

Video, Freedom And Mozilla - felixmar
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/01/video_freedom_a.html

======
Hexstream
"- But I could just download gst-plugins-ugly and I'd be OK. - That's a
selfish attitude. Everyone should be able to browse the Web with a free
software stack without having to jump through arcane hoops to download and
install software (whose use is legally questionable)."

I'll tell you what's selfish: going out of your way to cripple the experience
of your users just so your extremist ideological views can prevail (and they
won't anyway).

I don't think the deliberate weakening of the #1 open-source browser over such
trivial matters is a win either, ideological or otherwise.

I love Firefox and I hope this sorry state of affairs will be quickly resolved
sensibly before irrecoverable damage has been done.

</opiniated>

~~~
bad_user
Everybody's selfish, but Mozilla is also short-sighted ... they cannot and
will not be able to have an influence on the defacto standards for codecs if
they aren't popular enough.

This was the right time to really push for HTML5 and standards ... to push
Flash/Silverlight/Quicktime out of the way. Safari, Chrome, Opera and Firefox
combined have enough market-share to do that.

But no ... they take the same stance as Linux distros, all proprietary stuff
is evil, ban it all. Unfortunately, while they have a point (H264 is not safe)
... they'll just lose users to Chrome or Safari.

~~~
nzmsv
This is exactly how we ended up with things like ActiveX and Flash in the
first place. It's not enough to make things just work today. Mozilla is right
to be thinking about what happens a few years down the road.

Mozilla has enough market share to make it relevant to web _developers_. Who
will have to learn about the issue, and support Firefox. The users don't
matter nearly as much.

~~~
bad_user
> _This is exactly how we ended up with things like ActiveX and Flash in the
> first place._

No, and I really don't see the resemblance. We ended up with ActiveX, Flash
and Java (you forgot about it) in the first place, because there was no other
way to get around the browser's limitations.

In fact it's quite the opposite ... wasn't XmlHttpRequest implemented first as
an ActiveX object in IExplorer 5? Or do you think some standards body
magically came up with it and everyone was happy?

H264 is the current standard for video, with lots of tools and lots of
momentum ... in order to replace it you'll have to put a whole lot more on the
table than ideology.

------
alextgordon
Mozilla's decision to push for Ogg seems like a classic programmer's response.
They're attempting to solve the problem with an _engineering_ solution.

Unfortunately, this won't be enough. If Mozilla want to usurp H.264, they'll
either need a huge market share or budget (which they don't have) or
technological superiority over H.264 (I don't think this is the case either).
They're also fighting against Apple, who want H.264 to succeed.

~~~
windsurfer
Mozilla isn't making any choices. supporting theora is their only option due
to patents surrounding H.264. It has nothing to do with engineering, and
everything to do with copyright and patents.

~~~
briansmith
They're not supporting H.264 because they don't want to promote Windows 7 (or
Mac OS X) over Linux. They could easily implement H.264 support for all
operating systems that license H.264, and then let websites dynamically choose
what to send based on what the operating system supports. However, that means
Firefox would work better on Windows 7 and Mac OS X than it would on 100%
legit Linux distros.

~~~
DrJokepu
I think this is an incredibly silly decision. Basically it boils down to
"operating systems A and B support feature X while C doesn't, but we don't
want operating system C to be at disadvantage so we will just disable access
to feature X on A and B too."

------
thristian
There was a recent HN post on this topic that garnered a lot of discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070780>

This new blog-post from Robert O'Callahan (one of the Mozilla developers who
worked on the <video> element) explains Mozilla's position much better than
anyone in the HN thread did, touching on things like patent licensing, using
GStreamer, and idealism.

~~~
axod
Idealism is an excellent way to loose users to Chrome.

~~~
leftnode
Or a way to make users even more die-hard Firefox users. I don't understand
how this is extremely idealistic. This is an excellent way to show how
software patents are bad.

~~~
axod
Sure, I'm agreed software patents are bad. But average users just want stuff
to work.

Remember those music players that didn't play mp3 files so they didn't have to
pay a few cent royalty? No me either, but they existed for a time. Everyone
wanted to play mp3 files, so the players that could play them won out.

~~~
halo
>Sure, I'm agreed software patents are bad. But average users just want stuff
to work.

Right. Yet you've said before that you'll get rid of your iPhone if "they put
Flash on it". How do you reconcile your position that "average users just want
stuff to work" against being so vehemontly against Flash on the iPhone?

~~~
axod
? Flash is amongst the worst examples of 'stuff that works'. Flash _doesn't_
work. It pegs your CPU at 100%, crashes, and generally ends up in mess.

 _IF_ they can get flash to work, and not crash, and not eat battery, and not
peg CPU, then I'd probably welcome it. But they haven't managed to do that in
the last 10 years with the standard versions of flash, so I think it's
extremely unlikely they'd manage it on slimmed down hardware like the iPhone.

------
blasdel
Since 2004, Mozilla has had baked-in support for automatically installing
Flash on the first encounter if the plugin is not found. A nice little yellow
infobar pops down (a brilliant UI innovation), prompting you to install it
with a few clicks, even without root access on both Windows and Linux.

They've also recently implemented automatic update checking for Flash. Since
it's their biggest security hole, they throw up a big nasty "update now"
warning on launch if you're using a known-vulnerable version.

Mozilla initially distributed the Flash binaries under license themselves via
addons.mozilla.org -- I'm not sure if they still do so.

Flash is shitty, nonredistributable, closed-source, restricted-platform,
proprietary, and patented but they're willing to go to great lengths to help
their users use it. Why not do the same thing for ffmpeg, which is merely
patented?

------
jwr
Other issues aside, I don’t understand why supporting a proprietary Flash
plugin from a single vendor is better than opening support for a standardized
(albeit similarly patent-encumbered) video format with open-source
implementations.

