Firefox With H.264 HTML 5 Support = Wild Fox

Elledan writes "Two countries have software patents which make it impossible to freely use video codecs such as AVC (H.264). This has led to projects such as Firefox not including AVC support with the HTML 5 video tag in their releases, which makes the rest of the world suffer indirectly the effects of software patents as well. To rectify this situation at least somewhat, I have created the Wild Fox project, which aims to release Firefox builds with the features previously excluded due to software patents. This software will be available to those in non-software-patent-encumbered countries. Any developers who wish to join the project are more than welcome."

Comments

End of Firefox?

[sopssa]

Now first of all to the Wild Fox project maintainers, this is the right move. Fight to win the whole war, not one battle. Don't die as a martyr and lose it all just by demanding something to happen right now.

Additionally, it looks like Firefox is actually starting to lose support even from the Open Source front. Even Ubuntu is probably changing to Chronium and dropping Firefox. It kind of looks like Firefox lost the track of what they were doing a long time ago.

Apparently Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution, is considering dropping Firefox for Chrome. ...
it could be a sign that people are starting to feel less, um, “loyalty” to Firefox.

Not that I'm anymore happier Google's products taking over everything...

Re:End of Firefox?

[Trepidity]

As far as I can tell, they aren't actually proposing a wholesale fork, with a new community to do general browser development and replace Firefox. It looks like it's just a project to release variant builds of Firefox with additional features added, and will otherwise track mainline FF development.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

You said,

As far as I can tell, they aren't actually proposing a wholesale fork

As far as I can tell their is no "they". It's more like a person who is looking for programmers:

As I (Maya Posch AKA 'Elledan') am just a single person, help is required to set up this project successfully...

I think the news on this story is a bit premature.

Re:End of Firefox?

[BiggerIsBetter]

Now first of all to the Wild Fox project maintainers, this is the right move. Fight to win the whole war, not one battle. Don't die as a martyr and lose it all just by demanding something to happen right now.

I agree with parent that WildFox is the right way to go, but could Firefox devs not offer a means to pipe the video stream to the player of the user's choice? Eg, vlc or mplayer running as a content-transparent plugin? That sorts the patent issue (from Firefox's perspective) and sorts the playback performance problem that others have mentioned. As long as the layer of the window is handled right, this might be a palatable workaround?

Re:End of Firefox?

[RAMMS EIN]

``could Firefox devs not offer a means to pipe the video stream to the player of the user's choice? Eg, vlc or mplayer running as a content-transparent plugin?''

Yeah, they could. But then they'd be doing the same thing that browser vendors have been doing for the object element since the 1990s. Then what would be the point of the new HTML 5 video element?

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now first of all to the Wild Fox project maintainers, this is the right move. Fight to win the whole war, not one battle. Don't die as a martyr and lose it all just by demanding something to happen right now.

What "war"? Against who, exactly? Mozilla's only interest is in building an open, inclusive web where everyone can participate with no barriers to entry. H.264 represents the direct antithesis of this goal. There is no segregation into groups of "winners" and "losers" in an open web, rather everyone benefits.

Look, I know there's no point trying to convince you. You don't really get it. Whenever there's an H.264 story, you're always one of the first posters and always pro-H.264. It's like you post on an astroturfer hair-trigger.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Nakor BlueRider]

You're right, only I don't know that it's premature for Slashdot. It certainly doesn't belong in a mainstream news article of any sort, but we know the feelings here on the topic; perhaps a little /. exposure is what the project needs to get its feet off the ground.

Re:End of Firefox?

[sznupi]

Not that I'm anymore happier Google's products taking over everything...

It's not like Chromium is anywhere close to that; it grows, sure, but this time it might bring honest adherence to standards instead of a kind of duaopoly, making websites to work with "IE+FF" that was semi-common for some time. Even if they are only slightly better than FF with standards at this point; this post means they rather care.

Good for me, and any user of the browser which is closest to the bullseye. And good for the web.

Re:End of Firefox?

[BiggerIsBetter]

Yeah, they could. But then they'd be doing the same thing that browser vendors have been doing for the object element since the 1990s. Then what would be the point of the new HTML 5 video element?

Well, it would make all that bitching about which codecs to standardize on a non-issue for a start. It's a browser, why should it know how to play audio, video, decode images, display fonts, or lord knows what other things will come along - 3D support next? Pass it to the OS or build against external libraries and let something else figure that out.

Re:End of Firefox?

[SanityInAnarchy]

3D support next?

Google WebGL.

Pass it to the OS or build against external libraries and let something else figure that out.

Also see WebGL. I agree that external libraries should be used, but there needs to be some amount of integration, or at least standardization. The browser doesn't have to implement OpenGL itself, but it helps that it's specified to be OpenGL and not DirectX.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Beelzebud]

Of course Firefox is losing support among the OSS front. It's feature-rich, and is widely used.

Perfect time to turn our backs on it, and kill it!

Re:End of Firefox?

[stms]

Why not incorporate ffmpeg into firefox its open source and not only would it render h.264 but almost ever other codec.

Re:End of Firefox?

[brainboyz]

Actually, I thought it was the memory mismanagement and bloat.

Re:End of Firefox?

[dangitman]

Mozilla's only interest is in building an open, inclusive web where everyone can participate with no barriers to entry. H.264 represents the direct antithesis of this goal.

But H.264 has much wider support than Theora. So, isn't Mozilla's blocking of H.264 in favor of Theora the antithesis of this goal?

Re:End of Firefox?

[Beelzebud]

Don't install 100 addons, and there is no bloat or memory mismanagement.

Re:End of Firefox?

[spikeb]

haha, right. it's still a resource hog and slow as molasses compared to chromium

Re:End of Firefox?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Because it would violate patents in many countries, unless you stripped out all of the infringing codecs, including h.264.

Also because it's the wrong way to go about this. Why bundle the codecs when you can call out to native, shared systems like GStreamer and have them provide the codecs for you? That'd handle the legal issue, too.

Re:End of Firefox?

[scumm]

I suspect this is what the "Wild Fox" folks intend to do. I doubt they'd want to re-invent the wheel when such an easy solution is available. Hell, Chrom(e|ium) uses it, to varying degrees (the whole h.264 thing in Chromium).

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

COMPREHENSION FAIL.

Short response: "No, it's not."

Long response:
"Open, inclusive web" has nothing to do with popularity. H264 will (or already has?) require fees to produce the content and must be licensed from several large companies including M$ and Apple. Don't agree with the license, then you can't participate legally. Don't pony up the cash, you can't participate.

Theora is open to everyone, and requires no money. You can find plenty of open source, freely available editing tools... although you could probably find commercial / closed applications too, if you so choose to.

Re:End of Firefox?

[sjames]

Not having to work out what particular set of voodoo incantations is necessary to control the video/audio playback with javascript?

Re:End of Firefox?

[Cley Faye]

Yeah, they could. But then they'd be doing the same thing that browser vendors have been doing for the object element since the 1990s. Then what would be the point of the new HTML 5 video element?

It would mean a standardized way to embed video (duh). Using the object element merely say "I want to play this file". It can be handled in various ways; having the video tag would mean a common, uniform interface which would detach the video playback from the browser but still have a single interface from browser point of view.
This would lead to some things, like, having a way to control the video through javascript without a handful of different function just to say "play", for example.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then what would be the point of the new HTML 5 video element?

Look, the asshats that selected a proprietary plug-in as the standard lost any right to make the video plug-in behave as intended.

