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It seems to me that the author purposely avoided to discuss the reasons against Mozilla not adopting H264: - Firefox may be the most used browser on computers,

It seems to me that the author purposely avoided to discuss the reasons against Mozilla not adopting H264: - Firefox may be the most used browser on computers, but on mobile devices H264 is clearly winning. And that's where companies want to go right now. - A lot (the majority?) of online videos are already encoded using H264. - Flash is also proprietary. So, if you shun H264 for your ideals, you should do so also with flash.

Qz 17y ago
Flash is provided to Mozilla as a third party plugin, so Mozilla doesn't actually have to deal with the licensing fees. If they use H264 for the video element, Mozilla has to license it for their own software.
- stralep 17y ago
  Why not allow third parties to perform playing <video> tag?
  - wmf 17y ago
    Mozilla won't allow any kind of plugins for <video> because they want to force you to use Theora. You're getting freedom, and you're going to like it. (Because who doesn't want freedom?) The cost of the H.264 license is not the issue.
    - Qz 17y ago
      Now you're just making assumptions. As far as I know, there isn't a single browser that uses plugins for displaying elements defined as part of the HTML specification. With <video> as part of the HTML5 spec, any browser supporting HTML5 is supposed to render <video> tags without relying on 3rd party support. This is the entire reason for <video> existing in the first place.
      - wmf 17y ago
        I don't think this is an assumption: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/01/video_freedom_a.html http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/01/video_fr... http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2009/06/directshow_and.html http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2009/06/directsh... I always thought it was a mistake that <img> wasn't extensible (e.g. Mozilla would display PNG with <img> but for IE you'd need <embed> or <object>) and I think that mistake is being perpetuated with <video>.

Qz 17y ago

Flash is provided to Mozilla as a third party plugin, so Mozilla doesn't actually have to deal with the licensing fees. If they use H264 for the video element, Mozilla has to license it for their own software.

stralep 17y ago
Why not allow third parties to perform playing <video> tag?
- wmf 17y ago
  Mozilla won't allow any kind of plugins for <video> because they want to force you to use Theora. You're getting freedom, and you're going to like it. (Because who doesn't want freedom?) The cost of the H.264 license is not the issue.
  - Qz 17y ago
    Now you're just making assumptions. As far as I know, there isn't a single browser that uses plugins for displaying elements defined as part of the HTML specification. With <video> as part of the HTML5 spec, any browser supporting HTML5 is supposed to render <video> tags without relying on 3rd party support. This is the entire reason for <video> existing in the first place.
    - wmf 17y ago
      I don't think this is an assumption: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/01/video_freedom_a.html http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/01/video_fr... http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2009/06/directshow_and.html http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2009/06/directsh... I always thought it was a mistake that <img> wasn't extensible (e.g. Mozilla would display PNG with <img> but for IE you'd need <embed> or <object>) and I think that mistake is being perpetuated with <video>.