Wednesday 24 March 2010
Amor Robustum
But if Mozilla’s position were really about idealism — tough love for the good of the web in the name of free, open file formats — then in addition to not supporting H.264, they’d drop support for plugins like Flash Player.
Let's assume for the sake of this argument that eliminating NPAPI plugins (and their shapeshifted ActiveX cousins) would be a good thing for the open Web. Would dropping support for NPAPI plugins in Firefox be a good thing for the open Web? Not necessarily. If we dropped support for Flash in desktop Firefox, then (since desktop browsers are so competitive and the switching costs are quite low) a very large number of users would stop using Firefox and start using another browser that does support Flash. So Flash usage would not decrease much. We would certainly not even get close to eliminating the use of Flash on Web pages. On the other hand, there would be significantly less competition in the browser market. Overall, that's not a win for the open Web. Pointless martyrdom can be fun, but it's not good strategy.
The situation with the HTML5 <video> element and H.264 is very different. At the moment, lack of support for H.264 in <video> is not driving users away from Firefox. That is a battle we can still fight and possibly win without destroying our relevance.
Comments
Will firefox try to support it then ?
a) lack of H.264 support causing significant harm to our users
b) complete domination of H.264 to the point where further resistance is futile
c) getting to a point where supporting H.264 with <video> actually lets us drop support for Flash (I don't think this will happen)
d) H.264 becoming free because the U.S. Supreme Court blows up all related patents (I don't think this will happen either, but I can dream)
Then again, there are many things that confuse me too: such as why people believe the current degree to which H.264 has a higher quality per bit is more critical than a completely open video format, why Apple believes the heavily patented H.264 would be legally safer than Theora, why Apple haven't implemented Ogg audio, why Hixie (who I think does an amazing job) decided that this one case of a stubborn vendor was different to all the other cases of stubborn vendors and why *some* users who currently enjoy the fruits of open processes and organisations are so incredibly ungrateful when those organisations try to fight the good fight for those user's rights.
b) This is the case already
c,d) Not happening
I sympathize with Mozilla's idealism but given that 99% of Firefox users have Flash installed, for all practical purposes Firefox supports h.264, therefore you do absolutely nothing by not supporting it natively. Except "a)", of course.
Given the almost complete lack of tools on the Vorbis side compared to the near ubiquity of h.264 support in new hardware/software (even if some of the h.264 encoders are rather crappy), I have a hard time seeing any valid -practical- reason to support Vorbis. Google has the money and manpower to build a sufficient amount of the support software to go along with VP8 that I could see that as a credible threat, though.
Also, aren't you guys concerned that IE9 is going to support H.264? If that happens its not likely that publishers will encode their videos in OGG and H.264 its more likely that they will serve browsers that support H.264 in the video tag H.264 and browsers that don't will get Flash. Do you really want Firefox to be lumped together with IE6, IE7 and IE8. That can't be good for the image.
"What about Gruber's larger point that although OGG is not patented technologies that are included in it may very well be?"
Patents that apply to Ogg Theora are known and the developers of Theora have a license to use them. If there are "unknown" patents then this same problem applies to H264 or any other piece of software.
We can't create something about what is unknown, only with what is real. And the reality is that Ogg Theora has not any patents problems.
If you, Joe Stevens or Gruber, know of any patent that apply to Theora and isn't already known please inform us.
Else, please stop the FUD!
His posts about this matter have all been debunked. As his most recent one. They can be described in one "word": FUD!
His most recent one is filled with false statements and poor reasoning, so poor that I can only conclude it is intentional. Like Fox News, he is acting a part to please his followers.
He, like any single end user, would have been pleased with the position of Mozilla and should have been supportive of it, for the web as an open platform depends on it.
Instead, he chooses the opposite position. Why? Doesn't it make you think.
Like every person which took a similar position throughout history, his position is self serving.
Egotistical and egoistic. As long his short term needs are served the hell with common good.
I'm pleased that the people that known about the subjects also care about them.
My advice: Mozilla, Opera, the people behind the Ogg Theora project and other like minded people should create a website debunking this type of FUD.
Then, every time Mr. Gruber makes one of his poorly researched and poorly reasoned posts, you only have to redirect your readers to that website.
The "ogg theora is a bigger patent risk" has been an orchestrated campaign since it was first suggested as codec for HTML5 Video.
It's time for Mozilla to respond!
Sorry, I must disagree. I have been using Firefox since the Phoenix days and am now making the switch to Chrome specifically for H264 playback. I am not the first in my office to have done this; nor, I suspect, will I be the last. As a user, I want to use what works. The Foundation's moral stance is admirable, but I'm afraid largely meaningless to 90% of users who want to just *use*.