Why not just adopt multiple formats or no format at all?
HTML5's video tag supports multiple formats (it always has) and the spec does not mandate any specific codec. Nobody is proposing to adopt h.264 as part of the standard.
Just to be more specific because this seems to be a point of confusion:
HTML5 video tag was always supposed to allow any codec to be used.
It was also, from the first time it was proposed by Opera, intended to use Theora as a baseline interoperability codec which everyone could implement for free so that if you wanted to guarantee someone could see it on any HTML5 compliant platform you could use that.
Just to underline that point. No-one, at any point said "Theora is the best codec in the world lets force everyone to use that", instead they said "What are the best, freely implementable codecs" and the only good answer was Theora (and maybe Dirac at some point in the future).
This was all written up in the spec.
Apple and Nokia said "we don't care what you write in the spec, we're not going to implement Theora".
The spec author didn't want to have anything in the spec that didn't reflect reality, and didn't think having such things in the spec would help change that reality, so he took Theora out and said no baseline default codec would be added until there was a royalty free option that the main players could agree on.
Again, just to underline this twice, no-one proposed H.264 (or any other royalty bearing codec) for inclusion in the spec because W3C specs do not allow royalties.
Even Apple thinks this is a good thing:
"After careful consideration of the draft patent policy, Apple believes that it is essential to continued interoperability and development of the Web that fundamental W3C standards be available on a royalty-free basis. In line with the W3C’s mission to “lead the Web to its full potential,” Apple supports a W3C patent policy with an immutable commitment to royalty-free licensing for fundamental Web standards. Apple offers this statement in support of its position."
I think a while back that was under consideration, but the spec-writers gave up since they knew that no matter what codec they picked, they knew they couldn’t get all browser vendors to implement it.
You're probably confusing it with Theora, which was actually part of the spec for a while but was removed around last June for the reasons you mention. That's when the public shitstorms started. I was an avid reader of what WHAT-WG list around the time leading up to that and I never recall anybody seriously proposing H.264 be put into the spec.
Ah ok. I didn't learn of the issue until after Theora was removed, so all I saw were the reasons why neither H.264 nor Theora were in the spec (and the impression that at least one of those had been considered for it).
HTML5's video tag supports multiple formats (it always has) and the spec does not mandate any specific codec. Nobody is proposing to adopt h.264 as part of the standard.