8 ms·

Dear Mozilla, Please Don't Kill HTML5 Video

119 points by bcrescimanno 17y ago

nivals 17y ago
Keep Mozilla patent free. The HTML5 video jockeys want Flash dead more than they want the future of the internet to be open, they are being blinded by short term problems. Support Mozilla for making the tough, but correct choice.
jmillikin 17y ago
You should be directing this towards Microsoft and Apple; all of my videos work fine in Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, and Opera but currently do not in IE (54.5% market share) or Safari (5.3% share). If IE9 supports Theora, then that's one less browser which will require Java- or Silverlight-based fallbacks. H.264 is great, and I look forward to being able to use it in 15 years or so[1]. But the only reasonable codecs I can use today are Theora and Dirac. [1] http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the-html-5-video-codec-debate.ars http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the...
freetard 17y ago
Mozilla is waiting for google to open source On2's codec.
- evgen 17y ago
  What benefit if there for Google to do this anytime soon? They can wait for Mozilla to implode, scoop up most of their marketshare and continue to use the On2 codec as a veiled threat to keep MPEG-LA in line. The On2 codec is more useful to Google if it stays locked in a drawer.
  - freetard 17y ago
    Google doesn't want to kill mozilla. Open standards are good for the web and therefor good for Google. Google explicitly said that they want other browsers to copy the features of chrome because great broswers mean a better web experience for everyone which is good for google. A competitor such as mozilla that embraces open standard is actually a good thing for google, that's the kind of browser competitor they want, not IE. As for freeing On2 codec, google made it clear on their press release when they bought on2 that having an open video standard was primordial for the web. And again, it's in their interest to make the web the best platform possible, and having a free and open video codec usable by all is a huge part of achieving that goal. Letting the On2 codec locked in a drawer would be a huge mistake, it would help mpeg4 be the ubiquitous standard making any alternative irrelevant and useless (like vorbis or aac were with mp3, even though vorbis and aac were actually better). If there is any time to make use of On2, it's now and that's by making it open source.
- deleted 17y ago
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- jimmyjim 17y ago
  It isn't in Google's long-term interest to do any such thing for its future expansion. Especially with the news of Android on TV's, it would seem that it'll have to cave in to DRM-encumbered technologies in order to play ball with big media.
  - freetard 17y ago
    Having an open codec doesn't prevent at all using DRM.
  - jimmyjim 17y ago
    And on a related note, Google's visions come to light quite clearly if you look at what they're focusing on: cloud computing, ultra-high speed connections. They don't want users to have any local storage. They just want to serve ads on all media. Very obvious of course, but it's interesting to see the grand scheme coming together.
- blasdel 17y ago
  Noone really wants On2's proprietary codec implementations — that got us the Theora shitpile. What we could use is their independent patent portfolio.
evgen 17y ago
Don't worry, Mozilla is taking a principled stand that will become the impetus for their final jump into irrelevance. If IE9 does what their recent noises regarding HTML5 have been suggesting then Mozilla will join Opera in the "cute but useless" category and Chrome & IE9 will divvy up the Firefox marketshare within three years.
- CoreDumpling 17y ago
  Sorry, my sarcasm meter needs some calibration. While HTML5 video driving forward web standards is certainly nice, I can't even bring myself to believe that we will rid ourselves of the rotting carcass that is IE6 within the next three years, let alone Flash as a video delivery platform. I don't think Mozilla feels threatened yet, but we'll see if they change their minds once they see this affecting their bottom line. Strangely enough, my gripes with Firefox have driven me to Opera, despite the "cute but useless" label you have slapped on it in such a cavalier fashion.
  - jmillikin 17y ago
    Opera is sort of "cute but useless" -- on some sites I maintain for non-technical users, Opera has a smaller market share than IE5. IE6 will probably be around until we're all dead of age.
    - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      I'm guessing your not in Eastern Europe? I'm guessing you are in the US since their denizens are famous for assuming the world stops outside their borders. Opera + Chrome + Mozilla (i.e. Theora supporting) market share varies by region but is probably over 50% in every european country bar the UK and that will probably topple with the browser ballot.
      - jmillikin 17y ago
        Opera + Chrome + Mozilla (i.e. Theora supporting) market share varies by region but is probably over 50% in every european country bar the UK Why do Opera users always say something like this? "Opera (and the important browsers) has some huge market share!" 0.2 + 18 + 43 > 50, but the 0.2 really doesn't matter.