Re:End of Firefox?

[ChunderDownunder]

Who cares how fast it is if it looks bad?

Some of us just prefer gecko's rendering over webkit. Always have, always will.

Re:End of Firefox?

[dangitman]

"Open, inclusive web" has nothing to do with popularity. H264 will (or already has?) require fees to produce the content and must be licensed from several large companies including M$ and Apple

I was mainly responding to the "inclusive web where everyone can participate with no barriers to entry" part. Theora is a much bigger barrier to entry for most people, and much less inclusive. A hell of a lot of people have computers and devices that are already equipped to play H.264. Very few people have computers and devices equipped to play Theora.

Theora is open to everyone, and requires no money. You can find plenty of open source, freely available editing tools...

But actually getting them and installing them on the plethora of platforms out there is a pretty big barrier compared to just using what you already have, that supports H.264. Do you really think that the majority of web users are going to seek out those tools?

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Needs help? To integrate one codec into a browser? Really?

This can't be real. Is he asking for brains to do all the work for him? For volunteers to set up and run a website? For donations? Popularity? I don't get it.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell their is no "they".

Their is no they're is no there. So there.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Draykwing]

..could Firefox devs not offer a means to pipe the video stream to the player of the user's choice? Eg, vlc or mplayer running as a content-transparent plugin?

There's a patch floating around if Firefox's bugzilla that uses GStreamer as the backend for the <video> tag, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=422540

Re:End of Firefox?

[Pentium100]

Eg, vlc or mplayer running as a content-transparent plugin?

There is no reason to reinvent the wheel - Windows has DirectShow, Linux has gstreamer and MacOS has Quicktime. They allow any application to play any media file that has the needed codecs and source filters installed. Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic and a lot of others use DirectShow, that's why I need to install ffmpeg once to a PC and not once for every player.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you get it? Mozilla already showed it in their concepts, they want to take over the desktop. Since emacs more and more applications are trying to become something more than they are. Today Mozilla, Chrome and possible others want to be the whole desktop experience where ever you are using it, on your mobile, laptop or desktop.

I am by the way against using the any non-free codec anywhere, whether its built-in or not. There is no reason for us to support software patents in anyway. It is a stupid american idea that is being enforced by us corporate greed.

Re:End of Firefox?

[buchner.johannes]

Two things:

1. Forks of good* projects have it hard:
Wild fox will not be able to keep up with the good infrastructure of Firefox (developers, build system, connections). Mozilla is pretty big and provides a excellent service. Wild fox will have a hard time to keep up with upstream.

2. Mozilla has a bigger target. They aim for a free Internet (and free software). They have been quite successful against IE in these terms (correctness regarding CSS, HTML4 & XHTML, inclusion of HTML5, JS speed).
The FSF, GNU & Red Hat have the same goal for free software. The Linux kernel has the same goal too (no closed source modules).
Ubuntu does not. Wild Fox has not.

It is shortsighted to find the "tolerant", "pragmatic" projects better. It is not just puristic zealots against "I just want it to work". The availability of free software increases the options users have.
Projects that cut the corner slow down the OSS development of free replacement packages, and can damage the upstream process.

Don't get me wrong. It is nice that we can view Flash videos. This binary blob comes with security issues, memory bloat and crashes. At the same time Gnash ran out of funding and most developers had to abandon it.
Contrary to what Ubuntu users** believe, good free software doesn't come from screaming loud enough, but actual, continuous work.

* you could also say: projects that don't sufficiently suck
** Enough Ubuntu bashing :-) They are very good at taking an end-user view on projects, which is valuable feedback.

Re:End of Firefox?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Even Ubuntu is probably changing to Chronium and dropping Firefox.

I guess it really is time to switch to Gentoo then.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe so, but Firefox got vimperator. For me that is the only thing that matters.

I know I am in minority, but there are plenty of minorities that stick with a browser for similar reasons.

Re:End of Firefox?

[fyngyrz]

Do you really think that the majority of web users are going to seek out those tools?

They would if, for example, none of the videos on YouTube would play until they did.

h.264 is a BAD mistake. It's GIF all over again. By supporting it, they're just playing the corporate game. Oh wait - they ARE corporations. Never mind. So much for freedom.

Re:End of Firefox?

[dirtyhippie]

Since when does a simple fork cause the parent to die?

In your answer, please provide actual examples. Like, when OpenBSD's fork killed NetBSD, or the proliferation of webkit browsers killed konqueror.

Thanks.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

But actually getting them and installing them on the plethora of platforms out there is a pretty big barrier compared to just using what you already have, that supports H.264. Do you really think that the majority of web users are going to seek out those tools?

Internet Explorer is already installed on the computer. Actually getting firefox and installing it on the plethora of windows machines out there is a pretty big barrier compared to just using what you already have. Do you really think that the majority of web users are going to seek out those tools?

Had youtube chosen theora, then the majority of people would install theora. All it takes is a major player. The problem is that several major players have stocks in H.264.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

As I see it (and I think this was the grandparent's point), downloading other people's videos is not "participating". Participating is creating your own videos and sharing them with the world.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

A hell of a lot of people have computers and devices that are already equipped to play H.264. Very few people have computers and devices equipped to play Theora.

Apparently over 615 million computers are equipped to play Theora:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/stats/

I doubt all of those computers are owned by a very few people. I'd suggest that many, many millions of people have computers equipped to play Theora.

Re:End of Firefox?

[dangitman]

They would if, for example, none of the videos on YouTube would play until they did.

Doubtful. They'd more likely seek out another site that is compatible with their devices.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Trogre]

X.Org/XFree86?

Re:End of Firefox?

[Bigjeff5]

Now first of all to the Wild Fox project maintainers, this is the right move.

Why? It capitulates to a non-free standard, and if H.264 becomes the defacto standard for HTML5 it effectively destroys the ability of any free browsers without deep pockets behind them to compete in the market.

Google Chrome will be fine, as will Apple Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer, but Mozilla may well be toast, and any other free alternatives that want to operate in a country that respects software patents.

This is not the right move. We have free compression formats that work just as well as H.264 but don't have any of the licensing baggage. One of those should be the HTML5 standard, with any additional codecs a browser vendor wishes to supply optional.

You don't fight a war by giving ground at every turn. Eventually you have to make a stand.

It really sucks to have an open standard (HTML5) that effectively requires a proprietary standard (H.264) to be fully functional. It isn't necessary either.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why bundle the codecs when you can call out to native, shared systems

Because that's the whole point of this - to be sure that something works, as opposed to some vaguery "native" system that may or may not work.

I <object>!

Re:End of Firefox?

[lennier1]

Glad I'm not alone.
With every additional unwelcome change Canonical makes to the defaults switching to a different distribution becomes more and more tempting.

Re:End of Firefox?

[hairyfeet]

Just because you have FF does NOT mean you can play Theora, okay? I'm typing this on my "nettop" which is a circa 2005 Sempron 1.8Ghz, and I'm typing this in FF. I can watch full screen SD H.264 flash and it plays beautifully. Theora? Even in a window it is a jerky mess. And this Sempron is certainly more powerful than those single core Atom netbooks I see everyone carrying.

So I'm sorry, but Theora sucks on older or low power devices. Not to mention I can slap a $50 AGP card and get full hardware accelerated H.264, and many devices from cell phones on up have hardware H.264 support. Is there ANYBODY offering hardware Theora support?

