Free and Open
Another reason there are so many audio codecs: silly licensing restrictions. Would you base a business on technology a competitor controls?
That's why the Opus specification and complete source are Free, Open, and available for any use whatsoever without IP restrictions, explicit licensing or royalties.
Opus was developed and tested in a public, fully transparent process
within the IETF, proof that open collaboration can produce a better
audio codec than proprietary, secretive, patent-encumbered systems. Open
standards benefit-- and benefit from-- open source organizations and traditional
commercial software companies alike. Opus itself is the result of a
collaboration including Broadcom, Google, the IETF, Microsoft (through
Skype), Mozilla, Octasic and Xiph.Org.