docgnome 17y ago
I like how Mozilla gets all the blame for refusing to support a non-free solution, instead of Google, Apple, and Microsoft for choosing a proprietary solution.
- andrewfox 17y ago
  I think the idea that the article is “hating” or “blaming” Mozilla for anything is just a little bit overdoing it. To say the least. The article goes out of its way to empathise with and respect the Mozilla position.
- bcrescimanno 17y ago
  I'd personally contend that MS, Apple, and Google didn't "choose proprietary," they chose 1) the current market leading format 2) ...that has the most video content available online already 3) ...that can be hardware accelarated 4) ...that offers the best quality to size ratio.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - daleharvey 17y ago
    none of those change the fact that they "chose proprietary"
    - bcrescimanno 17y ago
      Sure--but they chose pragmatically. Proprietary vs. open was not as major a factor as say; not forcing 9 of 10 businesses to re-encode all of their video if they want it to work with Firefox.
      - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
        Yes, it's entirely pragmatic for Apple and Microsoft to choose an option that can't be implemented in Free Software or even free software produced by small companies. Anti-competitive actions are always pragmatic if you're not going to get punished for them. I don't really blame them though. The US government allows software patents and has a terrible patent system that massively favours entrenched interests and blessed the MPEG patent pool which created the current mess. (Bear in mind that the US government spent most of the 20th century breaking up patent pools because they were anti-competitive). People say "there's too many patents around video codecs" but no one stops to ask why. The answer is because anyone who gets a patent into MPEG gets an equal cut of the profits, doesn't matter how small, useless or even counter-productive your idea is. It all adds to the patent thicket that prevents competition. How can anyone say with a straight face that they are choosing a bureaucratic monopoly because quality is so important to them?
fungi 17y ago
this really isn't fair mozilla is in no position to be directly supporting h264, to suggest otherwise is just naive. its not a free codec and they simply can't afford to bet their future on the liability of massive royalties when the licensing regime changes (and it will). their reasons for not indirectly supporting h264 via the OS is in my view valid but weak, would assume that this will be overcome with an extension of some sort in the future. in any case encoding video twice really isn't a big deal.
- bcrescimanno 17y ago
  How do you account for them directly supporting GIF? I'm not disagreeing in principle; but history shows that Mozilla as an organization is capable of picking it's battles and even supporting patent encumbered formats if doing so will make the Web a better place. Being an employee of a one of the largest online video providers, I can assure you that both we and our customers see multiple encoding formats as a big deal.
  - jmillikin 17y ago
    The GIF patents expired while Firefox was still in early development. And it was not the GIF format itself which was patented, but a particular compression algorithm used with it -- decoders, as used in Mozilla, were not patented. People could (and did) create uncompressed GIFs to avoid the patent risk. For obvious reasons, uncompressed H.264 is not useful. [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html
    - bcrescimanno 17y ago
      The Mozilla appsuite was released as a 1.0 product in 2002 Firefox was released as a 1.0 product in 2004 The last GIF patents expired in 2006 (the first, in 2003 after the 1.0 version of the Mozilla App Suite)
      - jmillikin 17y ago
        Looking further, there were no patents on GIF decoders (from < http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html >). So Mozilla was completely in the clear.
Qz 17y ago
I'm so glad the patent system is spurring creativity and innovation.
- mkyc 17y ago
  It seems to have gotten us h264. The variant that isn't patented is clearly inferior - look at the screenshots.
  - andrewf 17y ago
    Theora is patented. On2 granted people the right to use their patented technology without fear of legal reprisal. http://theora.org/faq/#24 http://theora.org/faq/#24
fnid2 17y ago
In the end, this was a good move from Google, Apple, and Microsoft if they want to kill off FireFox. Why do any of those three want FF to survive? They're rich, they got money. They want to dominate the browser market. FF is all of their enemies, so in this instance, they are friends. I don't see anyway that FF could compete against them all if people can't watch videos in the browser. Additionally, they are all owners of massive content sites that will be able to distribute the content as well, so it's a win win for them. They beat out FF as a browser and they beat out rival content distributors.
- rimantas 17y ago
  Why would anyone want to kill something that looks suicidal anyway?
jsz0 17y ago
