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> I don't recall either gaining any traction until they were better in some way, either for developers or implementors.

No, when they got traction was before they were better, but after they were good enough, which means you could run your business on cheap Intel/AMD hardware.

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Ah, but that means they were better in some way relevant to business needs, and good enough elsewhere.

Theora is better in terms of cost, but that apparently isn't enough of an advantage to counter the technical shortcomings.

No, they were not better than the closed source alternatives for most businesses. They were cheaper. Cheaper trumps better often. Cheaper drove adoption.

I'm defining "cheaper" as one of many factors that go into deciding if one thing is better than another, I'm not speaking purely from a technical/feature standpoint.

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