Our working definition of Open Video

Using Free Tools

We can use free tools even if we can't use free codecs all the time.

What is a Free codec?

besides having an open specification that allows anyone to implement there own player, encoder or other tool to encode or decode videos in a free codec. It is important that this can be done without requireing a special contract or patent agreement. While H264 is a big step forward compared to proprietary codecs owned by a single vendor like Real or Microsoft, it still requires anyone implementing an encoder or decoder and even anyone distributing a video in h264 to pay license fees for patents covering algorithms used in the codec to do so. For videos distributed on the web for free this has been removed but if you sell or distribute videos on disks or broadcast you need to pay up. Free codecs like Ogg Theora or WebM dont have such restrictions. The allow anyone to freely create tools and distribute content as they like.

While its important to make material available in free and open formats you might have to also provide version in more restrictive formats like h264 to reach users on closed platforms like iOS, where the vendors prevent there users from using free formats.

Pragmatically there are reason by you need to adopt