http://news.com.com/BBC+reveals+open...3-5401004.html

The codec, called Dirac--after physicist Paul Dirac--is still in the early stages of testing. But developers say when it goes into beta in the fall of 2005, there's a good chance it will be as good, if not better, than anything else out there.

To protect the software and the techniques used to develop it, the BBC has taken out its own defensive patents, Davies said, and it is releasing the software under the Mozilla license to ensure "that those patents are licensed for free, irrevocably, forever."

The terms of the license mean that Dirac could be used in open-source software or in proprietary software in such a way that a company that produces the software would not have to divulge its source code, according to Davies.