
Google Chrome's H.264 support not true "free" software - cpearce
http://ianweller.org/tag/ogg-theora/
======
zokier
I began to wonder how long it will take for someone to begin working on a fork
of Firefox which would include support for h264. I have already seen patches
for both DirectShow and GStreamer backends, so I'd guess it's not that hard
technically.

What we need is a catchy domain name, some marketing and a few devs and the
spice shall flow again.

~~~
wmf
Who's going to pay the licensing fees? If you fork, you probably don't get
access to the Google money spigot.

~~~
blasdel
Apple (QT) and Microsoft (DirectShow) pay the license fees when they
distribute their Operating Systems.

Nobody gives a shit about distributing the x264 source code, and only the
fosstards even have a hiccup about distributing binaries, especially from
hosts outside the US. Ubuntu may not ship with the gstreamer plugin, but it
does prompt you to download it the first time it's asked for by an
application.

~~~
notauser
\- The 'fosstards' built and shared a good deal of the ecosystem on which the
Internet you are using runs.

\- A large chunk of the rest is directly or indirectly enabled, possible or
cheaper thanks to them.

\- Every one I have met in person has been polite about their goals, and while
they base them on fundamental principles I don't quite agree with, their
reasoning as based on those principles is rock solid.

As such I think they deserve a little more respect than being called names,
especially here. When was the last time you saw a start-up that used no FOSS
software?

~~~
blasdel
The 'fosstards' aren't generally writing the Free Software I use -- they're
hanging out in debian-legal and harassing people over petty imagined issues
and doing more than anyone else to promote strong intellectual property rights
(especially Software Patents: you don't weaken something by anal-retentively
respecting it).

The vast majority of people writing GPL software do not align with the FSF's
ideology, the GPL2 is just the most practical for their needs. Note how noone
outside their core commune has switched to the GPL3, and how noone actually
deeds the copyright for their random projects to the FSF like they recommend
in the license text?

The only hard-GNU software I (and most others here) really use are GCC,
coreutils, bash, and readline. Incidentally I'm hoping to be able to ditch all
the first three in the near future for quality reasons mostly borne of FSF-
pigheadedness (though I would like to swap out readline when that's the only
GPL lib in a program). If I switch back to a Mac I'll be able to use better
alternatives for all of them quite soon.

~~~
Sanguinez
Any stats to back up your wild claims and non-sense assumptions?

------
GHFigs
_Mozilla has taken on the responsibility of providing a free-software solution
for browsing the web_

..and in so doing they have intentionally crippled their browser's ability to
play one of the most widely used video formats. To some of us, this sounds
like a _dumb move_. Hence "get with the program", that program being the one
where you attempt to build the best software for browsing the web.

~~~
mortenjorck
There's a relatively simple solution to this that another heavy hitter in the
FOSS world has been using for years: Prompt for a "restricted package" install
when the user first encounters an h.264 video, similar to how Ubuntu deals
with non-FOSS drivers, plugins, and codecs.

It's the best of both worlds; you stay free and you get to be compatible.

~~~
blasdel
Mozilla links directly with liboggplay and actively avoids abstracting it in
any way. It can't handle any non-ogm container formats, and ogm was
intentionally designed not to handle any other codecs.

They're just assholes. If software patents are repealed in the US they'll
mourn the loss of the mainstay excuse with which they force earnest activist
wankery on their users. If patents were the real obstacle they'd distribute
the x264 decoder to/from locales where the patents are unenforceable, and/or
fall back on system libraries.

Their present actions serve only to strengthen the Copyright, Patent, and
Trademark status quo, because without IP assholery they would neither have a
soapbox to stand on nor an enemy to fight.

~~~
pavlov
The "ogm" file format is an old, unsupported, deprecated variant of the Ogg
container. Do you mean "ogv"?