I think the Mozilla folks are just trying to make a point here but ultimately it's hard to see how they back it up against IE/WebKit. They'll have to give in eventually or they'll be left behind.
tmsh 17y ago
I imagine I'm missing something. But why couldn't Mozilla use an extension that supports H264? Similar to Ubuntu's nonfree packages? I imagine the HTML5 video tags are pretty deep in Gecko, but surely they could 'pave the way' with a clear interface for such an extension. And then use one that is developed by others. Isn't that one of the advantages of having a standardized <video> tag? Reading this: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codecs/ http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codec... It sounds like Mozilla is worried about (a) encouraging a non-free web and (b) passing on licensing fees to other people who use their product downstream. But surely there is less risk in being 'side-stream' so to speak with licensed technologies, esp. under a standardized markup. Anyway, curious legal issue.
- pingou 17y ago
  But who will make this extension ? Who will pay 5 millions $ each year to use H264 on Firefox ? If H264 become standard, every browser will have to pay the license fee. What if a new team of developers decide that all browsers sucks and they want to create their own, just like the Mozilla team did ? They will have to pay 5 millions if they want to distribute a browser that people could really use (almost nobody would use a browser that doesn't play their favorite videos).
  - tmsh 17y ago
    Good point. Though they could theoretically setup a separate financial entity that paid 5 million but was separate from the Mozilla foundation. And this separate entity might not really have to pay fees until 2015 or something unless I'm reading it wrong. Anyway, viva theora. It would be cool if there were some legal move they could do to get around the issue is all..
  - tpz 17y ago
    "Who will pay 5 millions $ each year to use H264 on Firefox ?" I've already paid for my H.264 licenses. Now I just want to use them. The PC to my left has a video card with licensed H.264 that I paid for and free software that harnesses it, the Mac in front of me has both a video card with licensed H.264 and a licensed software decoder and I paid for both, the Windows 7 VM running in the Mac even has a licensed H.264 decoder that I paid for, the phone to my right has licensed H.264 that I paid for, heck the linux-based set-top box in the living room has hardware in it with licensed H.264 decoding and as I'm sure you can guess I'll point out that I paid for that license too. :) "If H264 become standard, every browser will have to pay the license fee." Why? I just want Firefox to let me use the licenses I have already paid for. All they have to do is defer to the appropriate operating system -level decoding support as many have suggested. That they are refusing to do so suggests to me that this has nothing to do with licensing fees and has everything to do with something else we've not quite uncovered yet. At the end of the day, though, unless the Mozilla folks change their course I can easily see techies supporting family and/or business by saying "just install Chrome" the same way they used to (and to an extent still do, I suppose) say "just install Firefox" when their supported userbase complained about IE. The real risk now is that even if in the end Mozilla's issue is purely one of ideology it won't stop them from having become irrelevant in the process.
DannoHung 17y ago
Things I don't understand: * Fork? * H.264 HTML Video support via a plugin? Why aren't these valid solutions?
- blasdel 17y ago
  Yes, someone could fork Gecko + XULrunner + Firefox; but it is a huge pain-in-the-ass to even track it as upstream, much less diverge from it. It's purposefully architected to make a plugin very unsavory — you could do it with a plugin/extension that inspected every DOM for failed <video> embeds, dynamically replacing them with an <embed> of its own NSAPI plugin. You'd be guaranteed to get FOUC, poor detectablity, and regular breakage. At that point the author is better off just seamlessly falling back to Flash.
  - carussell 17y ago
    "It's purposefully architected to make a plugin very unsavory" I'd like a citation for this please, or at least some synthesis based on some explicit rationale (which is what I expected on the with that em dash, instead of a non-sequitur).
    - blasdel 17y ago
      Gecko links directly with liboggplay to restrict themselves to exclusively WAV and vorbis+theora in ogg containers. Every other app out there uses a standard media handling library: ffmpeg (esp. if bundling), GStreamer, QuickTime, DirectShow, or some combination of them. This was made explicit when us proles discovered that Mozilla has had a GStreamer <video> implementation for two years, for use in their mobile port so that they have a hope of playing video in real time: > My exclusive focus for this GStreamer integration has been to make it work with Fennec. Not enabling it in Firefox on platforms where GStreamer has been ported to, is as far as I know a political decision. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=422540#c105 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=422540#c105 Architecting against plugins is not new in the free software community. RMS purposefully designed GCC so that you couldn't interface with its internal representations to make it impossible to have independent language frontends, optimizers, or target backends. That led directly to ECGS, a complete fork of GCC away from the FSF's control after they let it languish and refused patches — the FSF lost and eventually blessed it as the 'real' GCC. Its closed architecture is the primary motive behind LLVM's ascendancy.
