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There was a recent HN post on this topic that garnered a lot of discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070780 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=107

There was a recent HN post on this topic that garnered a lot of discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070780 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070780 This new blog-post from Robert O'Callahan (one of the Mozilla developers who worked on the <video> element) explains Mozilla's position much better than anyone in the HN thread did, touching on things like patent licensing, using GStreamer, and idealism.

axod 17y ago
Idealism is an excellent way to loose users to Chrome.
- leftnode 17y ago
  Or a way to make users even more die-hard Firefox users. I don't understand how this is extremely idealistic. This is an excellent way to show how software patents are bad.
  - axod 17y ago
    Sure, I'm agreed software patents are bad. But average users just want stuff to work. Remember those music players that didn't play mp3 files so they didn't have to pay a few cent royalty? No me either, but they existed for a time. Everyone wanted to play mp3 files, so the players that could play them won out.
    - halo 17y ago
      >Sure, I'm agreed software patents are bad. But average users just want stuff to work. Right. Yet you've said before that you'll get rid of your iPhone if "they put Flash on it". How do you reconcile your position that "average users just want stuff to work" against being so vehemontly against Flash on the iPhone?
      - axod 17y ago
        ? Flash is amongst the worst examples of 'stuff that works'. Flash doesn't work. It pegs your CPU at 100%, crashes, and generally ends up in mess. IF they can get flash to work, and not crash, and not eat battery, and not peg CPU, then I'd probably welcome it. But they haven't managed to do that in the last 10 years with the standard versions of flash, so I think it's extremely unlikely they'd manage it on slimmed down hardware like the iPhone.
  - bad_user 17y ago
    And how is that working in other areas? How many Linux desktop-users do you know? And out of those, how many use "pure" distributions, like gNewSense?

axod 17y ago

Idealism is an excellent way to loose users to Chrome.

leftnode 17y ago
Or a way to make users even more die-hard Firefox users. I don't understand how this is extremely idealistic. This is an excellent way to show how software patents are bad.
- axod 17y ago
  Sure, I'm agreed software patents are bad. But average users just want stuff to work. Remember those music players that didn't play mp3 files so they didn't have to pay a few cent royalty? No me either, but they existed for a time. Everyone wanted to play mp3 files, so the players that could play them won out.
  - halo 17y ago
    >Sure, I'm agreed software patents are bad. But average users just want stuff to work. Right. Yet you've said before that you'll get rid of your iPhone if "they put Flash on it". How do you reconcile your position that "average users just want stuff to work" against being so vehemontly against Flash on the iPhone?
    - axod 17y ago
      ? Flash is amongst the worst examples of 'stuff that works'. Flash doesn't work. It pegs your CPU at 100%, crashes, and generally ends up in mess. IF they can get flash to work, and not crash, and not eat battery, and not peg CPU, then I'd probably welcome it. But they haven't managed to do that in the last 10 years with the standard versions of flash, so I think it's extremely unlikely they'd manage it on slimmed down hardware like the iPhone.
- bad_user 17y ago
  And how is that working in other areas? How many Linux desktop-users do you know? And out of those, how many use "pure" distributions, like gNewSense?