While I don't like MPEG-LA, I'm also a realist. The only chance we have to tell MPEG-LA to shove it is Google releasing the On2 codecs, because VP6 plays nicely on low power and slower devices like this Sempron, and I'm betting VP8 will be even better. Theora is just gonna end up another Vorbis, a teeny tiny niche nobody but a few FOSS geeks use, just like how everyone plays MP3s even though they are patent encumbered.

Re:End of Firefox?

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

gcc/egcs. In the last 90s, the FSF officially abandoned gcc (gnu c compiler) development and turned it over to the egcs team, which renamed their compiler gcc (gnu compiler collection).

Re:End of Firefox?

[dangitman]

Sure, Firefox is installed on many computers. But how many mobile devices? Also to consider is how many people are going to continue using Firefox if it doesn't support H,264? And those computers with Firefox installed usually have at least one other browser installed, too.

Re:End of Firefox?

[portentum]

..or the slightly more logical jump to Debian. Nothing against Gentoo, I love it myself when I can be bothered to maintain it, but Debian is more sane a path from Ubuntu for most users, I'd think.

Re:End of Firefox?

[bemymonkey]

One of the main reasons to use Firefox is: Addons!

There's only about 5 or 10 that I absolutely need to have installed, but even with those, the memory usage is so high that I frequently get out-of-memory errors with 2GB of RAM... highest I've seen was almost 800MB, and there were less than 50 tabs open...

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't the summary kinda put the kibosh on your 'many countries' claim?

Re:End of Firefox?

[blackest_k]

many countries? according to the article two , the usa and south korea

Re:End of Firefox?

[PastaLover]

I was under the impression most people moving away from firefox were jumping over to webkit browser. Which is also feature-rich and widely used.

Re:End of Firefox?

[PastaLover]

D'oh. webkit based browsers

Re:End of Firefox?

[Paul Jakma]

HTML5 video does a lot more than the object tag. It specifies a model for controlling the playing of the video, and other features in HTML5 allow the UI for those controls to be specified with the video. Further features allow all manner of transformations on the video.

Basically, it's wrong to say HTML5 video is like the object tag.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's Vimium for Chrome...

Re:End of Firefox?

[Hal_Porter]

Here's a modest proposal. Support a way to run binary plugins with a stable ABI. Then third parties with a patent license could produce plugins which played the patented format. Some of those third parties might go beyond just supporting H.264. They could have a byte code language to allow interactivity for example. It could be JITted to native code for speed. Others might provide a plugin to play a whole bunch of formats - H.264 and whatever other ones they are promoting.

This ABI could be supported across several browsers.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Paul Jakma]

Out of curiosity, do you have a proprietary browser plugin from Adobe installed? /me testing the theory that the fiercest opponents of H.264 HTML5 video tend also to quite happily be using proprietary browser plugins to browse H.263+/H.264 video on Youtube. FWIW, I don't have it installed, and HTLM5 video + H.264 at least lets me browse/watch Youtube easily with free software. Some parts of it may still have patent problems, but then so does a lot of other free software (and yes, it sucks that video seems to be a patent minefield).

Re:End of Firefox?

[ultranova]

Why? It capitulates to a non-free standard, and if H.264 becomes the defacto standard for HTML5 it effectively destroys the ability of any free browsers without deep pockets behind them to compete in the market.

H.264 is a free standard in most of the world. That's the point: why should the rest of us suffer from USAs bad laws?

Google Chrome will be fine, as will Apple Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer, but Mozilla may well be toast, and any other free alternatives that want to operate in a country that respects software patents.

So don't operate in a country that "respects" software patents. Operate in an area where it's impossible to patent a file format, such as the EU.

You don't fight a war by giving ground at every turn. Eventually you have to make a stand.

Well, moving operations out of a country where the local laws inhibit competition certainly seems like taking a stand to me. It's just a stand that happens to be inconvenient to US citizens. Maybe you should talk to your congresscritters about it?

Meanwhile, here in the free world, h.264 is an open standard, as are all file formats, so...

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who says "always have, always will" in reference to a comparison of two software products under continuous development is demonstrating that their decision making is fundamentally irrational. Well, that or that they love needlessly hyperbolic and clichéd rhetoric.

Especially when "always have" means maybe 7 years at most (or 12 years if you want to go back through KHTML as WebKit and were there from the outset...). It's an interesting form of "always".

Re:End of Firefox?

[Patch86]

apt-get purge chromium-browser
apt-get install mozilla-firefox

Easier than replacing the whole distro?

Re:End of Firefox?

[Patch86]

Why? It capitulates to a non-free standard, and if H.264 becomes the defacto standard for HTML5 it effectively destroys the ability of any free browsers without deep pockets behind them to compete in the market.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it only non-free in the US and South Korea; the only two countries with software patents? Here in the EU, for example, what prevents it from being an open standard?

I don't see why I should suffer just because some 350 million people elsewhere in the world have daft laws.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be suffering from an extended delusion; the EU has software patents. The EU rejected business method patents, but software patents are alive and well.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla's devs keep claiming that using Directshow, Gstreamer/FFMpeg and Quicktime is going to cause the Internet to catch fire and explode ("performance tuned code with little security").

The second issue is that WinXP and Vista don't have H.264, you need to install FFDshow or Nero, etc to get that support. This is "a support nightmare making sure the right codecs are installed".

I think these answers are cop-outs and can be worked around reasonably easily but whatever.

1. Split the player logic into a daemon and farm it out under a limited user account so if it gets cooked then nothing of value was lost.
2. After the install, just use that useless splash website to tell the user that they need to install 3rd party codecs. Bundle the Ogg+Theora codec with the installer if you really want.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course Firefox is losing support among the OSS front. It's feature-rich, and is widely used.

Actually, I thought it was the memory mismanagement and bloat.

Heh, it gets features that make it worth using for the regular user so the leet users get pissed off that it isn't bare bones anymore. Way to prove the GP's point!

Re:End of Firefox?

[DMiax]

Exactly the worst enemy of "perfect" is "good enough". It is why Plan9 died at the hands of Unix.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

My Pentium 4 1.6GHz plays Theora beautifully. You don't need any hardware support on that kind of CPU to play movies at DVD resolutions. There must be something wrong with your setup, or Firefox is poorly coded. Try playing the same movie in a standalone player (like VLC) and see if there's any difference.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Sparx139]

It is shortsighted to find the "tolerant", "pragmatic" projects better. It is not just puristic zealots against "I just want it to work". The availability of free software increases the options users have.

Agreed. However, I'd say that both camps are equally important. As you said, it is shortsighted to simply jump to the easy solution. Without the puristic philosophy, open source as it is would cease to exist, and would simply be a few programs built by hobbyists as opposed to a serious alternative to MS/Apple products.

On the other hand, the pragmatic solutions such as Ubuntu bring open source out of the realm of programmers and computer hobbyists and takes it to the masses. If it weren't for projects willing to compromise on software licensing, then open source will always be behind the ball on proprietary software - for example, how many people who are "iffy" about linux refuse to touch it if they couldn't use flash?

Projects such as WildFox, assuming that it goes ahead, help to keep FOSS a real option for most people. If we want people to take *nix et. al. seriously, then we need the pragmatic ideology just as much as we need puristic one.

Re:End of Firefox?

[dbIII]

Because it would violate patents in many countries

The USA and, um ... what's that other one?
This is about the point where some loser will blame "Europe" for the utter shambles that is the US system of copyrights and software patents. That is of course utter bullshit. It's a home grown problem that can be fixed at home.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Mike-the-Mikado]

Firefox killing the Mozilla browser.

