Are you saying that last year, you could have predicted the licence fee cap would have been $6.5 million and not 5.5 or 7.5 or 10.5? If you couldn't then it was unknown until they announced it. Similarly, what do you predict it will be in 5 years and each of the next 20 years till the patents run out? Are you sure?
No, I'm agreeing that you're right that the cap is effectively unknown. I missed that footnote (shame on me). My point is that even with an unknown cap, the license rates are predictable for the foreseeable future:
Free under 100k units
$0.20 per unit above 100k
$0.10 per unit above 5 million units
Now, I'm no fan of software patents and I wish they would be done away with. But given the choice between that and the practical/technical/patent uncertainty of webM I don't feel like those are massive payments.
I'm glad Google open sourced the on2 codec and I can even see that maybe the H.264 prices have been influenced by that move. But from a practical standpoint, I think Apple and Microsoft are making a reasonable move. People say it's short-sighted, but I think they are relatively protected.
