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The HTML Working Group appears to have bowed to pressure from Nokia and Apple and removed a clause stating that browsers and devices "should support Ogg Theora video and Ogg Vorbis audio, as well as the Ogg container format".

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amended draft now states that "user agents may support any video and audio codecs and container formats".

In a note, the Working Group editors, Ian Hickson of Google and David Hyatt from Apple, said that the situation may yet change again, as there are still several issues to resolve.

"It would be helpful for interoperability if all browsers could support the same codecs," they note. "However, there are no known codecs that satisfy all the current players: we need a codec that is known to not require per-unit or per-distributor licensing, that is compatible with the open-source development model, that is of sufficient quality as to be usable, and that is not an additional submarine patent risk for large companies."

They also note that specifying a required codec may not suit some implementations. "Certain user agents might support no codecs at all, e.g. text browsers running over SSH connections," they say.