Mozilla Corporation Signs Distribution Deal with RealNetworks (MozillaZine) [LWN.net]

MozillaZine covers a new distribution deal between the Mozilla Corporation and RealNetworks. "The Mozilla Corporation and RealNetworks have entered into a multi-year agreement under which RealNetworks will distribute Mozilla Firefox with its products. During the installation of RealPlayer, users will be given the option to also install Firefox. In the near future, Firefox will also be an installation option with Real's Rhapsody music download service and RealArcade gaming platform."

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Mozilla Corporation Signs Distribution Deal with RealNetworks (MozillaZine)

Posted Aug 3, 2006 23:40 UTC (Thu) by azhrei_fje (guest, #26148) [Link] (2 responses)

That's really nice and all... But when will I get a 64-bit player that works as a plug-in in Firefox and/or Konqueror? [grin]

Mozilla Corporation Signs Distribution Deal with RealNetworks (MozillaZine)

Posted Aug 5, 2006 0:07 UTC (Sat) by srfritsche (guest, #25168) [Link]

Perhaps answering this question is the responsibility of Adobe. Nevertheless, I agree with you on substance.

Mozilla Corporation Signs Distribution Deal with RealNetworks (MozillaZine)

Posted Aug 5, 2006 0:10 UTC (Sat) by srfritsche (guest, #25168) [Link]

Ugh, sorry, I meant Real Networks. The lack of a Flash plugin is Adobe's problem. As early as it is, I can't even blame fatigue. Oh, well.

Mozilla Corporation Signs Distribution Deal with RealNetworks (MozillaZine)

Posted Aug 4, 2006 0:44 UTC (Fri) by afalko (guest, #37028) [Link] (2 responses)

There are drawbacks to this and there are benefits.

The benefits are that users (especially those using GNU/Linux as a desktop environment) will be able to have better access to multimedia on the internet. I can assure you that in the near furture websites like http://nfl.com/ will finally be able to render real media content without any hassle (I have not been able to get the real plugin for firefox to work well under Linux). Multimedia on GNU/Linux has been a tremendous weakness. I maintain a few desktop machines for users and the #1 complaint is that they cannot view a lot of the video content on the 'net. This deal is going to eliminate some of the trouble.

The drawbacks that I see is philosophical incompatability. Real media is a proprietary product, while Firefox is not. In my opinion media formats, like many other things, should be open source. The deal that was struck justifies the philosophy that proprietary and open source software can co-exist. Not only that, but it sends the message that it is ok to have proprietary media around. If windows media player was open sourced (their video formats at the very least), then there would not be much trouble for someone to create a media plug-in to effortlessly deliver the media to all operating systems. Microsoft instead chooses to keep as big a grip on the browser market as possible.

Mozilla Corporation Signs Distribution Deal with RealNetworks (MozillaZine)

Posted Aug 4, 2006 1:17 UTC (Fri) by hawk (guest, #3195) [Link] (1 responses)

Nothing in there said anything about Linux or plugins for Firefox under Linux, did it? (Those already exist, as far as I know...?)

All it said was that RealNetworks will distribute Firefox with some of it's own products. It's entirely possible (even quite probable, I would say) that this is a Windows-only thing.

Mozilla Corporation Signs Distribution Deal with RealNetworks (MozillaZine)

Posted Aug 4, 2006 5:09 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

yep, I read this as 'get firefox free (and easily) when you download realplayer' not 'get realplayer when you download firefox'

as such this should significantly increase the number of people who have firefox available on their machine, some of them will start useing it instead of IE, so this is a good step forward.

this will have no effect on people already running firefox or other free software, it's just cracking the ice for those who are running all-microsoft machines