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Assuming that you're referring to replacement of SWF wtih HTML5:

you replaced one format that [...] Was owned by a company that had no problem not only allowing it to be bundled with anything but ALSO allowed for FOSS alternatives

Initially, Adobe's SWF spec was licensed under terms that specifically forbade its use to create third-party players. Adobe didn't drop that provision until the Open Screen Project in the second quarter of 2008.

[Flash does] Not only did video but animation and gaming.

HTML5 also does gaming. See Cookie Clicker and Pirates Love Daisies, for example.

[HTML5 video] Had mandatory DRM baked in

It's not mandatory. A web browser publisher can just choose not to support Netflix and Amazon video.

[HTML5 video] Requires a codec that is not only owned by one of the biggest patent trolls around but is openly hostile to FOSS

Where does the HTML5 spec require use of MPEG-4 codecs? Last time I checked, WebM (Matroska container, VP8 or VP9 video codec, and Vorbis or Opus audio codec) was also acceptable, and only pack-in browsers on proprietary operating systems (IE and Safari) fail to support WebM out of the box. Even Microsoft Edge will get WebM support come Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Besides, SWF also used H.263 and H.264.

MPEG-LA has made it clear they will sue FOSS companies which is why all work on supporting that format has to be done outside Berne convention countries

MPEG-LA licenses patents, not copyrights. The Berne Convention refers to copyrights, not patents. It looks like you've been bitten by the false equivalence of intellectual property.

Doesn't support half the features of the supposedly "inferior" format its replacing

Could you list some SWF features that aren't supported in HTML5 and can't easily be polyfilled? Because if there were, it wouldn't be possible to build Shumway, a polyfill for SWF itself.

How would a real-time chat application or collaborative whiteboard "gracefully degrade" without scripts and without Flash? All I can think of is "read-only, press Ctrl+R to refresh". And how would a game such as Pirates Love Daisies or Cookie Clicker gracefully degrade? By providing native versions for fourteen different platforms?

Why aren't they ported to HTML5?

Uh, because they are? Hell, DHTML Lemmings is 11 years old. I don't know what you're worried about. Just play some Tappy Chicken or World's Biggest Pac-man or Pirates Love Daisies or HexGL or any of the many WebGL games out there.

Flash is in its Autumn. Mourn it not. Look at the pretty lights.

My favourite example is the HTML 5 Angry Birds game.

Angry Birds Chrome is a poor example of an HTML5 game as it relies on Flash for audio. If I try it with Firefox 14.0.1, for example, without Flash installed I get a message which tells me that I either need to install Flash or use Chrome as it has Flash built-in. Better examples of HTML5 games which work without Flash are Cut the Rope, Pirates Love Daisies, World's Biggest Pac-Man, and Word Squared.

The development of the first three games was funded by Microsoft to demonstrate that credible applications can in fact be built against an HTML5 runtime. They also demonstrate that there are already high quality applications available for Firefox OS. It's pretty trivial to make them installable on Firefox OS.

From what I understand they're banking on the fact that writing an app for Firefox OS will use the same technologies as making a webpage, which should make it viable for a huge developer community.

Yes, especially because that developer community already exists. Even Microsoft has already inadvertently funded the development of a few Firefox OS applications. The HTML5 version of Cut the Rope, for example, already runs on Firefox OS. To make it an installable Firefox OS application all that would need to be added is a manifest file and an install page. And similarly for other Microsoft funded HTML5 games like Pirates Love Daisies and World's Biggest Pacman.

The main issue for me is of extreme slowness even on contempory computers. html5/javascript games, or apps for text reading with "turning pages" not only are slow, they peg 100% of a core only to recreate 1990s level of computing. This has problems including heat, fan noise and electricity bill. I have no flame intentions, just pointing out what seems obvious.

I've had a try at "Pirates love daisies" for instance, and it runs quite a bit slow on a 3GHz computer, re-creating the experience of an Amiga game but with higher res and lower quality sound. also selecting a character results in the display of a black square, as the blending is not supported. Running firefox 5. It should run like total crap on a 1GHz ARM, and of course single-thread performance has hit a ceiling.

I have a feeling the java plug-in worked better back in the days. It even ran on low end cell phones years ago and allowed actual games. There still are some java games around, such as Yahoo games. They load quickly and run butter smooth. So, maybe java isn't open enough but I wish we could have such a solution with near native performance, rather than stuff that feels like it's run on a emulator written in QBASIC.

Looks like you either don't have Adobe Flash installed or are using an older version of Adobe Flash. To dish out revenge on the green pigs who stole the Birds' eggs you'll need to: Install Google Chrome, a fast browser from Google that comes with Flash built-in. or Install the latest version of Adobe Flash.

Pirates Love Daisies, on the other hand, is an example of a game that works well in modern browsers with no plugins.