My theory on the Nokia's reasoning on this, I don't think it's really about the codec, otherwise, why are they only attacking WebRTC and not YouTube/Chrome/Android uses?
Edit: ok, I'll just inline it here to save people the trouble
<QUOTE>
What if any two devices, with just a few lines of JavaScript, could make a free voice call, or a free video call, anywhere, and not necessarily be subjected to control by phone carriers or other entrenched interests?
WebRTC, IMHO, is one of the most important technologies added to the web platform in the last couple of years. It is disruptive, perhaps too disruptive. It commoditizes things which used to be hard to do, even replicating something like Skype or Google Hangouts becomes much easier for small startups, and it scares big IHVs and ISVs who sell equipment and charge money for these services. It threatens to turn phone carriers into bit-pipes as well.
Putting on my tin-foil hat, it doesn't seem surprising to me that Microsoft (which owns Skype), Cisco (which owns WebEx), and Nokia (puppet of Microsoft), are pushing back and finding ways to delay it. The brouhaha over the VP8 codec is only one aspect, there are players who are worried their existing deployed VoIP/Video HW endpoints will be obsolete legacy equipment in the new WebRTC world, and so they do not want mandatory features which put them at a disadvantage.
But this technology is too important to be designed in a way that makes it hard to use, hitched to commercial legacy hardware, or encumbered by commercially controlled cartels like MPEG-LA.
Sorry for the G+ public link (should be viewable when not signed in), but I use it as my blog nowadays. https://plus.google.com/u/1/110412141990454266397/posts/QLuD...
Edit: ok, I'll just inline it here to save people the trouble
<QUOTE> What if any two devices, with just a few lines of JavaScript, could make a free voice call, or a free video call, anywhere, and not necessarily be subjected to control by phone carriers or other entrenched interests?
WebRTC, IMHO, is one of the most important technologies added to the web platform in the last couple of years. It is disruptive, perhaps too disruptive. It commoditizes things which used to be hard to do, even replicating something like Skype or Google Hangouts becomes much easier for small startups, and it scares big IHVs and ISVs who sell equipment and charge money for these services. It threatens to turn phone carriers into bit-pipes as well.
Putting on my tin-foil hat, it doesn't seem surprising to me that Microsoft (which owns Skype), Cisco (which owns WebEx), and Nokia (puppet of Microsoft), are pushing back and finding ways to delay it. The brouhaha over the VP8 codec is only one aspect, there are players who are worried their existing deployed VoIP/Video HW endpoints will be obsolete legacy equipment in the new WebRTC world, and so they do not want mandatory features which put them at a disadvantage.
But this technology is too important to be designed in a way that makes it hard to use, hitched to commercial legacy hardware, or encumbered by commercially controlled cartels like MPEG-LA.
</QUOTE>