Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla's VP of Engineering On H.264
We recently discussed news that YouTube and Vimeo are each testing their own HTML5 video players using the H.264 format. Firefox does not support H.264, and Mozilla's vice president of engineering, Mike Shaver, has now made a post explaining why. Quoting: "For Mozilla, H.264 is not currently a suitable technology choice. In many countries, it is a patented technology, meaning that it is illegal to use without paying license fees to the MPEG-LA. Without such a license, it is not legal to use or distribute software that produces or consumes H.264-encoded content. Indeed, even distributing H.264 content over the internet or broadcasting it over the airwaves requires the consent of the MPEG-LA, and the current fee exemption for free-to-the-viewer internet delivery is only in effect until the end of 2010. These license fees affect not only browser developers and distributors, but also represent a toll booth on anyone who wishes to produce video content." Mozilla developer Robert O'Callahan has written a blog post on the same subject, following a talk he gave on Friday about the importance of open video on the web.
Codec hell? What Codec hell? If I try to play something new, my OS will go and
automagically fetch what I need and install it for me. Perhaps you run a Lame
OS like Windows and view this situation as a problem.
Perhaps you should use a less lame OS.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I really don't understand why Silicon Valley type geeks get so excited about the alleged advent of "free" and "standard" web technologies such as HTML5 and SVG. First, as this story illustrates, these are not "free". More importantly, these are not "standard". SVG for example has existed as a finalized, commitee underwritted standard for more than eleven years now, yet not a single browser supports more than a subset of it, and each a different subset. Even if it had been supported by IE from the beginning (Adobe doesn't even bother to support their plug-in btw), web developpers would have faced the pain of making their app working across browser, which is bad enough currently with the JS situtation.
Instead of having these commitee designed pseudo "standard" existing in abstract document and leaving it up to multiple browser and platforms to implement their own interpretation of it, I much prefer the model in which a few vendors develop mature plug-ins such as Flash or Silverlight that are guaranteeded to work the same whatever they're plugged into. Yes these are "proprietary" but so are your OS and drivers if you run Windows or MacOSX, so is the design of your CPU and GPU, etc.
Better having working platforms which empower a multitude of developpers to get working stuff out to the public than abstract, broken chimeras that burden developers with absurd compatibility and licensing issues.
Ponder over the original story and the paradox that the FOSSest browser out there might be actually better off loading a proprietary Flash or SL plug in than implement a "Free" HTML5 "standard"
he United States market is large enough that "it doesn't just work in the United States" means "it doesn't just work" because the install disc would require onboard GPS so that it won't install on a machine on U.S. soil.
To use a British word - bollocks. Americans would like to think so, and indeed it used to be the case, but it is not the case anymore. If it works in Japan, Europe, China, South Africa and Australasia then the vast majority of the world would perceive it as "just working". Contrary to the belief of Americans, no one elsewhere gives a shit about the problems you have with patents and the litigation that goes along with them. We'll carry on using H.264 and the like just fine and if Americans can't then we don't honestly care anymore.
Listen to my latest album here
Dependent on Google ? Are you taking 90s style magazines such as PCpro seriously ?
Name one major open source project that stopped evolving as a result of funding withdrawal.
In fact name one major open source project that stopped evolving period.