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Mozilla reconsiders H.264Mozilla reconsiders H.264Posted Mar 22, 2012 1:41 UTC (Thu) by gmaxwell (subscriber, #30048)Parent article: Mozilla reconsiders H.264
If you'll note— not a single comparison post has been made with figures comparing battery life for "hardware" H.264 platform decoders and the WebM/Theora decoders (which on some platforms are hardly any less hardware than the H.264 decoders).
Perhaps its a big deal on some devices, perhaps it's not. The thing is no one is posting the figures. And in my own profiling Firefox appears to spend more CPU time moving the pixels around in the rendering pipeline than it does actually _decoding_ the video. (Due mostly to a respectable, if not at all pragmatic, decision to make <video/> first class in the HTML rendering model thus breaking all the classic accelerated video rendering)
In light of all that, I think it's deceptive to cast this as a hardware compatibility story. It's a content compatibility story— for sure.
But I think it's also at least a little bit of a scapegoating for Firefox's declining market share— market share loss that has little to do with video and a lot to do with those chrome popups on every Google site and the hermetic seals on new Apple devices. But I thought the tone was clear enough for the discussion— people feel the declining relevance. "We Must Do Something. This is Something. Then it Must Be Done.". That fact that a lot of their market share is being lost due to aggressive marketing by their primary financial sponsor has to cause a heck of a lot of cognitive dissonance.
I think it's also a story about Apple's increasing influence on the tech decision maker market— Almost every Mozilla person, technical or otherwise, I know/have met (with the exception of the codec DSP folks) is a true apple aficionado, with one or two of each of the shiny idevices. How do you make a platform with a modest market share as important as a platform ten times larger? Make it appeal to the project managers, engineers, and managers of technology companies. With influence like that simple inaction, "don't ship a codec you don't hold patents on" changes the world, Mozilla used to have that kind of influence. I thought it still did, I guess Mozilla doesn't think so. Brilliant strategy, but one which in Apple's hands doesn't bode well for the world of Free Software at all.
And of course, this is a story about Google's lost direction and failure to scale— spend $125 million buying a codec company to free its codec, make grand promises... take all the engineering cost to deploy the codec on Youtube, but only to leave it incompatible with their new advertising incentives program. Ultimately resulting in a reguression to fewer and fewer videos available via WebM. Though this aspect is a story that has been covered in many places.
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Mozilla reconsiders H.264 Posted Mar 22, 2012 4:11 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]
I'm not sure what you're getting at with "Almost every Mozilla person I know/have met ... is a true apple aficionado". I just did a survey of the 7 Mozilla developers in the Auckland office:
-- 0 out of 7 own an iPhone -- 0 out of 7 own an iPad -- 1 out of 7 uses a Mac as their primary machine Feel free to list the Mozilla people you know or have met, and identify which ones are "true Apple aficionados", but I suspect that you may not have a representative sample.
Even if it were true, I'm not sure what you're implying. That liking Apple products induces a desire to use patent-encumbered codecs?
> in my own profiling Firefox appears to spend more CPU time moving the
Maybe true when GPU compositing is not enabled. Not true when GPU compositing is enabled, when I've profiled it. If you're seeing those results with GPU compositing enabled, please file a bug and we'll fix it.
Contrary to your speculation, this has little to do with desktop market share. On desktop we could support H.264 via Flash for a good while yet without too much user impact. The sticking point is mobile: to be relevant, we have to grow market share on mobile devices, which means we have to be able to play H.264 on those devices. And of course, on mobile, Flash is either non-existent or horrible and withering.
Mozilla reconsiders H.264 Posted Mar 24, 2012 0:18 UTC (Sat) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]
"to be relevant, we have to grow market share on mobile devices"
because...?
Mozilla reconsiders H.264 Posted Mar 24, 2012 2:38 UTC (Sat) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]
Because Web browsing is moving to mobile devices.
Mozilla reconsiders H.264 Posted Mar 24, 2012 8:50 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
'moving to' or merely 'growing on'?
