
with
standardizing of G.719 which is a royalty free codec and I can also
point
that Anisse was also part of this work.

Now for the codec work. My view is that if there is a claim that the
codec
has better quality than other codec it need to be tested using well
established procedures that has been used to compare codec quality.
There
was a request from the people who had experience with codec quality
testing
to produce a proposal for test procedures and when they did they are
attacked for their motivation by some (I want to note that there are
some
discussions about the proposal itself).

MAR: +1

I do not mind if the WG will decide to remove the quality claim and
continue
with developing  a royalty free codec with "good enough" quality not
saying
it is better than other codecs. 

I just think that it should be clear from the charter and requirements
what
is the purpose of the work. 

Regards
Roni Even
With individual hat

---

From: Anisse Taleb <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:10:27 +0000

If only it was true, I could finish paying my 5 years old Peugeot 307.

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
> Thorvald Natvig
> Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2011 8:37 AM
> To: [email-masked]

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:54:14 -0600

With my chair hat on, please indulge me in a bit of a rambling email.... the goals and motivations of people at IETF are often very complex and even a single person can have multiple conflicting goals. We have many people in this WG that have past experiences in comparing codecs. Some of them have done it in processes such at used at ITU-T. Others have done it other ways - for example Skype tried different codecs with users and looked at statistical lengths of calls. Longer calls meant more revenue for them and it was a very directly and object measure. It's not clear if the calls were longer because people loved the better quality and had more to say or if they were having such hard problems hearing each other that they had to repeat things and the calls took longer but no matter which of these it was, from Skype point of view the longer calls were better. Some people view less than 6 listeners as too small a sample set. Some people view less than 10,000 listeners too small a sample set. One thing should be clear to everyone, it's not easy to decide which is better and there are a wide variety of ways codecs are compares. A small fraction of people in this WG would probably be just as happy to see opus never happened but many of the people commenting on test plans are simply trying to say what they think is the best way to compare codecs. When someone proposes some testing approach, I would not assume that any given person was trying to block this work regardless of what role their employer may have in USAC or any other work. 

Discussing testing that no one will do, regardless if it is even impossible or not is a waste of time. We need to focus on what we can and will do. I realize there is a diversity in how formal tests can be and what different people would consider good enough. This is going to be easier if people work on the assumption that most the people on the list are good faith actors and are actually trying to get to a reasonable codec with a reasonable "truth in advertising" results about how good it actually is. 

Cullen <with my co-hair hat on>

PS - Trying to figure out anyone motivations is an impossible task - my employer, via mergers, is an founding member of MPEG-LA. My employer would probably make more money if everyone used uncompressed 24 bit audio samples at an 196 KHz sample rate. My employer use patents defensively and would be very happy to see all other companies do the same. I'm a huge supporter of how free  communication can change the world for better bringing peace and prosperity and have been involved with many projects, including lots of open source to help make this happen. Same for my employer. I like the IETF and want to see it remain one of the relevant SDOs for the internet. I once bet someone a beer that wavelet based codecs were not the future and have an economic incentive (of one beer) for them to fail. It's highly unlikely I can figure all of my own motivations in a this WG much less someone else's.