4 ms·

"- But I could just download gst-plugins-ugly and I'd be OK. - That's a selfish attitude. Everyone should be able to browse the Web with a free software stack w

"- But I could just download gst-plugins-ugly and I'd be OK. - That's a selfish attitude. Everyone should be able to browse the Web with a free software stack without having to jump through arcane hoops to download and install software (whose use is legally questionable)." I'll tell you what's selfish: going out of your way to cripple the experience of your users just so your extremist ideological views can prevail (and they won't anyway). I don't think the deliberate weakening of the #1 open-source browser over such trivial matters is a win either, ideological or otherwise. I love Firefox and I hope this sorry state of affairs will be quickly resolved sensibly before irrecoverable damage has been done. </opiniated>

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
halo 17y ago
It's interesting to draw an analogy between this and Apple's lack of support for Flash, especially given the lack of support for the prior but the large amount of support for the latter on here. I can only conclude you think it's equally selfish for Apple to cripple the experience of their users so their ideological views can prevail (and that they won't anyway). I can also conclude that you don't think that the deliberate weakening of the #1 smartphone browser over such trivial matters is a win either, ideological or otherwise.
- alextgordon 17y ago
  That's not quite a fair analogy. If Apple allowed Flash on the iPhone, it would have real consequences: lower battery life, higher RAM usage. I don't doubt for a minute that there's an ideological component as well - Apple want to see Flash gone. But at least that decision is based on technological problems with Flash. On the other hand, if Firefox were to support OS H.264 decoders, it would harm nothing but Mozilla's ideologies.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - halo 17y ago
    The technical problems are trivially overcome by requiring the user to press a button to activate Flash and/or providing an option, so that's pretty much moot.
    - evgen 17y ago
      Pressing a button does not change the abysmal performance of Flash on a Mac, why would one expect it to change this problem on a iPhone? The positions being taken by Mozilla and Apple in these cases are similar, but Apple's technical justification has merit while Mozilla's political stance has no technical merit to hide behind.
      - middayc 17y ago
        I have flash lite on my shitty noname nokia I bought for 20 eur, I can play youtube videos on webpages, and it even played some flash games I made with HaXe. I am certain iPhone has much better cpu than this ordinary phone, so I don't see technical merits in apple's decision but exclusiveness and closing itself in walled garden. same for java btw..
  - middayc 17y ago
    If in couple of years all web clients support only patented video codecs (which will happen if Mozilla doesn't succed here). Imagine doing a video startup or anything related to video that isn't irrelevant then.
bad_user 17y ago
Everybody's selfish, but Mozilla is also short-sighted ... they cannot and will not be able to have an influence on the defacto standards for codecs if they aren't popular enough. This was the right time to really push for HTML5 and standards ... to push Flash/Silverlight/Quicktime out of the way. Safari, Chrome, Opera and Firefox combined have enough market-share to do that. But no ... they take the same stance as Linux distros, all proprietary stuff is evil, ban it all. Unfortunately, while they have a point (H264 is not safe) ... they'll just lose users to Chrome or Safari.
- nzmsv 17y ago
  This is exactly how we ended up with things like ActiveX and Flash in the first place. It's not enough to make things just work today. Mozilla is right to be thinking about what happens a few years down the road. Mozilla has enough market share to make it relevant to web developers. Who will have to learn about the issue, and support Firefox. The users don't matter nearly as much.
  - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
    Talking of ActiveX, apparently Mozilla had code to support that and made the ideological decision not to. That worked out well for everyone.
  - bad_user 17y ago
    > This is exactly how we ended up with things like ActiveX and Flash in the first place. No, and I really don't see the resemblance. We ended up with ActiveX, Flash and Java (you forgot about it) in the first place, because there was no other way to get around the browser's limitations. In fact it's quite the opposite ... wasn't XmlHttpRequest implemented first as an ActiveX object in IExplorer 5? Or do you think some standards body magically came up with it and everyone was happy? H264 is the current standard for video, with lots of tools and lots of momentum ... in order to replace it you'll have to put a whole lot more on the table than ideology.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

halo 17y ago

It's interesting to draw an analogy between this and Apple's lack of support for Flash, especially given the lack of support for the prior but the large amount of support for the latter on here. I can only conclude you think it's equally selfish for Apple to cripple the experience of their users so their ideological views can prevail (and that they won't anyway). I can also conclude that you don't think that the deliberate weakening of the #1 smartphone browser over such trivial matters is a win either, ideological or otherwise.

alextgordon 17y ago
That's not quite a fair analogy. If Apple allowed Flash on the iPhone, it would have real consequences: lower battery life, higher RAM usage. I don't doubt for a minute that there's an ideological component as well - Apple want to see Flash gone. But at least that decision is based on technological problems with Flash. On the other hand, if Firefox were to support OS H.264 decoders, it would harm nothing but Mozilla's ideologies.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- halo 17y ago
  The technical problems are trivially overcome by requiring the user to press a button to activate Flash and/or providing an option, so that's pretty much moot.
  - evgen 17y ago
    Pressing a button does not change the abysmal performance of Flash on a Mac, why would one expect it to change this problem on a iPhone? The positions being taken by Mozilla and Apple in these cases are similar, but Apple's technical justification has merit while Mozilla's political stance has no technical merit to hide behind.
    - middayc 17y ago
      I have flash lite on my shitty noname nokia I bought for 20 eur, I can play youtube videos on webpages, and it even played some flash games I made with HaXe. I am certain iPhone has much better cpu than this ordinary phone, so I don't see technical merits in apple's decision but exclusiveness and closing itself in walled garden. same for java btw..
- middayc 17y ago
  If in couple of years all web clients support only patented video codecs (which will happen if Mozilla doesn't succed here). Imagine doing a video startup or anything related to video that isn't irrelevant then.

bad_user 17y ago

Everybody's selfish, but Mozilla is also short-sighted ... they cannot and will not be able to have an influence on the defacto standards for codecs if they aren't popular enough. This was the right time to really push for HTML5 and standards ... to push Flash/Silverlight/Quicktime out of the way. Safari, Chrome, Opera and Firefox combined have enough market-share to do that. But no ... they take the same stance as Linux distros, all proprietary stuff is evil, ban it all. Unfortunately, while they have a point (H264 is not safe) ... they'll just lose users to Chrome or Safari.

nzmsv 17y ago
This is exactly how we ended up with things like ActiveX and Flash in the first place. It's not enough to make things just work today. Mozilla is right to be thinking about what happens a few years down the road. Mozilla has enough market share to make it relevant to web developers. Who will have to learn about the issue, and support Firefox. The users don't matter nearly as much.
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  Talking of ActiveX, apparently Mozilla had code to support that and made the ideological decision not to. That worked out well for everyone.
- bad_user 17y ago
  > This is exactly how we ended up with things like ActiveX and Flash in the first place. No, and I really don't see the resemblance. We ended up with ActiveX, Flash and Java (you forgot about it) in the first place, because there was no other way to get around the browser's limitations. In fact it's quite the opposite ... wasn't XmlHttpRequest implemented first as an ActiveX object in IExplorer 5? Or do you think some standards body magically came up with it and everyone was happy? H264 is the current standard for video, with lots of tools and lots of momentum ... in order to replace it you'll have to put a whole lot more on the table than ideology.