3 ms·

You're right of course. Free vs Non-Free had nothing to do with it. I just really hate how everyone is hating on Mozilla for making a choice that is consistent

You're right of course. Free vs Non-Free had nothing to do with it. I just really hate how everyone is hating on Mozilla for making a choice that is consistent with their principles.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
blasdel 17y ago
They have a custom auto-installer for Flash baked into Firefox, and they've even distributed the binaries to it from addons.mozilla.org. Nobody that hasn't already been wanking over it is going to start using Theora. Authors will just fall back to Flash playing h.264 in mp4 containers via HTTP like they've been doing for years, which Mozilla is eager to support. There's nothing consistent about their principles.
- dtf 17y ago
  They don't have to cough up $5 million to support Flash. That's a priniciple I can understand.
  - blasdel 17y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if they'd spent millions promoting Theora to the exclusion of all else (they reinvent the wheel by linking directly with liboggplay, instead of using libavcodec or the platform DS/QT/GS like everyone else) The salaries of all the cheerleaders and wheel-reinventors have to add up to something substantial. They've got piles of Google cash — they stopped begging for donations after their $60m search-referral windfall in 2006 got publicized, but they've gotten secretive about their financials after that.
    - kinetik 17y ago
      Google will help you find more recent financial details. The 2008 financials are right here: http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2009/11/19/state-of-mozilla-and-2008/ http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2009/11/19/state-of-mozilla-a...
      - blasdel 17y ago
        Thanks, that's a lot clearer than it used to be. I had found the 1099s a while back, but they stopped showing the whole picture after the Mozilla Corporation was created to take the revenue.
    - barrkel 17y ago
      I have little confidence in the stability of most video decoders in the face of corrupt data. The smaller the dependency set here, the better for stability.
- allyt 17y ago
  Ugh. Please, read the other side of the "argument", I was going to say "research", but seriously, the information is 5 seconds of google-fu away: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codecs/ http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codec...
  - blasdel 17y ago
    I'd already read it when it was published along with the rest of the Mozilla employee apologia. They don't have to bundle a h.264 decoder with the browser — Google is the only one that does that with their binaries (depending on how many transcoding machines they had for youtube, they may have already been paying the full license fee), and they're nice enough to dynamically link with libavcodec, so if you build it yourself you can just symlink to your platform's copy, and get every codec under the sun instead of just wav, mp3, aac, vorbis, h.264, and theora. Apple and Microsoft just link with their native platform libraries (QT & DirectShow), and use the licensed codecs they already licensed to bundle so your computer can function in the real world. Opera's using GStreamer on at least some of their platforms, but I think it's with a private copy. GStreamer would be a great fit for Mozilla if they'd get their heads out of their asses: they could even bundle their whole own private copy with only their foss-wank decoders. They don't even have to make it fall back to the platform libraries, as long as it's possible to drop in more decoders. They could even implement the same 'a proprietary plugin is missing' thing they do for Flash, and just download the binaries from the upstream developers (most of whom are based in western europe).
    - barrkel 17y ago
      IE dragging in random codecs is one of the reasons I don't use it. As it is in Firefox, I have realplayer and quicktime plugins disabled.
    - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      IE9 is bundling the codecs (otherwise it wouldn't work on Vista). Mozilla is bundling codecs. Google Chrome is bundling codecs. Opera bundles codecs on all platforms but Linux. Apple gets you to install Quicktime on Windows if you want video in Safari. Any thoughts on why you'd want to support every codec under the sun (and pay licence fees for most of them) if the market externalities and network-effects lead to only one codec being used? Why argue for "choice" if you know that will lead to people being forced to support one particular codec?
mfukar 17y ago
Consistency would only matter if Mozilla offered a better alternative, that had the potential to become a popular lead standard. They don't, so the only way for them out of this in my humble and limited point of view is to join Netscape in oblivion. Of course, since I'm so humble, you can ignore me.

You're right of course. Free vs Non-Free had nothing to do with it. I just really hate how everyone is hating on Mozilla for making a choice that is consistent with their principles.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

blasdel 17y ago

They have a custom auto-installer for Flash baked into Firefox, and they've even distributed the binaries to it from addons.mozilla.org. Nobody that hasn't already been wanking over it is going to start using Theora. Authors will just fall back to Flash playing h.264 in mp4 containers via HTTP like they've been doing for years, which Mozilla is eager to support. There's nothing consistent about their principles.

dtf 17y ago
They don't have to cough up $5 million to support Flash. That's a priniciple I can understand.
- blasdel 17y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if they'd spent millions promoting Theora to the exclusion of all else (they reinvent the wheel by linking directly with liboggplay, instead of using libavcodec or the platform DS/QT/GS like everyone else) The salaries of all the cheerleaders and wheel-reinventors have to add up to something substantial. They've got piles of Google cash — they stopped begging for donations after their $60m search-referral windfall in 2006 got publicized, but they've gotten secretive about their financials after that.
  - kinetik 17y ago
    Google will help you find more recent financial details. The 2008 financials are right here: http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2009/11/19/state-of-mozilla-and-2008/ http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2009/11/19/state-of-mozilla-a...
    - blasdel 17y ago
      Thanks, that's a lot clearer than it used to be. I had found the 1099s a while back, but they stopped showing the whole picture after the Mozilla Corporation was created to take the revenue.
  - barrkel 17y ago
    I have little confidence in the stability of most video decoders in the face of corrupt data. The smaller the dependency set here, the better for stability.
allyt 17y ago
Ugh. Please, read the other side of the "argument", I was going to say "research", but seriously, the information is 5 seconds of google-fu away: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codecs/ http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codec...
- blasdel 17y ago
  I'd already read it when it was published along with the rest of the Mozilla employee apologia. They don't have to bundle a h.264 decoder with the browser — Google is the only one that does that with their binaries (depending on how many transcoding machines they had for youtube, they may have already been paying the full license fee), and they're nice enough to dynamically link with libavcodec, so if you build it yourself you can just symlink to your platform's copy, and get every codec under the sun instead of just wav, mp3, aac, vorbis, h.264, and theora. Apple and Microsoft just link with their native platform libraries (QT & DirectShow), and use the licensed codecs they already licensed to bundle so your computer can function in the real world. Opera's using GStreamer on at least some of their platforms, but I think it's with a private copy. GStreamer would be a great fit for Mozilla if they'd get their heads out of their asses: they could even bundle their whole own private copy with only their foss-wank decoders. They don't even have to make it fall back to the platform libraries, as long as it's possible to drop in more decoders. They could even implement the same 'a proprietary plugin is missing' thing they do for Flash, and just download the binaries from the upstream developers (most of whom are based in western europe).
  - barrkel 17y ago
    IE dragging in random codecs is one of the reasons I don't use it. As it is in Firefox, I have realplayer and quicktime plugins disabled.
  - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
    IE9 is bundling the codecs (otherwise it wouldn't work on Vista). Mozilla is bundling codecs. Google Chrome is bundling codecs. Opera bundles codecs on all platforms but Linux. Apple gets you to install Quicktime on Windows if you want video in Safari. Any thoughts on why you'd want to support every codec under the sun (and pay licence fees for most of them) if the market externalities and network-effects lead to only one codec being used? Why argue for "choice" if you know that will lead to people being forced to support one particular codec?

mfukar 17y ago

Consistency would only matter if Mozilla offered a better alternative, that had the potential to become a popular lead standard. They don't, so the only way for them out of this in my humble and limited point of view is to join Netscape in oblivion. Of course, since I'm so humble, you can ignore me.