The article completely glosses over the existence of the Alliance for Open Media[1]. They mention it and go straight into "Can something be done?". To me, the real question: Why should we care about MPEG anymore?
It is indeed true that the MPEG approach is dead. Once AV1[2] is out, the open, royalty-free codecs will be the better performing codecs for both audio (Opus[3]) and video.
So yes, if MPEG is dead, its components are free to join AOMedia, as long as they leave their silly RAND ideas behind.
The article mentions AOM (and vaguely what it is) about 5 times, and even dedicates a paragraph to AOM:
> Alliance for Open Media (AOM) has occupied the space left free by MPEG: outdated video compression standard (AVC), no competitive Options 1 standard (IVC) and no usable modern standard (HEVC). AOM’s AV1 codec, due to be released soon, is claimed to perform better than HEVC and will be offered royalty free.
It is indeed true that the MPEG approach is dead. Once AV1[2] is out, the open, royalty-free codecs will be the better performing codecs for both audio (Opus[3]) and video.
So yes, if MPEG is dead, its components are free to join AOMedia, as long as they leave their silly RAND ideas behind.
[1] http://aomedia.org/.
[2] https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-spec/
[3] https://opus-codec.org/