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H.264 support coming to FirefoxH.264 support coming to FirefoxPosted Mar 19, 2012 19:05 UTC (Mon) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281)In reply to: H.264 support coming to Firefox by Zizzle Parent article: H.264 support coming to Firefox
> Surely Apple, Google and MS must be pleased by this. All they have to do is gain a threshold of market share with a proprietary technology and the biggest supported of the open web will capitulate and support it.
Not a threshold, but a dominating position. The articles spell out the situation: WebM is in a hopeless position compared to H.264. It had some promise, but none of the planned moves by Google or Adobe that were meant to promote it actually happened.
But yes, even that is depressing: If Apple, Google and MS take a proprietary technology and promote it to a dominant position, Mozilla and Opera will be forced to support it. That is sad but true, if you ignore a dominant technology, you will become irrelevant, even if it is nonstandard, proprietary or patented. Becoming irrelevant isn't an option for Mozilla and Opera, because they would then lose any ability to promote open standards altogether.
The only defense against this is to prevent nonstandard, proprietary or patented technologies from becoming dominant on the web. We need to keep WebRTC open, oppose NaCl, research new next-gen video and audio codecs, fight Apple's patents on multitouch events, strengthen OIN, etc etc. This is a constant struggle.
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H.264 support coming to Firefox Posted Mar 19, 2012 19:28 UTC (Mon) by davide.del.vento (guest, #59196) [Link]
> WebM is in a hopeless position compared to H.264.
> It had some promise, but none of the planned moves > by Google or Adobe that were meant to promote it > actually happened.
Exactly how WebM is hopeless? IIRC, most of the video on the web are coming out of youtube and they are available as webm. HW support for it is coming, but of course hw is slow, so some more time is needed.
Last, but not least, it's sad to see firefox too putting mobile ahead of everything else (after KDE and GNOME doing so). As a heavy desktop person, who doesn't have or care for a smartphone, this is very annoying.
H.264 support coming to Firefox Posted Mar 19, 2012 19:49 UTC (Mon) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
Agreed. The argument is that H.264 is dominant.
Ok, how did that happen. Apple.
But there are far more Androids sold than iStuff.
So really it's down to google. They followed Apple, didn't do what they said they would with WebM.
The open web loses.
Google could transcode Youtube to WebM, drop H.264 in Chrome (no a big deal - still have the flash fallback), and start pushing Android handset makers to support HW WebM. Surely it would be cheaper for the handset maker too.
H.264 support coming to Firefox Posted Mar 19, 2012 22:09 UTC (Mon) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
Yes, the real problem is that Google gave up on WebM. I have no idea why it did. It had a viable strategy, in part with Adobe, but never followed through. So H.264 wins, sadly for all of us.
H.264 support coming to Firefox Posted Mar 19, 2012 20:32 UTC (Mon) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
> Exactly how WebM is hopeless? IIRC, most of the video on the web are coming out of youtube and they are available as webm.
As one of the TFAs noted, only ad-free content on YouTube is WebM. But almost everything popular has ads (sometimes because nefarious organizations claim copyright to works they don't own, there was a sad case of this with birdsong a few weeks back in the news).
> HW support for it is coming, but of course hw is slow, so some more time is needed.
It has been several years, and still no shipping hardware. We can continue to hope for that, but the company that holds the keys to utilizing that hardware is Google, who controls YouTube and Android. But Google has not even removed H.264 from Chrome on desktop which it promised. So Google's commitment to WebM hardware is uncertain at best.
> Last, but not least, it's sad to see firefox too putting mobile ahead of everything else (after KDE and GNOME doing so). As a heavy desktop person, who doesn't have or care for a smartphone, this is very annoying.
Agreed, I'm a heavy desktop person without a smartphone too. Proud owner of a (almost always off) dumbphone. We are relics of an earlier age, though, if you look at the numbers ;) so it isn't surprising KDE, GNOME, Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, Apple are all focusing on mobile these days.
H.264 support coming to Firefox Posted Mar 20, 2012 19:08 UTC (Tue) by krake (subscriber, #55996) [Link]
I wouldn't say that either GNOME or KDE focus on mobile.
Both communities take steps to widen their portfolio towards mobile, e.g. by making UI and application cores less interdependent and thus allowing mobile UIs to use the same core.
I would bet that a majority of contributors do not even own a device that would make a viable host for the application they are working on.
If mobile were a priority for more than a handful of developers we would see way larger availability of GNOME and KDE apps in mobile app stores.
H.264 support coming to Firefox Posted Mar 20, 2012 0:09 UTC (Tue) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
>>If Apple, Google and MS take a proprietary technology and promote it to a dominant position, Mozilla and Opera will be forced to support it.
How so ? Mozilla, as I understand it, is a non-profit. So they don't have the usual "fiduciary responsibilities" cop-out. They aren't forced to support anything that would go against their mission statement.
>>That is sad but true, if you ignore a dominant technology, you will become irrelevant, even if it is nonstandard, proprietary or patented.
>>The only defense against this is to prevent nonstandard, proprietary or patented technologies from becoming dominant on the web.
The first logical step for this prevention would be, in my opinion, to not support it.
>>Becoming irrelevant isn't an option for Mozilla and Opera, because they would then lose any ability to promote open standards altogether.
In my opinion Mozilla's claim to fame in the current world of many fast competitive browsers, is being the champion of an open and unencumbered web.
If they feel they are in not a position where they can say "no" to supporting known software patents, the current greatest threat to software freedoms, as a part of the web, what's the reason for their existence ? To produce a very popular browser ? There are several takers doing a good job in that department already.
I also feel that "irrelevant" and "less popular" are being used interchangeably in most arguments concerning this decision, even though they're not, and it confuses any argument.
I understand Mozilla's predicament to a certain extent, but I don't feel pandering to commercial interests was in their (and our) own long term benefit in this case.
H.264 support coming to Firefox Posted Mar 20, 2012 0:42 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
by your logic, Mozilla should never have supported Flash.
However, not doing so would have meant that Mozilla would only get used by pureists, and would probably have died by now due to the lack of users.
If you don't have users, it doesn't matter how 'pure' you are, you have no influence.
H.264 support coming to Firefox Posted Mar 20, 2012 1:40 UTC (Tue) by lab (subscriber, #51153) [Link]
I think you nailed it there. Still, it's kind of a rock/hard-place situation, without a lot of happy faces.
H.264 support coming to Firefox Posted Mar 20, 2012 9:58 UTC (Tue) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]
Flash is a different situation. It was a hangover from a previous era, when Mozilla had little opportunity to shape the future of the web.
HTML5 was supposed to be different.
H.264 support coming to Firefox Posted Mar 20, 2012 11:21 UTC (Tue) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
>>by your logic, Mozilla should never have supported Flash.
As I understand it, Flash is a proprietary program, and as such, it can be worked around. But acknowledging software patents to be a legitimate part of an open web is something different.
>>However, not doing so would have meant that Mozilla would only get used by pureists, and would probably have died by now due to the lack of users.
Mozilla's mission says nothing about keeping Mozilla alive.
>>If you don't have users, it doesn't matter how 'pure' you are, you have no influence.
Users may come and go, but "supporters" (of a free and unencumbered web, for example) usually stick around, because they appreciate the deeper significance of what you're trying to achieve, even if 'success' is not imminent. But if you change/compromise on what you're trying to achieve *and* you fall behind in development (which is not unthinkable given the giants they're up against in the browser arena, especially if one of those giants basically pays for your own development) prompting your normal users to leave, you're left with nothing.
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