
Mozilla's Robert O'Callahan explains why it was important to support Ogg in Firefox - nickb
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2008/08/why_ogg_matters.html
======
felixmar
I think it's great that Mozilla is promoting royalty free technologies. RAND
licensing is fine if you're a megacorp, but for smaller companies and
especially startups it can be a big hurdle. And the 'reasonable' part is often
questionable in the technical sense when many patents are pretty trivial or
should not have been granted at all.

------
unalone
Bloggers really have to learn to edit their posts. Not even as a disagreement
with "open for open's sake" but as a matter of writing quality in general.
Bloggers just don't write well.

"To reach the rest, we will keep turning people into Firefox users, and
pressure Apple, Microsoft and other vendors to support Vorbis and Theora."

That's a complete waste of a sentence. "To get people who don't use our
product to use this format, we will make them use our product."

"Isn't Theora inferior to H.264, so no-one will use it? Theora isn't bad on an
absolute scale --- look at some demos to see for yourself."

Can't they just say that it's inferior, and say it straight out? Double talk
fools nobody. Something like "It's inferior, but not by much - and a growing
community online is trying to use entirely open formats. (Try it yourself
here.)"

"Even if it's slightly lower quality than H.264 at some bit rates, it's still
going to be very useful to people who favour free formats on principle, or who
need an open-source solution, or who want a solution that Just Works across
platforms without plugins, or who just want a solution without licensing fees
--- for example, if you just want a convenient way to use a video clip in a
Web app."

First off - DO you have to pay Adobe to use Flash commercially? I was not
aware of this.

Second - liking something just because it's free is and always will be stupid.
People don't use Firefox because it's free. They use it because they think
it's the best browser, and by some arguments it is. Similarly, a post like
this would serve better purpose to be open about the practical advantages of
Ogg, rather than to try and preach to the masses.

This is something that I've become increasingly annoyed with over the last few
months regarding the Firefox team: they've become less like visionaries and
more like evangelists. Reading this was like seeing Firefox's download page
for 3: the See How We Stack Up comparison with Safari.

Compatible with modern Web pages and technologies - both

Active security features like anti-phishing and anti-malware - Firefox

Battle-tested security process and the industry’s fastest response times -
Firefox

Thousands of ways to personalize your online experience - Firefox

100% free and open source software - Firefox

That is a pure propaganda bit and Mozilla knows it. The important bit is the
compatibility, and by Acid3 standards, Firefox is LESS compatible than Safari
(and Webkit blows it away, of course). The quick response times is really a
tie. "Battle-tested" means nothing. I know people like plug-ins, but "online
experience" is another marketing term. It doesn't really matter in terms of
competition whether or not something is open source, but Safari IS "100%
free." "Active security features" is legitimate, but that's only one point in
Firefox's advantage, and - of course - they leave out Safari's advantages as
well. While I know this is standard practice for competition, Firefox would
win me over much more if they cut the crap and were honest about "Okay, you
might like us more IF you do the following things a lot, and you might NOT
like us if you do such-and-such."

This point, and my following points about aesthetic of writing, don't seem to
bother many other people here. The art of honesty is one that doesn't hold
much water online, so it seems. People online are much happier with
imprecision and selective dishonesty than they should be, and it's something
that worries me about developing culture.

That's my main argument; what follows is merely aesthetic nitpicking rather
than nitpicking on content.

"Vendor pressure must come from content providers dedicated to making
compelling content available in free formats (coupled with a superior playback
experience in Firefox)."

This sentence is just terrible and seems to shift subject and tense as it
does. Vendor pressure - the noun here seems like it should be vendor, but it's
pressure - must come from content providers - an empty term - dedicated to
making compelling content - compelling is compelling regardless of format -
available in free formats - but, of course, this is self-obvious (because, the
"pressure" is the pressure to use open formats; therefore, any pressure to use
open formats must come from open format users) - coupled with a superior
playback experience in Firefox - not only is "experience" a terrible word
that's overused in this post, but this post should have to do with Ogg Vorbis
and not promoting Firefox. That hurts the cause of Ogg, when its promoter is
only promoting it to promote itself.

"This is a great example of why Mozilla and Firefox are important. The Web
needs a high-market-share browser vendor committed to free software and open
standards across the board."

This is not a great example, because open formats are not necessarily
important, never have been, and most likely never will be. They've been nice,
of course, but they're always an added luxury rather than a main feature. The
web does not "need" these things. It might "benefit from" them, but it does
not need them. Also, needless to say, there's so much fluff in this sentence.
This writer is terrible.

"The answer is simple"

Yes, but it wasn't explained simply.

And it's funny, as an afterthought, because almost every programmer I know is
precise with language to a fault. The person writing this is not writing as a
programmer. He is not writing from a logical point of view. He is writing as a
marketer, which almost guarantees that he knows he's being deceptive with his
language.

Here's how he could have written that post and made it shorter but better.

"Matt Asay doesn't understand why shipping Ogg Vorbis and Theora in Firefox is
important. The answer is simple. Open video/audio formats are not widely
supported as of yet - and we believe that open formats help keep the web free
and equal. By giving 100 million users Ogg support, we're making it a format
that's less risky for developers, which may pressure other companies into
supporting the format as well.

"Is Ogg equal to H.264? Not quite, but it's good - check it out for yourself.
And quality is only improving. We would love to offer open codecs for H.264 in
the meantime, but until something changes, we can't.

"Wasn't this already available on Firefox? Yes - but as a plugin. We feel that
supporting Ogg out-of-the-box meant one less step for the end user - and that
means that overall, Ogg is a hundred million steps closer to being an actual
alternative format. Making formats difficult to use is bad for everybody, even
developers and users that prefer other formats."

Of course, Mozilla wouldn't mention usability nowadays, since usability design
isn't nearly as high a priority as it was even with Firefox 2.

~~~
akd
You blame the post for being wordy and complex and then you post something
like this...

~~~
unalone
:-)

Seriously, though... the difference is that mine is straight to the point.
There's a time for lengthy posts, and criticizing another post in-depth
requires length.

The difference, I'd think, is that my post doesn't mince words, doesn't repeat
itself, and tries to make relevant points with a minimum of rambling.

