<i>I am completely opposed to web standards including proprietary codecs</i><p>h.264 is not in the HTML5 standard and nobody is trying to get it put there. The reason it is a hot topic is that it is what people are actually <i>using</i>, not because of web standards.<p><i>HTML5 should have Theora (or some other open gratis and libre codec) as the standard which all browsers wishing to be HTML5 compliant must be able to handle</i><p>The point of the spec is to document what is shared in common across browsers. Mandating something that was <i>not</i> going to be shared in common would have turned the spec into a work of fiction.