ja2ke 17y ago
Firefox has been slowly winning Joe consumers in the past few years by simply doing it better. Faster, less complicated, no spyware, displays everything. Regular users don't give a crap about the ideology behind any of those decisions, they just cared that FF sucks less than IE in almost every measurable way. From a consumer standpoint, not playing the video format everyone else plays goes against why so many started using FF in the first place. I don't care if Theora is great, it's not what people are using right now. Maybe Mozilla can fight this battle on the next go-round, but right now they're the odd man out in a split which has all major browsers and many many content creators on the other side. If Mozilla was Microsoft they could maybe try this, but they're not, and I think many people are frustrated by this video thing because to people who "just want good software," that was the message behind adopting FF from day one. Not militant idealism or everything should be free hippie coder talk or anything else - the impression they gave at least, was of practical and clean decisions to uncomplicated the lives of average users. Sometimes that means going with the flow, even if only for the time being. The moment they reintroduce "why doesn't this just work" into the equation, they fail at the expectation they spent so much trying to create when Firefox first caught on. This fight is weird because it feels like "Mozilla the ideological open source organization" is battling against "Mozilla the practical and uncomplicated software for your previously complicated and annoying life" marketing campaign.
wazoox 17y ago
This is utterly stupid. Mozilla can't support H264 and distribute freely its browser and conform to the (moronic) US law. This guy can whine as long as he want, there is no way around. Mozilla is a real US company with real money, not a couple of hackers in a garage; unfortunately they must comply to the unfortunate state of patent laws.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  I'm going to go round to the homes of everyone who assumes that shipping a hard-wired copy of a codec in a browser is the only way to support video, and smack them all upside the head with a printout of the source to gstreamer. It won't cause them any sort of enlightenment, but it will make me feel a bit better.
  - avar 17y ago
    The issue isn't that it's technically impractical to support H.264 but rather that it's legally impractical. Sure you could just offload the problem to the operating system via something like GStreamer but that just moves the target, it doesn't eliminate it. It just means anyone who distributes your OS gets into trouble rather than your browser distributor. This is about eliminating the possibility of submarine patents for an essential feature like video, not just moving the target around.
    - planettrash 17y ago
      I don't think that is a problem. Part of the price of the OS goes into the codec. Open Solaris tries to get around this, by getting you to pay for the codec after install. Of course not paying is the ideal outcome, for most consumers.
  - deleted 17y ago
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  - planettrash 17y ago
    Here here. Surely it's not hard to make an operating system and browser that makes it almost transparent to install a codec or bit of software. I agree, get gstreamer or something else to work seamlessly. And at the same time, give me the ability to turn the damn thing off. I can already imagine, the state of web pages to come, it will be like a license to put video adds all over my webpage, and drag my cpu into hades.
Robin_Message 17y ago
> I hope you can at least agree that going from two proprietary formats to one is a marked improvement. I think I'd argue one proprietary format is worse than two in terms of lock-in, monopoly power and misaligned incentives.
- bcrescimanno 17y ago
  Not when, in the case of two formats, the formats aren't competing and one, in fact, includes the other.
jrockway 17y ago
Dear Apple, Microsoft, and Google: Please don't kill HTML5 Video. ("Why should I change? He's the one who sucks!")
anr 17y ago
How old is h264? When will the patents expire?
planettrash 17y ago
I am lost in this debate. If the decoder is a paid for plugin. Then it makes sense for it not to be shipped. Why can't Google buy out the h.264 tech and give it to us all? Why do we need the video tag anyway? Doesn't it make more sense to use existing codecs that already sit on the system? Why bundle the codecs in the browser, wouldn't it be better to work on a common architecture that can interface with codecs?

