I don't think the GIF story is proving what you think it's proving.
The problem with GIF is that everyone thought it was open and free, and then Unisys turned around and started enforcing the patents.
Paying MPEGLA up front for indemnity is precisely the type of thing a company would do to avoid being sued by people who hold submarine patents on video encoding.
If there's a lesson to be learned from GIF, it's: don't use encoding formats with questionable IP.
Whether you or I think WebM is patent free is, quite frankly, irrelevant. Not many companies, besides Google apparently, are going to be willing to take that risk, precisely because they remember the GIF fiasco.
The problem with GIF is that everyone thought it was open and free, and then Unisys turned around and started enforcing the patents.
Paying MPEGLA up front for indemnity is precisely the type of thing a company would do to avoid being sued by people who hold submarine patents on video encoding.
If there's a lesson to be learned from GIF, it's: don't use encoding formats with questionable IP.
Whether you or I think WebM is patent free is, quite frankly, irrelevant. Not many companies, besides Google apparently, are going to be willing to take that risk, precisely because they remember the GIF fiasco.