Cisco 開發新的 Video Codec 與 HEVC (H.265) 競爭，專案名稱叫做 Thor：「World, Meet Thor – a Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec」。
沒什麼意外，專利問題是主要的原因：
Unfortunately, the patent licensing situation for H.265 has recently taken a turn for the worse. Two distinct patent licensing pools have formed so far, and many license holders are not represented in either. There is just one license pool for H.264. The total costs to license H.265 from these two pools is up to sixteen times more expensive than H.264, per unit. H.264 had an upper bound on yearly licensing costs, whereas H.265 has no such upper limit.
不過一開頭寫到 VP9 是 proprietary 的描述讓人很不解：
There are two of note – Google’s proprietary VP9 codec, and the industry standard H.265 (HEVC) codec, which is the successor to H.264 (AVC).
往下拉 comment 看果然就有人提出來：
How exactly is VP9 more "proprietary" than Thor? Both are open sourced under BSD license, both are royalty free, both are intended to be unencumbered by patents. Are you defining "proprietary" as "not controlled by Cisco"?
不知道在搞什麼鬼...