Actually, the licensing wasn't always the same and people did "squeal".
I believe part of the reason Adobe went from H.263 (Sorenson Spark) to VP6 and then to H.264, jumping over MPEG-4 ASP was because of uncertainty around the licence regime including a "usage fee" for that video codec.
Similarly, Apple refused to release Quicktime 6 until the use fees for AAC were dropped.
Also, regarding MPEG-2/MP3 the Chinese government forced them to lower their fees because as DVD players plummeted in price from hundreds to tens of dollars they were beginning to account for the majority of the money paid by the end-user (dwarfing manufacturing, shipping, retailer margin) and threats of moving to VP7 codec based alternatives were made.
So yes, the article is almost entirely wrong but there's an actual issue here that big serious companies worry about too, not just crazy software hippies.
I believe part of the reason Adobe went from H.263 (Sorenson Spark) to VP6 and then to H.264, jumping over MPEG-4 ASP was because of uncertainty around the licence regime including a "usage fee" for that video codec.
Similarly, Apple refused to release Quicktime 6 until the use fees for AAC were dropped.
Also, regarding MPEG-2/MP3 the Chinese government forced them to lower their fees because as DVD players plummeted in price from hundreds to tens of dollars they were beginning to account for the majority of the money paid by the end-user (dwarfing manufacturing, shipping, retailer margin) and threats of moving to VP7 codec based alternatives were made.
So yes, the article is almost entirely wrong but there's an actual issue here that big serious companies worry about too, not just crazy software hippies.