Most of the Mozilla people, whom I otherwise quite respect, didn't like to admit that you're also almost certain to end up needing to pay royalties to ship any other decoder as well. The difference is that if you use H.264 your startup can know exactly what the costs will be whereas using WebM means you're just going to have to wait until you make enough money for someone to sue you.
The Mozilla people wasted a ton of energy conflating WebM with open-ness rather than directing attention to the actually problem: current patent law. As long as someone else can show up and demand money for independent work the environment will predisposed against complete openness.
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Most of the Mozilla people, whom I otherwise quite respect, didn't like to admit that you're also almost certain to end up needing to pay royalties to ship any other decoder as well. The difference is that if you use H.264 your startup can know exactly what the costs will be whereas using WebM means you're just going to have to wait until you make enough money for someone to sue you.
The Mozilla people wasted a ton of energy conflating WebM with open-ness rather than directing attention to the actually problem: current patent law. As long as someone else can show up and demand money for independent work the environment will predisposed against complete openness.