Thanks!
Fraunhofer HHI has already released vvenc ages ago: https://github.com/fraunhoferhhi/vvenc and it's _really_ good on compression performance as well as speed.
The difference is that we used our own HEVC encoder as the base whereas Fraunhofer (and most likely x265 team) use the reference encoder VTM: https://vcgit.hhi.fraunhofer.de/jvet/VVCSoftware_VTM giving them all the tools from the beginning.
We are aware of the problems with HEVC and VVC, and it's sad to find out that the VVC licensing terms are even worse for open-source...
Right now it's mostly that we have been working on the HEVC for the past 10 years and it's basically just easier for us to continue with the next version developed from that. Would be much harder to "start from scratch" with the other codec families.
However, we are aware of the licensing problems so maybe something will change later ;)
Well, I think it does if any company wants to take use of our software and if they pay for the licensing fees, there should be no problems. ..and for personal use it might be hard to crack down ;)
I might add that we are a university research group developing the software..
Our Kvazaar HEVC encoder was converted to the new standard during the past couple of years.
Some general info on the conversion process for the Intra part is described in our open-access paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9690938
One of the problems back then was the GPL license.
Since the project has been started and maintained by Tampere University (of Technology) with public money, allowing more free use of the software makes sense to us.