June 2009 is not "current". That issue (of making one or another codec mandatory in the HTML5 spec) is dead with decision you linked, for the reason that "if a browser
refuses to implement something, then we can't require it".
I'm being pedantic here, but I think it's very misleading to connect the spec issue with your conclusion that <video> could have been nice but somehow isn't. Had one or the other codec been made mandatory in the spec, the reality today would be exactly the same.
I'm being pedantic here, but I think it's very misleading to connect the spec issue with your conclusion that <video> could have been nice but somehow isn't. Had one or the other codec been made mandatory in the spec, the reality today would be exactly the same.