119 points by bcrescimanno 17y ago

Keep Mozilla patent free. The HTML5 video jockeys want Flash dead more than they want the future of the internet to be open, they are being blinded by short term problems. Support Mozilla for making the tough, but correct choice.

jmillikin 17y ago

You should be directing this towards Microsoft and Apple; all of my videos work fine in Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, and Opera but currently do not in IE (54.5% market share) or Safari (5.3% share). If IE9 supports Theora, then that's one less browser which will require Java- or Silverlight-based fallbacks. H.264 is great, and I look forward to being able to use it in 15 years or so[1]. But the only reasonable codecs I can use today are Theora and Dirac. [1] http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the-html-5-video-codec-debate.ars http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the...

freetard 17y ago

Mozilla is waiting for google to open source On2's codec.

evgen 17y ago
What benefit if there for Google to do this anytime soon? They can wait for Mozilla to implode, scoop up most of their marketshare and continue to use the On2 codec as a veiled threat to keep MPEG-LA in line. The On2 codec is more useful to Google if it stays locked in a drawer.
- freetard 17y ago
  Google doesn't want to kill mozilla. Open standards are good for the web and therefor good for Google. Google explicitly said that they want other browsers to copy the features of chrome because great broswers mean a better web experience for everyone which is good for google. A competitor such as mozilla that embraces open standard is actually a good thing for google, that's the kind of browser competitor they want, not IE. As for freeing On2 codec, google made it clear on their press release when they bought on2 that having an open video standard was primordial for the web. And again, it's in their interest to make the web the best platform possible, and having a free and open video codec usable by all is a huge part of achieving that goal. Letting the On2 codec locked in a drawer would be a huge mistake, it would help mpeg4 be the ubiquitous standard making any alternative irrelevant and useless (like vorbis or aac were with mp3, even though vorbis and aac were actually better). If there is any time to make use of On2, it's now and that's by making it open source.
deleted 17y ago
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jimmyjim 17y ago
It isn't in Google's long-term interest to do any such thing for its future expansion. Especially with the news of Android on TV's, it would seem that it'll have to cave in to DRM-encumbered technologies in order to play ball with big media.
- freetard 17y ago
  Having an open codec doesn't prevent at all using DRM.
- jimmyjim 17y ago
  And on a related note, Google's visions come to light quite clearly if you look at what they're focusing on: cloud computing, ultra-high speed connections. They don't want users to have any local storage. They just want to serve ads on all media. Very obvious of course, but it's interesting to see the grand scheme coming together.
blasdel 17y ago
Noone really wants On2's proprietary codec implementations — that got us the Theora shitpile. What we could use is their independent patent portfolio.

evgen 17y ago

Don't worry, Mozilla is taking a principled stand that will become the impetus for their final jump into irrelevance. If IE9 does what their recent noises regarding HTML5 have been suggesting then Mozilla will join Opera in the "cute but useless" category and Chrome & IE9 will divvy up the Firefox marketshare within three years.

CoreDumpling 17y ago
Sorry, my sarcasm meter needs some calibration. While HTML5 video driving forward web standards is certainly nice, I can't even bring myself to believe that we will rid ourselves of the rotting carcass that is IE6 within the next three years, let alone Flash as a video delivery platform. I don't think Mozilla feels threatened yet, but we'll see if they change their minds once they see this affecting their bottom line. Strangely enough, my gripes with Firefox have driven me to Opera, despite the "cute but useless" label you have slapped on it in such a cavalier fashion.
- jmillikin 17y ago
  Opera is sort of "cute but useless" -- on some sites I maintain for non-technical users, Opera has a smaller market share than IE5. IE6 will probably be around until we're all dead of age.
  - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
    I'm guessing your not in Eastern Europe? I'm guessing you are in the US since their denizens are famous for assuming the world stops outside their borders. Opera + Chrome + Mozilla (i.e. Theora supporting) market share varies by region but is probably over 50% in every european country bar the UK and that will probably topple with the browser ballot.
    - jmillikin 17y ago
      Opera + Chrome + Mozilla (i.e. Theora supporting) market share varies by region but is probably over 50% in every european country bar the UK Why do Opera users always say something like this? "Opera (and the important browsers) has some huge market share!" 0.2 + 18 + 43 > 50, but the 0.2 really doesn't matter.

