I love that the flif format is totally free, which seems to be the main painpoint here with BPG. However:

1) It doesn't seem very compelling without lossy compression. Moreover, the recommended way to get a lossy version is to use `dd` on a flif file...

2) Even in the FLIF examples, BPG always looks the best: http://flif.info/example.html strikingly so.

This makes me think that, even if using HEVC is a bad idea, reusing video codecs might be a rich source of innovation for image compression.

Now that all the browser makers (except Apple) are on board for a royalty free video codec based on VP10/Daala/Thor tech, I would be surprised if they didn't re-use the same tech and patents to create a next-gen web image format.

It's not totally free. It's bound to the GPLv3 and thus has no chance of being included into any standard browser.

Thats the code's licence, not the file format's, so they'd only need to write a decoder (or ask that the decoder be re-licensed).

There's no specification, so you would have to do a clean room reimplementation.

> reusing video codecs might be a rich source of innovation for image compression

As in WebP?

While the results are interesting, being able to reuse a hardware HEVC decoder on a phone is a compelling reason to adopt BPG (if one adopts a new image format at all).

Using the hardware decoder requires creating a new decoder for each size of image you're decoding, and round-trip latency to get the frame back and do compositing on the web page. In addition, most hardware decoders have a limited number of decode contexts available, forcing the decodes to be serialized. Not a great prospect for an average website with tens to hundreds of images.

Re-using HEVC has very real legal implications. Which will hinder any mainstream adoption.