This whole issue runs pretty deep. What with patents, licenses, law suits, settlements, fees, "open" standards, documented standards, approved standards, proprietary standards, cross-platform issues, revenue from sales, revenue from advertisments, etc., ... it's one ugly mess.
Good thing the world didn't have to depend on these guys to develop TCP/IP, otherwise there never would have been any Internet. Can't the government fund a couple of geniuses from MIT (or wherever) to get together and crank out a video format + hardware decoder for the world/posterity so we can move forward already?
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