docgnome 17y ago

I like how Mozilla gets all the blame for refusing to support a non-free solution, instead of Google, Apple, and Microsoft for choosing a proprietary solution.

andrewfox 17y ago
I think the idea that the article is “hating” or “blaming” Mozilla for anything is just a little bit overdoing it. To say the least. The article goes out of its way to empathise with and respect the Mozilla position.
bcrescimanno 17y ago
I'd personally contend that MS, Apple, and Google didn't "choose proprietary," they chose 1) the current market leading format 2) ...that has the most video content available online already 3) ...that can be hardware accelarated 4) ...that offers the best quality to size ratio.
- deleted 17y ago
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- daleharvey 17y ago
  none of those change the fact that they "chose proprietary"
  - bcrescimanno 17y ago
    Sure--but they chose pragmatically. Proprietary vs. open was not as major a factor as say; not forcing 9 of 10 businesses to re-encode all of their video if they want it to work with Firefox.
    - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      Yes, it's entirely pragmatic for Apple and Microsoft to choose an option that can't be implemented in Free Software or even free software produced by small companies. Anti-competitive actions are always pragmatic if you're not going to get punished for them. I don't really blame them though. The US government allows software patents and has a terrible patent system that massively favours entrenched interests and blessed the MPEG patent pool which created the current mess. (Bear in mind that the US government spent most of the 20th century breaking up patent pools because they were anti-competitive). People say "there's too many patents around video codecs" but no one stops to ask why. The answer is because anyone who gets a patent into MPEG gets an equal cut of the profits, doesn't matter how small, useless or even counter-productive your idea is. It all adds to the patent thicket that prevents competition. How can anyone say with a straight face that they are choosing a bureaucratic monopoly because quality is so important to them?

fungi 17y ago

this really isn't fair mozilla is in no position to be directly supporting h264, to suggest otherwise is just naive. its not a free codec and they simply can't afford to bet their future on the liability of massive royalties when the licensing regime changes (and it will). their reasons for not indirectly supporting h264 via the OS is in my view valid but weak, would assume that this will be overcome with an extension of some sort in the future. in any case encoding video twice really isn't a big deal.

bcrescimanno 17y ago
How do you account for them directly supporting GIF? I'm not disagreeing in principle; but history shows that Mozilla as an organization is capable of picking it's battles and even supporting patent encumbered formats if doing so will make the Web a better place. Being an employee of a one of the largest online video providers, I can assure you that both we and our customers see multiple encoding formats as a big deal.
- jmillikin 17y ago
  The GIF patents expired while Firefox was still in early development. And it was not the GIF format itself which was patented, but a particular compression algorithm used with it -- decoders, as used in Mozilla, were not patented. People could (and did) create uncompressed GIFs to avoid the patent risk. For obvious reasons, uncompressed H.264 is not useful. [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html
  - bcrescimanno 17y ago
    The Mozilla appsuite was released as a 1.0 product in 2002 Firefox was released as a 1.0 product in 2004 The last GIF patents expired in 2006 (the first, in 2003 after the 1.0 version of the Mozilla App Suite)
    - jmillikin 17y ago
      Looking further, there were no patents on GIF decoders (from < http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html >). So Mozilla was completely in the clear.

Qz 17y ago

I'm so glad the patent system is spurring creativity and innovation.

mkyc 17y ago
It seems to have gotten us h264. The variant that isn't patented is clearly inferior - look at the screenshots.
- andrewf 17y ago
  Theora is patented. On2 granted people the right to use their patented technology without fear of legal reprisal. http://theora.org/faq/#24 http://theora.org/faq/#24

fnid2 17y ago

In the end, this was a good move from Google, Apple, and Microsoft if they want to kill off FireFox. Why do any of those three want FF to survive? They're rich, they got money. They want to dominate the browser market. FF is all of their enemies, so in this instance, they are friends. I don't see anyway that FF could compete against them all if people can't watch videos in the browser. Additionally, they are all owners of massive content sites that will be able to distribute the content as well, so it's a win win for them. They beat out FF as a browser and they beat out rival content distributors.