Re:End of Firefox?

[tenco]

Additionally, it looks like Firefox is actually starting to lose support even from the Open Source front.

I guess it lost support by me. Strangely i switched to Chrome for "support" of math. Now that seems really odd, cause FF supports MathML and Chrome does not. But FF (3.6) both doesn't render the digital edition of my Bronstein-Semendjajew (it's from 2005) and the new NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions.

This is very sad, 'cause i would want to switch from a LaTeX/PDF combination to XHTML for editing my notes. But without a good editor and viewer MathML is worthless (and let's be honest - writing MathML is a PITA).

Re:End of Firefox?

[kurt555gs]

Don't worry. The ACTA treaty will solve this "problem" for the rest of the world. Then you WILL have all the joys of our "daft laws" like it or not!

Re:End of Firefox?

[bcmm]

I have mostly stopped using Firefox and Thunderbird largely due to their increasingly terrible Linux integration (and I used Fx from before the first name change, and Mozilla Suite before that). The most bizarre example of this is requiring one to specify the location of an executable when telling it which program to open downloaded files with. Linux users don't necessarily pay attention to the path that is being used when they put a command in their "run" box, and the only obvious way to add parameters to the command is to create a shell script. On a unix system, it really gives you the feeling that other OSs are the software's 'proper' targets.

Re:End of Firefox?

[hedwards]

Sigh, Firefox has fewer issues with memory than the competition. Chromium definitely isn't going to beat Firefox at that since they do a separate process for each, and the numbers I've seen when /. does an article on it were pretty clear that Firefox owns the competition by that metric. It uses more to start, but it doesn't really ever exceed somewhere around 250mb under normal conditions. And you can always throw in the memory trim option to cut down on unused memory blocks.

Re:End of Firefox?

[hedwards]

And precisely how much of the work for h.264 is being accelerated by the video card? Theora has been gaining traction in that area in recent times. Expecting it to keep up performance wise with a codec that has hardware acceleration is kind of silly.

Re:End of Firefox?

[drinkypoo]

Of course Firefox is losing support among the OSS front. It's feature-rich, and is widely used.

You mean it's bloated. I'm using Chromium now and it's faster, uses less memory, and has all the truly important functionality with few extensions. Firefox incorporated stuff that should have been plugins, in fact, stuff that used to be plugins, like a sidebar and dictionaries with syntax underlining. Except, of course, chromium has that stuff, and it's still smaller and faster.

I have no loyalty to software. I see no reason why I should have any. Chromium is superior and available under the same license. That's enough for me!

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it would violate patents in only two countries (while being legal in more than 190), unless you stripped out all of the infringing codecs, including h.264.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Kalriath]

The whole point of what SanityInAnarchy is saying is that browsers shouldn't need to know anything about the codecs needed. The operating system already has the libraries (QuickTime for Mac, GStreamer for most Linux disributions and DirectShow for Windows). More fragmentation is the exact opposite of what is needed.

Re:End of Firefox?

[drinkypoo]

This ABI could be supported across several browsers.

It already exists. It's called mozilla plugins, and for the most part they work in Chrome/Chromium. My about:plugins in Chromium now:

Plug-ins (7)
Shockwave Flash
Description: Shockwave Flash 10.0 r32
Location: /opt/flash10amd64/libflashplayer.so

iTunes Application Detector
Description: This plug-in detects the presence of iTunes when opening iTunes Store URLs in a web page with Firefox.
Location: /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/librhythmbox-itms-detection-plugin.so

MozPlugger 1.13.3 handles QuickTime and Windows Media Player Plugin
Description: MozPlugger version 1.13.3, maintained by Louis Bavoil and Peter Leese, a fork of plugger written by Fredrik Hübinette.
For documentation on how to configure mozplugger, check the man page. (type man mozplugger)
Configuration file: /etc/mozpluggerrc
Helper binary: mozplugger-helper
Controller binary: mozplugger-controller
Link launcher binary: mozplugger-linker

Windows Media Player Plug-in 10 (compatible; Totem)
Description: The Totem 2.30.0 plugin handles video and audio streams.
Location: /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libtotem-gmp-plugin.so

DivX® Web Player
Description: DivX Web Player version 1.4.0.233
Location: /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libtotem-mully-plugin.so

QuickTime Plug-in 7.6.6
Description: The Totem 2.30.0 plugin handles video and audio streams.
Location: /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libtotem-narrowspace-plugin.so

Interesting, mime types are shown when you C&P, but don't display on the page. I deleted them to pass the filter though. Stupid slashdot.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there ANYBODY offering hardware Theora support?

Yes, Mozilla actually:

http://blog.mjg.im/2010/04/16/theora-on-n900.html
http://www.basschouten.com/blog1.php/2010/04/07/firefox-video-goes-up-to-11

The only chance we have to tell MPEG-LA to shove it is Google releasing the On2 codecs, because VP6 plays nicely on low power and slower devices like this Sempron, and I'm betting VP8 will be even better. Theora is just gonna end up another Vorbis, a teeny tiny niche nobody but a few FOSS geeks use, just like how everyone plays MP3s even though they are patent encumbered.

This is silly. Google has video codecs, not audio codecs. If they release VP8 on an open, royalty-free basis they'll naturally use Vorbis for audio. What's the point of royalty-free video with no royalty-free audio to go with it?

Re:End of Firefox?

[Hal_Porter]

That was my point.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Hurricane78]

Uuum, the player uses the standart OS facitilies anyway. On Linux e.g. ffmpeg or xine. On Windows DirectShow. On Mac CoreVideo.
I always said that, and I’ll say it again: Just bind to ffmpeg.
Then you don’t only get one codec, but ALL. Plus lots and lost of processing functionality. And if you do it right, you can make it optional, and offer the lib separately. In all distributions of Linux, a simple (optional) dependency on ffmpeg would be enough. Which would make the whole “problem” dissolve into thin air.
Yes, that’s right: The original Firefox team could do that, and be out of “trouble”.

I told ya: If there are two things that seem to be an either/or choice... I choose both. No compromises*! :)

(* WARNING: Requires brain power. ;)

Re:End of Firefox?

[Hurricane78]

No it wouldn’t. Your statement is just plain bogus.
As the summary said: There are only two countries in the world with software patents. TWO.
And frankly, I declare them the “axis of evil” and don’t fuckin’ care about their “laws”. Much less do I care on them wanting to impose them on the whole world.

But I agree that bundling is pointless, except for Windows, where there is no concept of package dependencies, much less optional ones.
The big advantage with ffmpeg is, that you have the same interface on all operating systems. Even mobile phone OS ones.

Also you don’t seem to know that ffmpeg is not a codec. It is... well, it’s the other way around: GStreamer is something like ffmpeg. ffmpeg is a interface to use all codecs trough a common (and pretty good and featureful) interface.

Again: There is no legal issue. Create a dependency on ffmpeg.
And for the media terrorist countries, make it optional. (So people can download ffmpeg separately. E.g. trough their package manager. Since every Linux distribution known to man already includes ffmpeg, and hence already would have the “patent problem”. Or in other words: every Linux distribution known to man has more balls than the spineless Firefox team that’s kneeling to the media terrorists!. ;))

Re:End of Firefox?

[syousef]

Of course Firefox is losing support among the OSS front. It's feature-rich, and is widely used.

Perfect time to turn our backs on it, and kill it!