Yes, the use of mobile devices is growing significantly, but is the use of desktop/laptop machines actually shrinking? or is it just shrinking as a percentage of all use (which will always happen when a new use starts at 0%)
Mozilla reconsiders H.264 Posted Mar 24, 2012 9:15 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] It's losing proposition. PC use is most defenitely shrinking in certain niches but this shrinkage is offset by growth in other niches. Eventually it'll start shrinking across the board. Mozilla can dismiss mobile like Nokia and RIM dismissed iPhone back in 2007: eventually it'll be disrupted and will collapse even if it'll take 4-5 years.
Mozilla reconsiders H.264 Posted Mar 29, 2012 22:59 UTC (Thu) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]
I think your crystal ball needs polishing.
This trend of one-UI-fits-all-devices is just plain fail. We don't even need Firefox and Gecko on phones, especially not until it's underlying architecture is fixed up (i.e. Electrolysis needs to become Firefox).
Nokia and RIM were in the business of selling devices--Mozilla is not, and should not be. Mozilla needs to refocus on its core mission of making the best browser for computers (i.e. systems with keyboards and mice).
Mozilla reconsiders H.264 Posted Mar 25, 2012 15:08 UTC (Sun) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
That's nonsense.
There is a growing marked of web browsing on mobile devices but it is not moving there. Also people tend to accept missing features on such devices more than on traditional desktop devices (see flash).
Mozilla reconsiders H.264 Posted Mar 29, 2012 22:56 UTC (Thu) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]
My laptop and netbook are mobile devices.
Oh, you mean phones? And tablets? Touchscreen devices? Who cares!
It's time for Mozilla to focus its mission and scale back its grandiose ambition. We don't need Firefox on phones and tablets--there are already good browsers there. It might be neat, but that's not as important as maintaining the existing browser and developing it further. Desktop/laptop/netbook systems are not going away! I don't need my phone's browser to do everything Firefox can do! (And with Firefox's eternal freezing and stuttering, I don't want it to. How about fixing that before expanding to completely new platforms? What if all the Mozilla devs spent two weeks on that one problem and killed it once and for all?)
Mozilla may end up spreading itself out and doing nothing well--then it will really lose relevance. I'm becoming more interested in other, smaller-scale browsers that are user-focused, without the baggage of the Mozilla project.
Nokia and RIM were in the business of selling devices--Mozilla is not (and should not be!).
IMO, Mozilla's mission should be to make the best desktop/laptop/netbook/systems-with-keyboards-and-mice browser there could possibly be. A secondary mission should be to encourage the open Web--but I'm not convinced that putting Gecko and Firefox on phones and touchscreen tablets is necessary to accomplish that goal. Indeed, if trying to do so hurts Mozilla in the long run, then the open Web will suffer in the long run.
Mozilla needs to set trends, not follow them. It used to do just that, but then Chrome caused a panic, and now Mozilla is pandering.
Get back to your roots, Mozilla! Rise like a Phoenix!
Mozilla reconsiders H.264 Posted Mar 25, 2012 14:54 UTC (Sun) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
> Maybe true when GPU compositing is not enabled. Not true when GPU compositing is enabled, when I've profiled it. If you're seeing those results with GPU compositing enabled, please file a bug and we'll fix it.
Well it has been both disabled and broken on linux since day one and it seems that there is no progress being made to fix it. (WebGL is fine GPU compositing is still broken).
Mozilla reconsiders H.264 Posted Mar 23, 2012 21:45 UTC (Fri) by wazoox (subscriber, #69624) [Link]
> Almost every Mozilla person, technical or otherwise, I know/have met (with the exception of the codec DSP folks) is a true apple aficionado, with one or two of each of the shiny idevices.
Strange. I'm committed to Firefox mostly because I don't like Chrome interface and I'm hooked to 45 extensions; but Firefox decidedly sucks bricks on Mac OS. Fortunately, I myself plan to get rid of my last Mac soon (not free enough, son. Need more GNU tasting technology), and Firefox really runs great on Linux.
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