Sorry, this may seem like nit-picking, but such a fundamental mistake makes it
harder to take your strong claims about Mozilla's design and intentions at
face value.

~~~
blasdel
I intentionally used it to avoid a similar riposte if I had said 'ogg', an
even older and shittier container. I didn't know they had implemented a new
one, but from what I can tell they took special care to recapitulate all the
mistakes of the last one.

------
natmaster
I still don't understand why Mozilla doesn't just use the codecs already
installed in the Operating System. Then you don't have to ship any codecs.

Separation of concerns.

~~~
wmf
See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070979>

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jsz0
What about x264? I know there is speculation that x264 wouldn't have much
chance to withstand a software patent fight but OGG Theora isn't 100% safe
either. If Mozilla is already going down that road they should just adopt x264
and see what happens. Challenge the patent holders to outrage the public and
cripple the Internet. That's going to do more for software freedom than
sticking their head in the sand.

~~~
zokier
x264 is a h264 encoder implementation. Mozilla couldn't "just adopt" it,
mostly because they have little use of an encoder. Its the decoder what they
need.

~~~
jsz0
Ah I see. I must be thinking of something else. I know I've definitely played
back h264 video using OSS software with no commercial hackery.

~~~
DarkShikari
Of course--ffmpeg's decoder library, libavcodec, supports every format under
the sun, including H.264.

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mieses
The number of comments trashing the FOSS position towards video codecs is
strange given that it's equally popular to trash the proprietary flash player.
Maybe this thread is a statistical anomaly or people are just inconsistent.

~~~
DarkShikari
What "FOSS position"?

The vast majority of people I know in FOSS, both users and developers, could
care less about patents. The apparent "FOSS position" comes from a vocal
minority, not the majority of FOSS users and developers.

~~~
mieses
They should care because the H264 patent expires in 2025. If we were looking
at a few years then you might be right not to worry. It's odd that MPEG LA
supporters are coming out of the woodwork on this issue, seemingly to prevent
HTML5 from starting out on the right foot.

~~~
DarkShikari
_the H264 patent_

"The" H.264 patent? I have, sadly enough, the MPEG-LA agreement here, and
there have got to be 25 pages at least simply listing patent numbers, with
expiry dates ranging from very soon to a long time from now.

 _MPEG LA supporters_

So everyone who is against Mozilla's attempt to force crappy software on us
using the excuse of patents is an "MPEG LA supporter"? Some of us _simply
don't care about patents_ , as hard as it might be to believe for some.

~~~
mieses
I understand. But you could have a replay of the Unisys GIF situation except
that it will last a very long time. Most developers and web services (vimeo,
youtube, etc) are only thinking about how to improve their product in the
short term. The best short term move is to choose H264. They're free to do
what they want. So is Mozilla. Those same web services will screw themselves
if they make Mozilla irrelevant. But again, short term thinking.

~~~
heresy
How will they screw themselves by making Mozilla irrelevant?

It's not like Mozilla in any way had any influence on their websites becoming
popular, nor will they be affected at all if browser user agents change from
Firefox -> Chrome.

Interesting leap of logic.

~~~
geocar
Well they do actually.

Right now: Firefox is the only platform-neutral web browser. Firefox on Linux
and Firefox on Windows are supposed to be the same browser.

Using OS codecs changes that, which means a Windows shop can test Windows
browsers, but no (reasonable) way to test Linux browsers.

So long as there is a platform-neutral browser, browsers have to work
similarly.

If you remember: Microsoft IE for mac and for windows operate so differently
that they must be developed for as separate browsers, and yet banks
_regularly_ told people to use IE (despite the fact that IE on the mac didn't
work either- and the bank programmers had no way to test it).

Content producers earn on eyeballs, and if 10-50% of their users aren't seeing
what they want them to see, they'll adapt: browser sniff, flash fallback, or
whatever it takes.

As a result, video will remain complicated. Maybe Apple and Microsoft can be
pressured into supporting OGG, or maybe their users can be prompted to get
higher quality video by downloading some codec or plugin. Maybe a technology
like ChromeFrame will become popular.

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elblanco
So?

------
icefox
better than flash

------
heresy
Excuse me while I take 5 minutes to not give a shit..