Of course Firefox is losing support among the OSS front. It's feature-rich, and is widely used. Perfect time to turn our backs on it, and kill it!

Well it wouldn't have anything to do with shoving changes down the user's throats ala "Asesome" bar would it? Or memory leaks from hell, crashing due to poor extension crash prevention then blaming the extension writers or users who dare to enable extensions (Hint: That's why Firefox is popular in the first place).

Re:End of Firefox?

[daffmeister]

> Even Ubuntu is probably changing to Chronium and dropping Firefox

Only for the Netbook Remix, and even there it's only an idea. According to Jorge Castro "The switch to Chromium has only been identified as possible choice on the Ubuntu Netbook Edition." and "WE LOVE FIREFOX. Mozilla is one of our most important upstreams and we will continue to work with them as we have in the past."

Re:End of Firefox?

[nloop]

When a product runs faster via wine than its native code, I'm not too excited about running it.

Re:End of Firefox?

[syousef]

Don't install 100 addons, and there is no bloat or memory mismanagement.

Without the addons, what the fuck is the point of Firefox?

Seriously, if they release a broken addon framework that allows the addons to make the product unstable, then put addons as a feature, they can't come back and blame the addons.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Pax681]

They would if, for example, none of the videos on YouTube would play until they did.

Doubtful. They'd more likely seek out another site that is compatible with their devices.

while not being a coder of any way shape manner or form i DO greatly appreciate the open source community and it's ability to spread the open source love to ALL platforms easily and effectively.

your assumption that people would dump youtube if they changed over to an open source solution is utter asshattery.

if youtube/google DID do this then when you got to their site then it'd most probably announce this in the run up and say "we are moving over to [insert codec here] please go to this link and download and install the appropriate version for your operating system"

and a similar notice for when a change over happened. it's not like google don't have the resources to carry off such a feat and the open source community, i would imagine would be back it to the hilt.

your rationale sir is bogus

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Theora is just gonna end up another Vorbis, a teeny tiny niche nobody but a few FOSS geeks use, just like how everyone plays MP3s even though they are patent encumbered.

Maybe you should read this list of games using Vorbis:

http://wiki.xiph.org/Games_that_use_Vorbis

Millions of people use Vorbis, whether they know it or not. I'm guessing you're one of ones who don't know.

Re:End of Firefox?

[lindi]

Enabling all codecs by default is not a good idea. Think security vulnerabilities in ffmpeg:

http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2000
http://www.debian.org/security/2009/dsa-1781

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the OpenGL C API was sort of shitty and archaic when I first started using it. Then I saw the WebGL JavaScript API, and it made the C API look pretty.

Re:End of Firefox?

[BZ]

"Most of the world" by which metric? If you weight countries by number of Firefox users, most of the world has a patent-encumbered H.264.

Unless you're laboring under the same misapprehension as the Wildfox author about the patent status of H.264. It's patent-encumbered in way more than two countries. See http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/bz/archives/020400.html

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be suffering from an extended delusion; the EU has software patents. The EU rejected business method patents, but software patents are alive and well.

European Patent Convention, Article 52, Paragraph 2 excludes from patentability, "schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers."

Re:End of Firefox?

[BZ]

> The browser doesn't have to implement OpenGL itself

However it does have to implement some sort of OpenGL checker (which is actually harder in some ways). Unless you enjoy having web pages send your GPU into an infinite loop, of course. Not to mention that most graphics drivers out there don't handle "invalid" OpenGL very well (read: crash, usually exploitably); needless to say one can't expect websites to stick to "valid" OpenGL.

Re:End of Firefox?

[BZ]

The article is wrong. According to the MPEG-LA, there are patents on H.264 in at least the following countries:

Germany, France, UK, Finland, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Bulgaria, Liechtenstein, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Hungary, Ireland, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Portugal, Slovenia, Japan, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, India, Canada, Mexico, Australia

See http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't try to bring practicality and rationality into a religious issue...

Re:End of Firefox?

[malv]

Firefox has terribly laggy draw performance on Linux. This was the primary reason for my switch to Chromium.

Re:End of Firefox?

[TazMainiac]

Meanwhile, here in the free world, h.264 is an open standard, as are all file formats, so...

Really?

Really:

http://slashdot.org/submission/1222248/Microsoft-gets-its-FAT-Patent-back-in-Germany

Re:End of Firefox?

[Tarquin Sidebottom]

Currently if Firefox comes across a html5 video using an unsupported codec, it already allows you to play the video in an external player or save the video. The problem is the HTML5 Javascript function canPlayType(); things like the Youtube trial detect that h264 isn't natively supported so the javascript never dynamically creates the VIDEO tag.

Downloaded the Firefox source and edit content/html/content/src/nsHTMLMediaElement.cpp.
Change the line

case CANPLAY_NO: aResult.AssignLiteral(""); break;

to

case CANPLAY_NO: aResult.AssignLiteral("probably"); break;

If you recompile the browser then join the youtube html5 beta, it will now try to serve you video via html5. At this stage the video is "protected" behind a transparent DIV so you can't right-click it. Use Firebug, or the following Greasemonkey script to delete the DIV.

// ==UserScript==
// @name youtube anti-div
// @namespace html5hackery
// @include http://.youtube./*
// ==/UserScript==

// video-blocker
function addGlobalStyle(css) {
var head, style;
head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
if (!head) { return; }
style = document.createElement('style');
style.type = 'text/css';
style.innerHTML = css;
head.appendChild(style);
}

addGlobalStyle('#video-player .video-blocker { display:none;');

You now have a version of Firefox 'compatible' with Youtube's HTML5. Currently it doesn't work with Vimeo's HTML5 beta and I haven't bothered to find out why.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Goaway]

Somehow I doubt you've looked all that much at either, especially seeing as how WebGL is pretty much a straight copy of OpenGL ES 2.0, with some convenience added on top.

Re:End of Firefox?

[moonbender]

Urgh, yeah, that one is just horrible. The strangest thing is that it's only a problem when you chose to open the file immediately. If you save the file, and then open it (within the Firefox interface, e.g. by double clicking the download), it always seems to start the right program. Pathetic.

Re:End of Firefox?

[camperdave]

Exactly the worst enemy of "perfect" is "good enough". It is why Plan9 died at the hands of Unix.

To make people think that Plan 9 is dead is all part of Plan 9. Plan 9 is proceeding perfectly.

Re:End of Firefox?

[CaptnMArk]

I prefer it because of Zoom text only. Otherwise, I'd have to use Readability on even more sites.

Re:End of Firefox?

[LordVader717]

The article's plain bull. MPEG patents are upheld in Europe, so if you don't pay you'll get sued pretty fast. Linking to one Wikipedia page, and drawing badly-researched conclusions from it is a joke.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always found Mozilla to be quite pragmatic. Their rejection of MNG for reasons of bundle size, pushing a hacked APNG format, pushing "shiny" stuff without trying to reach a consensus with other browser makers (canvas tag), their rejection of XForms and XHTML 2, their pushing of XUL, I think that makes them pretty much pragmatic, though maybe not much more than other browser makers (maybe apart from Opera, who seem to be the only idealistic bunch). I think the problem is that all browser devs are too pragmatic and they push their own features into what becomes the next de facto standard for the web, without giving much thought to finding elegant solutions or considering the consequences of breaking ties with web standard tradition. It seemed to be moving in more or less the right direction: XML-based HTML with other namespaces for extra features such as MathML, inline SVG, XForms or others, at the same time trimming the cruft from HTML itself, and making the standard easier to implement consistently across browsers. But now due to browser makers insisting on their own hacked up stuff, we are getting a mess, and turning web sites into downloadable programs that, while offering features not available to traditional web sites, break accessibilty, development elegance and take away the feeling of being in control from the user.

