Well, Graal is designed to compile Java and dynamic scripting languages, not C. Its flexibility means it can also compile C (=LLVM bitcode), but that's more of a tech demo than something they invest into.

I don't quite get your point though. Mine was only that it's common for single companies to develop multiple independent state of the art compilers, whereas after the 1990s video codecs tend to be collaborations between many companies. That's a piece of evidence that codecs are harder. But this is all quite subjective and I don't really care. Maybe compilers are actually harder and the trend to collaboration in video is just a cultural quirk of that subfield - doesn't really matter. The starting point of the thread was a belief that if MPEG didn't exist video codecs would have all been 100% free right from day one and I just don't see any evidence for that. The competition to MPEG in the 90s was mostly Sorensen and RealVideo if my fading memories aren't too garbled. Although the last version of Sorensen Spark was apparently a tweaked version of H.263 according to Wikipedia.