Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?
Because the US endorses the concept of "essential patents," meaning you need to pay a licensing fee to be lawfully allowed to perform the math that transforms data into A/V content.<p>Never to mention the two blatant issues with this, being:<p>1) video codecs are the <i>exemplary</i> "we'll patent math and there's nothing you can do about it" scam, since that's <i>literally all a video codec is</i><p>2) a process being "essential" to a particular outcome (i.e. no other way to do it) was the main motivation mathematics was explicitly excluded from patentability in the first place, so the idea of "essential patents" just underlines the absurdity of the entire system<p>Anyways, yearly reminder that software patents are a blight to innovation and a scourge on our industry, and no you won't change my mind.