rimantas 17y ago
Why would anyone want to kill something that looks suicidal anyway?

jsz0 17y ago

I think the Mozilla folks are just trying to make a point here but ultimately it's hard to see how they back it up against IE/WebKit. They'll have to give in eventually or they'll be left behind.

tmsh 17y ago

I imagine I'm missing something. But why couldn't Mozilla use an extension that supports H264? Similar to Ubuntu's nonfree packages? I imagine the HTML5 video tags are pretty deep in Gecko, but surely they could 'pave the way' with a clear interface for such an extension. And then use one that is developed by others. Isn't that one of the advantages of having a standardized <video> tag? Reading this: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codecs/ http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codec... It sounds like Mozilla is worried about (a) encouraging a non-free web and (b) passing on licensing fees to other people who use their product downstream. But surely there is less risk in being 'side-stream' so to speak with licensed technologies, esp. under a standardized markup. Anyway, curious legal issue.

pingou 17y ago
But who will make this extension ? Who will pay 5 millions $ each year to use H264 on Firefox ? If H264 become standard, every browser will have to pay the license fee. What if a new team of developers decide that all browsers sucks and they want to create their own, just like the Mozilla team did ? They will have to pay 5 millions if they want to distribute a browser that people could really use (almost nobody would use a browser that doesn't play their favorite videos).
- tmsh 17y ago
  Good point. Though they could theoretically setup a separate financial entity that paid 5 million but was separate from the Mozilla foundation. And this separate entity might not really have to pay fees until 2015 or something unless I'm reading it wrong. Anyway, viva theora. It would be cool if there were some legal move they could do to get around the issue is all..
- tpz 17y ago
  "Who will pay 5 millions $ each year to use H264 on Firefox ?" I've already paid for my H.264 licenses. Now I just want to use them. The PC to my left has a video card with licensed H.264 that I paid for and free software that harnesses it, the Mac in front of me has both a video card with licensed H.264 and a licensed software decoder and I paid for both, the Windows 7 VM running in the Mac even has a licensed H.264 decoder that I paid for, the phone to my right has licensed H.264 that I paid for, heck the linux-based set-top box in the living room has hardware in it with licensed H.264 decoding and as I'm sure you can guess I'll point out that I paid for that license too. :) "If H264 become standard, every browser will have to pay the license fee." Why? I just want Firefox to let me use the licenses I have already paid for. All they have to do is defer to the appropriate operating system -level decoding support as many have suggested. That they are refusing to do so suggests to me that this has nothing to do with licensing fees and has everything to do with something else we've not quite uncovered yet. At the end of the day, though, unless the Mozilla folks change their course I can easily see techies supporting family and/or business by saying "just install Chrome" the same way they used to (and to an extent still do, I suppose) say "just install Firefox" when their supported userbase complained about IE. The real risk now is that even if in the end Mozilla's issue is purely one of ideology it won't stop them from having become irrelevant in the process.

DannoHung 17y ago

Things I don't understand: * Fork? * H.264 HTML Video support via a plugin? Why aren't these valid solutions?

blasdel 17y ago
Yes, someone could fork Gecko + XULrunner + Firefox; but it is a huge pain-in-the-ass to even track it as upstream, much less diverge from it. It's purposefully architected to make a plugin very unsavory — you could do it with a plugin/extension that inspected every DOM for failed <video> embeds, dynamically replacing them with an <embed> of its own NSAPI plugin. You'd be guaranteed to get FOUC, poor detectablity, and regular breakage. At that point the author is better off just seamlessly falling back to Flash.
- carussell 17y ago
  "It's purposefully architected to make a plugin very unsavory" I'd like a citation for this please, or at least some synthesis based on some explicit rationale (which is what I expected on the with that em dash, instead of a non-sequitur).
  - blasdel 17y ago
    Gecko links directly with liboggplay to restrict themselves to exclusively WAV and vorbis+theora in ogg containers. Every other app out there uses a standard media handling library: ffmpeg (esp. if bundling), GStreamer, QuickTime, DirectShow, or some combination of them. This was made explicit when us proles discovered that Mozilla has had a GStreamer <video> implementation for two years, for use in their mobile port so that they have a hope of playing video in real time: > My exclusive focus for this GStreamer integration has been to make it work with Fennec. Not enabling it in Firefox on platforms where GStreamer has been ported to, is as far as I know a political decision. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=422540#c105 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=422540#c105 Architecting against plugins is not new in the free software community. RMS purposefully designed GCC so that you couldn't interface with its internal representations to make it impossible to have independent language frontends, optimizers, or target backends. That led directly to ECGS, a complete fork of GCC away from the FSF's control after they let it languish and refused patches — the FSF lost and eventually blessed it as the 'real' GCC. Its closed architecture is the primary motive behind LLVM's ascendancy.