~~~
ugh
I (as an end user) don’t care so much about freaking patents. I only see that
my MBP sounds like a fighter jet when playing flash videos, not when playing
h.264 videos.

------
bonaldi
From the article: _It pushes the software freedom issues from the browser
(where we have leverage to possibly change the codec situation)_

This is what it's all really about: trying to use Mozilla's leverage to foist
an unpopular and inferior technology on an unwilling web. Remind you of the
antics of any other company with a popular browser?

Power corrupts. Thank god Firefox doesn't have the same market share as IE
did. Webkit ftw, here.

------
lmkg
The discussion I've seen surrounding the issue is mostly centered around the
user (browser) and video quality. The thing that most stuck out to me from the
post, buried in the end, was the (potential) restrictions that could be placed
on creating h.264 content and publishing it on the web. I think that this is
the biggest relevant issue I've seen yet with h.264. Apparently these issues
are still potential and still under wraps, but I would not be in favor of
effective restrictions on including the <video> tag in a website.

------
arnorhs
Sorry for being very off-topic, but that three-column layout (or more in
higher res?) of the text makes it hard for me to read. Resizing also makes me
lose where I was reading.

Sorry, again.

~~~
briansmith
It looks great in IE--its all one column.

Sometimes lacking a "feature" can be a feature in itself.

------
freetard
Once google completes its merger with On2 (February), we'll get free and open
video codec for free on youtube. Firefox and chrome will include it. This is
why I think we'll never get Theora on youtube, but all hope is not lost thanks
to vp7 or whatever they end up calling it.

------
Skriticos
With all the discussion going on, I was looking for a comparison of the codecs
and found this website:
<http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html>

If you ask me, the h264 vs ogv versions were not that different at the same
bit-rates (sure, maybe a little). My point is, I'd really like to see more
actual data before we enter endless discussions and most of us don't know
what's actually talked about.

~~~
zokier
Problem is not that Theora isn't capable enough now that MozCo has poured
money on it. The problem is that Google and every other video service has
already their videos in h264, which is playable in Flash. So if YouTube were
to support Theora they'd need to re-encode all their videos, and store them as
duplicates.

Another problem with Theora is hardware. There is a lot of hardware h264
encoders and decoders, allowing even cellphones to play HD h264. AFAIK there
is absolute no Theora hardware currently.

~~~
Skriticos
Sounds like a chicken and egg problem to me. If we collectively ignore ogv
because there are no current hardware en/decoders, then why should anyone
build it? These things are built when enough demand is present. For that, the
push from the Mozilla foundation seems to be reasonable. Once there is more
demand, the tech comes automatically. If we clinge to H264, nobody will ever
build the right hardware. It's basically a demand based resource allocation
problem, and Firefox is doing the demand part. Seems reasonable to me.

------
jwr
He touched a very important point. Many people do not realize that GPL and
LPGL are fundamentally incompatible with patents (intentionally) and that in
many cases it is a ticking bomb.

When he writes "The software license permits you to redistribute and use the
code, but the MPEG-LA can still stop you", he means section 7 of the GPL
(2.0). I think many people who use the GPL for their software do not realize
that later on a single company (patent holder) can stop the redistribution of
that software.

~~~
bad_user
Any patent holder with relevant patents can stop redistribution of a software,
regardless of license ... GPL or not.

------
DannoHung
This is idotic. By _not_ supporting h.264 and _not_ getting in trouble if and
when MPEG-LA decides to cease and desist, they are making it much easier for
h.264 to become completely ingrained because h.264 is what works NOW and it is
what is widely supported NOW. Why? Who among the vast majority of blithering
idiots in the world knows or cares about the patent issues with h.264? Outside
of Hacker News and the Mozilla corporation, I'd put that number at just about
nil.

Yo, has anyone started work on a Mozilla fork that _does_ support h.264 either
through native support or plugins?

edit: Also, if no one _does_ sue, then the whole thing will have been simply
an exercise in idiocy.

------
ComputerGuru
If one were to create an open-source "proxy extension" for Firefox to shim
H264 support via proprietary binary blobs dynamically loaded into the proxy,
how do you think that would go?

~~~
zokier
why proprietary binary blobs and not FOSS ffmpeg/libavcodec?

edit: but I like that idea... Would it be possible to create an Fx
extension/plugin to enable h264 playback? I mean, QT and Flash plugins do
already play h264 video with Firefox in <object>/<embed> -tags.

~~~
ComputerGuru
That's exactly what I'm trying to ask. Not if it were technically possible,
but if it would be worth the while.

Why bother using a FOSS implementation of a patent-encumbered technology? FOSS
for EMCA standards (.NET, Java) is great, but FOSS for h264 is kinda pointless
(which is part of the argument in TFA)

~~~
zokier
Because most of the world is not under US jurisdiction.

------
cookiecaper
Well, if Bilski goes our way, then this whole issue is mute, right? Or are
there some other restrictions on the codec?

I agree that OGV is pretty much Mozilla's only option for now.

~~~
msg
Not mute. No.

It's called a moo point. You know, like a cow's opinion.

~~~
cookiecaper
Heh, sorry, it's early.

*moot

