## FSF Announces Support for WebM Project, Encourages Adoption
BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Wednesday, January 19, 2011 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced that it is officially supporting the WebM Project, and is encouraging Web site operators to migrate any H.264-encoded video they have to WebM.
The full FSF announcement, "No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM" is available on its web site at http://www.fsf.org/news/supporting-webm.
"Google has been working to bring together a broad coalition of organizations to support WebM, which will go far to help it become the video codec of choice with HTML5," explained Brett Smith, license compliance engineer for the Free Software Foundation. "We want the world to know that we also support WebM: with its developer-friendly patent license and free software reference implementation, it's a good choice to help ensure the Web fulfills its promise of providing a free way for the world to communicate."
FSF executive director Peter Brown said, "We applaud Google's effort in not only making WebM available for implementation by free software, but also in promoting its reasons for deprecating the use of H.264. Now is the time to act. Through joint community effort in support of WebM, we can sustain the vision of the Web as free and unencumbered."
Google released the WebM video codec in May 2010. Unlike its competitor H.264, developers who support WebM in their software do not have to agree to a patent license that requires royalty payments, or limits how developers license their own software.
### About the Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at http://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.
### Media Contacts
Brett Smith License Compliance Engineer Free Software Foundation +1 (617) 542 5942 x18
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