Relating to the use of MPEG-4 (H.264) video codecs, a milestone event occurred on 26 August 2010.
MPEG LA has announced that H.264 will be royalty-free forever, so long as video encoded with the standard is free to end users. So far, one of the main arguments against widespread implementation of HTML5 video has been the uncertain licensing future of the H.264 standard.
Proponents of Flash video and organizations committed to license-free software, like the Mozilla foundation, said that while H.264 was currently royalty-free (and would remain so until 2015), there was no guarantee that MPEG LA would not start charging licensing fees later on.
With MPEG LA's announcement that H.264 will be royalty-free in perpetuity, it may be only a matter of time before Mozilla Firefox joins browsers like Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer 9 in fully supporting HTML5.
Possibly the biggest obstacle to widespread implementation of open, standardised HTML5 video has now been removed.
For more information: Franc Kozamernik (EBU)