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Free software. The Cisco H.264 codec supplied with Firefox cannot be distributed with other software, despite being "open". From https://www.openh264.org/ https
by rhn_mk1 8y ago
Free software. The Cisco H.264 codec supplied with Firefox cannot be distributed with other software, despite being "open". From https://www.openh264.org/ https://www.openh264.org/ , there seem to be licensing costs involved with the usage of this code, which have been waived for some uses, implying they were not waived for others:
> We will not pass on our MPEG-LA licensing costs for this module, and based on the current licensing environment, this will effectively make H.264 free for use on supported platforms.
EDIT: To clarify, such licensing requirements on H.264 may make codecs fall outside of the guidelines of software distributions allowing only free software, making them supply their browser without one.
- detaro 8y agoIf I remember correctly, only decoding for online video streaming doesn't require licensing fees. Cisco hits the fee cap with the products they sell already, so letting everyone use their binaries doesn't cost them anything.
- TingPing 8y agoRight the core problem is you have to use their binaries so Mozilla can't build it and ship their own.
- kodablah 8y agoAlso includes lots of people w/ custom Chromium-based browsers that don't ship with these codecs (and libs like CEF don't compile with them enabled by default).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]