Re:End of Firefox?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Directshow, Gstreamer/FFMpeg and Quicktime is going to cause the Internet to catch fire and explode ("performance tuned code with little security").

Because Flash is so much better. And where are they getting their Theora implementation, hmm?

The second issue is that WinXP and Vista don't have H.264, you need to install FFDshow or Nero, etc to get that support.

So what? At least then it's possible to get that support.

Basically, their argument is, "It might be hard for the average user to get H.264, at least on older OSes, so we'll make it actually impossible." WTF?

Re:End of Firefox?

[kbrosnan]

That is still in production, just under a different name. http://wwww.seamonkey-project.org/

Re:End of Firefox?

[SanityInAnarchy]

As the summary said: There are only two countries in the world with software patents. TWO.

They're big enough that it would really suck if Firefox couldn't be distributed in those countries. Also, that's factually incorrect, as others have pointed out.

The big advantage with ffmpeg is, that you have the same interface on all operating systems. Even mobile phone OS ones.

You would with GStreamer, too. I don't know about mobile devices, but it already supports QuickTime and DirectShow. And unlike bundling ffmpeg, that means it can use native hardware decoding when available.

Also you don’t seem to know that ffmpeg is not a codec.

Tell that to stms, who seems to be under the impression that bundling ffmpeg would include support for h.264. If ffmpeg includes codecs, that doesn't really solve the problem, does it?

And for the media terrorist countries, make it optional. (So people can download ffmpeg separately. E.g. trough their package manager.

Which is exactly what I'm suggesting, only through GStreamer instead.

Since every Linux distribution known to man already includes ffmpeg,

Ubuntu doesn't include those problematic codecs in their ffmpeg. At least until the licensed versions start showing up, you'll have to use Medibuntu, which is entirely unsupported by Ubuntu. So no,

every Linux distribution known to man has more balls than the spineless Firefox team

-1 wrong.

Though I'd argue that the Firefox team is taking a truly moronic stand at refusing to implement the solution I suggested on what seems to be purely ideological grounds -- they don't like it because it means they can't refuse to support h.264 anymore, and they don't want h.264 to win. Well, if they keep digging their heels in, I'm guessing h.264 will win, and they'll lose -- people will switch from Firefox.

Re:End of Firefox?

[u17]

H.264 is a free standard in most of the world. That's the point: why should the rest of us suffer from USAs bad laws?

Because the idea behind open standards is that they must be equally available to everyone, without exceptions. Personally, I find this notion of openness worth pursuing, and will gladly sacrifice some convenience for the benefit of the folks across the ocean.

Re:End of Firefox?

[celle]

"why should the rest of us suffer from USAs bad laws?"

Because if the USA has it's way, it will, you will all have to suffer from the USA's laws.

"...Operate in an area where it's impossible to patent a file format, such as the EU."

The EU isn't exactly a bunch of angels either.

"Well, moving operations out of a country..."

Great, leaving your largest, smartest, richest, most dynamic open market, seems smart. Not all of us can or would do the same just because a few laws suck.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand how firefox can run so poorly for anyone. I run it with maybe 3 or four addons, leaving the window open all day, with maybe a gig of RAM (or was it two?) with zero problems. Even when I open up two hundred tabs at once, there's only a little slowdown as things first load, and then I'm fine and dandy like sour candy.

I guess I'm just better at the internet than most people.

Re:End of Firefox?

[hairyfeet]

Is it a Celeron? If not your point is moot. A netburst P4 with HT is NOT in any way, shape, or form comparable to a low power chip like a Sempron or an Atom. I'm probably pulling maybe 25w average since it maxes out at 62w so comparing it to a power sucking P4, to use a /. car analogy is like comparing a Mustang to a Fiesta. And I find it funny how anytime a FOSSie gets told something don't work you get a "ur doing it wrong", considering I have been building computers since Win3.x I kinda doubt it, especially since everything else plays wonderfully.

But my point still stands, the days of "throw more watts at it!" is simply over. MSFT didn't heed that and Vista bit them right in the ass. Theora is an oooold codec, based on VP3, which frankly wasn't a great codec to start with. And hardware acceleration isn't the future, it's the present. I haven't built or sold a machine in over a year that didn't come with hardware accelerated H.26x, WMV 7-9, and MP4/DivX/Xvid OOTB. And even if one has the juice to play it the customer WILL notice the difference. You take the average dual core and accelerated video makes the machine more responsive, better able to multitask, it just gives a better experience all around which really isn't surprising since GPUs handle the job so much better than CPUs.

If you want to place your bets on Theora go right ahead, but I'm predicting it will be as tiny a niche as Vorbis. And for the other poster that brought up Vorbis use in games? Well duh, it is fricking games! That is like saying Linux rules the desktop because it is used in cell phones. Kinda doesn't have a point in this conversation, since you don't see anyone pushing Vorbis only players. Game companies use it because it is free, not because it is good. For music and as far as the public is concerned Vorbis is DOA, if they have even heard of it all all. Like Vorbis Theora will be used by a few militant FOSSies while everyone else uses H.264 or if we are lucky the On2 codecs Google might release, which will probably be paired with AAC or MP3 like VP6 files I come across now.

Sorry, but just because it is RMS approved don't make it good. Nobody will accept Theora over H.264, it is too CPU intensive, it requires bigger files and doesn't give as good a picture, and inertia is already on H.264s side. Sorry but I call it how I see it, and I see a bleak future for Theora. Oh and finally considering how many patents MPEG-LA holds if they decide to go nuclear on Xiph they will probably be toast.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

You make it sound like egcs was a completely different compiler. egcs (Experimental/Enhanced GNU Compiler System) was forked from gcc in 1997, and renamed in 1999.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Addons is the main reason to use FF

Agreed 101%.

There's only about 5 or 10 that I absolutely need to have installed

same here.

I frequently get out-of-memory errors

You do not mention other apps running on your system. I find it hard to believe that FF is the only thing you are running.

bigger question is: why the heck do you have ~50 tabs open? how do you even keep track of all that? even if you can keep track of it all, @ 1 tab/min you will need almost an hour to revisit the first tab. if it's not round-robin then some of the tabs will be even staler before you revisit them. it's pointless.
The most I've ever had is when I was job hunting and even then I didn't have more than 10-12 open at a time. it is just too much clutter.

Re:End of Firefox?

[advance-software]

Neither the browser nor HTML should not dictate what video format is used.

On Windows, FF should use the DirectShow interface which decodes the stream (with hardware accelerated decode) using whatever codecs are installed.

Application specific codec support is an unnecessary complexity & constraint. Please do this properly, Mozilla devs.

This fork is a step in the right direction, but decoding via DirectShow (Windows) is the best solution. Other operating systems have generic codec interfaces too.

Support could be included into the browser to automatically download & install codecs as necessary (for most users this should be the default configuration).

Thanks for doing this - it's a step in the right direction.

Re:End of Firefox?