ja2ke 17y ago

Firefox has been slowly winning Joe consumers in the past few years by simply doing it better. Faster, less complicated, no spyware, displays everything. Regular users don't give a crap about the ideology behind any of those decisions, they just cared that FF sucks less than IE in almost every measurable way. From a consumer standpoint, not playing the video format everyone else plays goes against why so many started using FF in the first place. I don't care if Theora is great, it's not what people are using right now. Maybe Mozilla can fight this battle on the next go-round, but right now they're the odd man out in a split which has all major browsers and many many content creators on the other side. If Mozilla was Microsoft they could maybe try this, but they're not, and I think many people are frustrated by this video thing because to people who "just want good software," that was the message behind adopting FF from day one. Not militant idealism or everything should be free hippie coder talk or anything else - the impression they gave at least, was of practical and clean decisions to uncomplicated the lives of average users. Sometimes that means going with the flow, even if only for the time being. The moment they reintroduce "why doesn't this just work" into the equation, they fail at the expectation they spent so much trying to create when Firefox first caught on. This fight is weird because it feels like "Mozilla the ideological open source organization" is battling against "Mozilla the practical and uncomplicated software for your previously complicated and annoying life" marketing campaign.

wazoox 17y ago

This is utterly stupid. Mozilla can't support H264 and distribute freely its browser and conform to the (moronic) US law. This guy can whine as long as he want, there is no way around. Mozilla is a real US company with real money, not a couple of hackers in a garage; unfortunately they must comply to the unfortunate state of patent laws.

ubernostrum 17y ago
I'm going to go round to the homes of everyone who assumes that shipping a hard-wired copy of a codec in a browser is the only way to support video, and smack them all upside the head with a printout of the source to gstreamer. It won't cause them any sort of enlightenment, but it will make me feel a bit better.
- avar 17y ago
  The issue isn't that it's technically impractical to support H.264 but rather that it's legally impractical. Sure you could just offload the problem to the operating system via something like GStreamer but that just moves the target, it doesn't eliminate it. It just means anyone who distributes your OS gets into trouble rather than your browser distributor. This is about eliminating the possibility of submarine patents for an essential feature like video, not just moving the target around.
  - planettrash 17y ago
    I don't think that is a problem. Part of the price of the OS goes into the codec. Open Solaris tries to get around this, by getting you to pay for the codec after install. Of course not paying is the ideal outcome, for most consumers.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- planettrash 17y ago
  Here here. Surely it's not hard to make an operating system and browser that makes it almost transparent to install a codec or bit of software. I agree, get gstreamer or something else to work seamlessly. And at the same time, give me the ability to turn the damn thing off. I can already imagine, the state of web pages to come, it will be like a license to put video adds all over my webpage, and drag my cpu into hades.

Robin_Message 17y ago

> I hope you can at least agree that going from two proprietary formats to one is a marked improvement. I think I'd argue one proprietary format is worse than two in terms of lock-in, monopoly power and misaligned incentives.

bcrescimanno 17y ago
Not when, in the case of two formats, the formats aren't competing and one, in fact, includes the other.

jrockway 17y ago

Dear Apple, Microsoft, and Google: Please don't kill HTML5 Video. ("Why should I change? He's the one who sucks!")

anr 17y ago

How old is h264? When will the patents expire?

planettrash 17y ago

I am lost in this debate. If the decoder is a paid for plugin. Then it makes sense for it not to be shipped. Why can't Google buy out the h.264 tech and give it to us all? Why do we need the video tag anyway? Doesn't it make more sense to use existing codecs that already sit on the system? Why bundle the codecs in the browser, wouldn't it be better to work on a common architecture that can interface with codecs?