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Interesting. Thanks for the info. >Do I think Mozilla is holding back the open web by not supporting H.264? Yes. I'm wondering if it's fair to expect Mozilla
by statictype 17y ago
Interesting. Thanks for the info.
>Do I think Mozilla is holding back the open web by not supporting H.264? Yes.
I'm wondering if it's fair to expect Mozilla (which I'm given to understand is a non-profit organization) to pay a license fee on every download the way a commercial entity like Google or Apple does? Do they get enough donations\royalties for this to be feasible?
Edit: Mozilla's explanation: http://www.osnews.com/story/22787/Mozilla_Explains_Why_it_Doesn_t_License_h264 http://www.osnews.com/story/22787/Mozilla_Explains_Why_it_Do...
- robin_reala 17y agoActually, as I understand it, only the Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit entity. The Mozilla Corporation is for-profit and makes considerable amounts of money from search engine (currently Google) sponsorship. Estimates of $5mil for an H.264 licence for Firefox were being thrown around which is feasible for MoCo to pay. However, Firefox is just one product. Mozilla also have a mission to enable downstream projects, and buying a licence for Firefox wouldn’t cover these. They’d then be promoting a format on the web that would hurt long-term dependant projects of theirs; not a feasible solution in their eyes.
- ROFISH 17y agoSo why doesn't Google, a significant stakeholder of H.264 with both YouTube (don't want to reencode) and Android (H.264 is better on battery life due to hardware considerations), just sponsor Firefox's H.264 license?
- robin_reala 17y agoBecause that wouldn’t address the root issue of Mozilla’s objection: that downstream projects that use Mozilla code won’t be able to without paying for an H.264 licence themselves.