[drinkypoo]

1. Forks of good* projects have it hard:

If adding H.264 is the only thing they do, they will have it easy. HOWEVER, it seems like patching in support for H.264 through something the user already has, or has access to, is a job best suited to a firefox extension, not an entire fork. Thus, I predict that this fork will fail in favor of an extension that does the same thing. Frankly I'm a bit confused as to why there's not already an extension that just maps an HTML5 video tag onto an object embed tag, which ought to let the existing video plugins take over. AFAIK my plugins should already play H.264. Whether that's legal here is a discussion for another time.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

When a product runs faster via wine than its native code, I'm not too excited about running it.

When a OS runs an emulated windows application faster than the native version I'm not excited about running it.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh that's why it - with zero extensions installed - starts about 10x times slower than Chrome with about 10? Explains a lot :)

Re:End of Firefox?

[phoenix321]

It may or may not have all the required libraries. How will the webpage know? How will the user know?

You know why I use VideoLAN for media playback? Because it has its own codecs for everything. Drop a file in it, works, everytime. If it doesn't, an update is already available or the file itself is damaged.

Modular solutions are a nice way to implement functionality and has its advantages, but the monolithic model is sometimes the way to go. The average user will have one tool to download and that's it. They don't know about the difference between codecs, or even what a codec is at all.

We have come a long way to bring Firefox some market share among the usual tech support leeching crowd around us, family, friends and fools, so to speak. And I want to be able to continue saying "download Firefox and everything will work", knowing that missing plug-ins will be auto-downloaded from a probably known-good source (mozdev etc) and updates for all components are auto-enabled as much as possible.

Since using the web is a must-have feature for everyone and their dog, this functionality should be assumed and fulfilled by a quality product of free open source software.

And I'd rather sacrifice the free part of the video-codec than letting Joe User migrate back to IE8 and IE9. Which they will do, because they - at least some of them - are the most pathetically ignorant crowd you could ever imagine and they want to be able to use their YouTube, Facebook, whatever stuff to maintain their 1000 friends network. They will not ever care about patents, copyrights, fair use and DRM. They will leech off whatever they need to off PirateBay and be done with it. They don't even care about malware, spyware and trojans, as long as their steady download of porn, music, games and movies isn't slowed down too much. These Joe Normals are nice and friendly people, and for them, we need quality free software.

Giants like Apple and Google can take over market share much much faster than the Mozilla foundation, so we need to take great care here.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Tellarin]

But these count hardware patents, not only software patents. Remember that both are wildly different beasts.

The guy proposing Wild Fox is focused on going around software patents. It would be pretty hard to add hardware to Firefox. :)

Re:End of Firefox?

[nine-times]

Yeah, they could. But then they'd be doing the same thing that browser vendors have been doing for the object element since the 1990s.

Not necessarily. The problem with using the object element was not that it passed the video stream to another player per se, but that it didn't really provide good ways for web developers to control the display and controls of the video. It was more like passing the video off to an external player and saying, "Do whatever you want with this."

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't the web browser still use the HTML5 tags and options, providing more of the controls that web developers want, while still passing the video stream off to some other application or plugin for decoding?

Re:End of Firefox?

[AmigaMMC]

I have been using Firefox since version 0.5 and with the last two releases I have been increasingly discontent with it. First the huge memory footprint, going up to 1.5GB with a few tabs open, then the crashes every time someone in the room sneezes the wrong way. Flash might be a piece of junk but Firefox crashes every time Flash crashes, with Chrome I don't have to worry about that, it will warn me that Flash has crashes and just kill that tab without killing the entire browser and often lose data. Chrome, IMO, is not ready for Prime Time (any news on RSS?) and I don't particularly like the interface, but it has potential. On my netbook Chrome is the only browser I use because of its speed, Firefox's speed is considerably slower.

Re:End of Firefox?

[icebraining]

FFMPEG's legality in the those two countries is not clear.

To comply with the GPL, ffmpeg gives you the freedom to distribute the software to anyone without any restricions, besides including the source.

Whereas the H.264 license says:

Which is much more restricted, and it's the reason the non-free build of FFMEPG is not in the main repo of Debian, but in Multimedia, which has no mirror in the US.

So you're basically advocating shaking off the legal trouble to someone else. I find that to be morally reprehensible.

This version (Wild Fox), on the other hand, is specifically made for countries where H.264 isn't patented, so it's completely legal.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they are not wildly different. They are the same goddamn patents with minor wording differences to get around the "software" versus "computer-based" invention criteria.

A PC manufacturer could not pre-install WildFox in most of the world without paying the H.264 fees.

Re:End of Firefox?

[icebraining]

How is GStreamer any more legal to distribute than an implementation in Firefox?

Re:End of Firefox?

[icebraining]

They can be search at http://gb.espacenet.com/search97cgi/s97_cgi.exe?Action=FormGen&Template=gb/en/quick.hts

The patent in Portugal is "METHOD TO TRANSCODE H.264/AVC VIDEO FRAMES INTO MPEG-2 AND DEVICE" and it's in study, so it hasn't been granted yet. I don't know about other countries, but if they count yet to be granted patents as "having them", their list is not really accurate.

Re:End of Firefox?

[ruemere]

Please mod parent up.

Re:End of Firefox?

[icebraining]

Can you provide an example not related to hardware decoding? Soft patents in the EU are still very muddy waters.

Re:End of Firefox?

[BZ]

I think your dichotomy between "software" and "hardware" patents is a false one. There is also a class of patents on solutions to technical problems which may be implemented in software; such patents are defined as a distinct class of patent in Europe, for example. This class is where most of the "software" H.264 patents seem to fall.

Re:End of Firefox?

[jcrousedotcom]

That was my exact reaction - the only thing that would have made the story better is if the site would have had ads on it....

This is a non-story rather an advertisement to the slashdot community for volunteers. While the project may (or may not be) noble or valuable and all that, if this guy wants this so bad - have him do it!, don't ask us to do it for him for free.

Just sayin'.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Pentium100]

Great!

Do they make a PCI version of the accelerator card, because a lot of older computers (that do need the hardware accelerator) do not have PCIe and there is usually only one AGP slot which is usually occupied by the VGA?

Re:End of Firefox?

[pizzach]

Meh, It looks like they are just continuing to work on their Javascript implementation and leaving HTML advances to Webkit. Having said that, they are both currently top of their league.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

but Mozilla may well be toast, and any other free alternatives that want to operate in a country that respects software patents.

Right, because MozCorp isn't getting millions from Google.

We have free compression formats that work just as well as H.264 but don't have any of the licensing baggage.

Except what is being pitched against H.264, Ogg Theory, produces a vfile nearly 3 times the size of its H.264 equivalent (see the /. article on that Blender short). Mandating the inferior codec by including it in the standard is ridiculous, besides, it isn't as though it makes a difference - if it comes to HTML5 and using up 3x the bandwidth, or sticking with Flash and using 1/3 the bandwidth, which do you think people will use? By mandating the inferior codec, you're marginalizing the standard and you're marginalizing the standard - you're suddenly back to the days where people are targeting browsers, and not standards.

You don't fight a war by giving ground at every turn. Eventually you have to make a stand.

Why does everything have to be a war? You want to kill H.264, deliver a comparable alternative, Theora isn't it. If this is the armament you're going to "war" with, then the "war" has been lost before even stepping on the battlefield.

It really sucks to have an open standard (HTML5) that effectively requires a proprietary standard (H.264) to be fully functional. It isn't necessary either.

H.264 is practical, Theora isn't. An impractical standard is of no use whatsoever.

