"Opera's refusal to license H264 hasn't got anything to do with ideals, obviously (Opera being proprietary and all), but the Norwegian browser makers believes the license is simply too expensive."
a) it's possible to be idealistic about royalty-free standards without also being idealistic about open source (personally I think both are somewhat pragmatic choices too but whatever), and more importantly:
b) Opera was actually the ones who proposed the idea of the video tag and the use of Theora 3 years ago:
"Opera's refusal to license H264 hasn't got anything to do with ideals, obviously (Opera being proprietary and all), but the Norwegian browser makers believes the license is simply too expensive."
a) it's possible to be idealistic about royalty-free standards without also being idealistic about open source (personally I think both are somewhat pragmatic choices too but whatever), and more importantly:
b) Opera was actually the ones who proposed the idea of the video tag and the use of Theora 3 years ago:
http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2007/03/05/1