Think of it, Apple, Microsoft and Google target H.264, Mozilla targets Theora. H.264 is more practical, and so most providers target it instead of Theora - you've effectively tiered off the internet, in a way where you need one of the 3 aformentioned browsers to view content, those three browsers are now no longer compliant to the standard (where two of them previously were), you effectively make the standard useless, and remove any practical incentive to use the Mozilla prict. But who cares, you've got a standard (that nobody uses) which uses a free codec (which nobody uses), supported only by a browser (that nobody uses anymore) pyrric victory FTW!

You don't win a "war" by martyring yourself, either.

Re:End of Firefox?

[BZ]

> so it hasn't been granted yet.

Interesting. That's very useful information, thank you!

Re:End of Firefox?

[raynet]

You can cross Finland out of that list, I've checked and all the patents MPEG-LA lists are actually expired in Finland. I wouldn't be suprised if that was true for many of the other EU patents.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, in several of the countries in that list, the validity of the H.264 patent is at least questionable if not obviously invalid.

Re:End of Firefox?

[BitZtream]

Well, it would make all that bitching about which codecs to standardize on a non-issue for a start.

What? How does pawning it off to something else change the fact that it still needs to be standardized so everyone knows that a specific type of media in a specific format will be viewable/playable.

It's a browser, why should it know how to play audio, video, decode images, display fonts, or lord knows what other things will come along - 3D support next?

Because these are things that people WANT the browser to do. If the need/want for 3D text becomes big, then yes, it should be part of the standard. Why even have a standard for HTML if its not going to actually be a standard?

Pass it to the OS or build against external libraries and let something else figure that out.

Uhm, thats what should happen regardless. IE doesn't know how to decode JPEGs, GIFs, and PNGs, but Windows does, and it uses those libraries to do so. Safari can't decode h264 on its own in OSX, its linked to the system libraries. Making it standard in a browser doesn't preclude it from being done by a third party. Theres no rule in the standard that says the browser has to implement all these features in its own code, just that the standard says 'these things are available and they should work like this'. How its actually done is irreleveant.

The whole point is so that everyones browser behaves the same so you don't have to make custom hacks for every retarded browser implementation. Have you not been around for the past 10 years of dealing with customizations to make the various browsers actually work somewhat the same?

Re:End of Firefox?

[BitZtream]

Because it would violate patents in many countries, unless you stripped out all of the infringing codecs, including h.264.

Why exactly does it violate a patent?

It is possible for someone other than the patent holder to use patented tech you know?

That'd handle the legal issue, too.

No it wouldn't, it would simply shift it somewhere else. Of course you really don't understand patents in the first place so theres not much of a point in trying to convince you.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

So VP6 plays fine for you but VP3 (aka Theora) is too much for your computer? Seems strange.

Also note that Vorbis is used by Spotify to stream music and is co-owned by the music industry. Maybe that's a niche, but it's not FOSS geeks, just an area where compatibility with existing devices isn't paramount. A similar niche in video would be something like, say Youtube, which is a neat coincidence since Youtube's owner Google just bought VP8. Interesting times.

Re:End of Firefox?

[fat_mike]

It doesn't matter because in eight months the sourceforge page won't have changed, there will be no files and the farthest he will have gotten is a:

YEAH PEOPLE, its time to design a logo for "insert project name". If your logo is picked you'll win a "insert shirt, button, hat, thong" with your logo on it!!!!!!!!!!!"

Re:End of Firefox?

[BitterOak]

The article is wrong. According to the MPEG-LA, there are patents on H.264 in at least the following countries:

Germany, France, UK, Finland, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Bulgaria, Liechtenstein, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Hungary, Ireland, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Portugal, Slovenia, Japan, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, India, Canada, Mexico, Australia

See http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx

Interesting that the U.S. isn't on the list. It represents a pretty huge market share of browsers, so the project might be worth it even if it's just usable in the U.S. It is nice to see that the U.S. isn't the most patent encumbered country for a change!

Re:End of Firefox?

[TheReal_sabret00the]

It sounds like you have some dodgy extensions installed. That won't be a problem after 4 comes out as most bjork extensions will stop working.

Re:End of Firefox?

[tepples]

Safari can't decode h264 on its own in OSX, its linked to the system libraries.

So to which system libraries should a browser pass the video? Consider these issues:

• Popular Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Fedora cannot ship patented codecs in the default install. The FFmpeg plug-ins and the "ugly" GStreamer plugins are illegal to install in the countries in question.
• The browser maintainer has no way to fix a security hole in a third-party codec.
• Makers of fake antivirus software have used missing codec error messages as a hook to get users to install fake antivirus software.

Re:End of Firefox?

[BikeHelmet]

Theora? Even in a window it is a jerky mess.

I believe this is a Firefox issue more than a Theora issue.

Try Chrome. It should play back acceptably well.

And I agree. Currently H.264 is the best codec, by a very wide margin.

Re:End of Firefox?

[tepples]

Because it would violate patents in only two countries (while being legal in more than 190)

Assigning an equal weight to each country is MAUP bias. How much of the gross world product is from countries where patents on information processing methods have been enforced in court (USA, South Korea, and Germany)?

Re:End of Firefox?

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

egcs was a fork of gcc, created because development of the original gcc went stale. The FSF abandoned the original gcc in light of the success of ecgs. In other words, the fork killed the parent, which is what the gp said he wanted an example of. After the death of the original gcc, ecgs was renamed gcc and took over its place in the GNU stack.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Teun]

The MPEG-LA can claim all they want but in the end it's the local law that rules. Here in The Netherlands (computer) algorithms cannot be patented, period.

Some misconceptions may be caused by the fact we, as others European countries, have farmed out the registration of patents (octrooien) to the European Patent Office.

As a commercial entity they have allowed the registration of anything worth a fee but that is well short of being able to legally enforce such a registration in one of the participating countries.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

If only GCC developers listened to you.

7z under Wine works on average 30% faster than a native 7z compiled by GCC.

Re:End of Firefox?

[fyngyrz]

(DENVER, CO, US - 2 February 2010) - MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as Internet Broadcast AVC Video) during the next License term from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2016

You were saying about how it's not like GIF? Can't come back and bite the users later? Yes? Please do go on. Explain how the change in charging the users for use in 2016 that MPEG-LA has set themselves up to be able to do wouldn't suddenly disrupt the community? Or do you believe, that after establishing a huge user base, there is no chance they, or whoever they've sold it to in the meantime, is not going to tap that metaphorical piggy bank, after they went to the extreme of specifically setting a time limit on how long it could be used for free?

h.264 is, because of the time limit (and indirectly because it is encumbered), a huge mistake, and both its intent, effect, and consequences, have the potential to have effects precisely like GIF: Get it embedded, get everyone using it, then hammer them with charges.

This is why it's a terrible choice. Being "up front" about it has nothing to do with it. It is potential developer- and user-license-bombing that is the issue. Why be stupid and walk into such a thing, knowing you can be screwed? The sensible thing is to use a codec that is not encumbered. Doesn't matter if the compression is poor, as long as it is even moderately reasonable, and it gets the movie to you. To the extent that bandwidth is a problem, it is temporary; bandwidth goes up constantly. It's no reason to dive face first, eyes open, into a reeking pile of financial hurt.

Technologies that are encumbered drag everyone down except the inventor. We need to stop using them. Every time we do, we get screwed. Want to watch a DVD on your linux machine? Guess you'll have to break the law. Notice how VNC won't play until you "do something"? That's because the technology is encumbered, not because it's hard to do. Want to watch a Bluray on a Mac? No, sorry. Again, it's not a problem technically. It's about licensing. Want to watch your h.264 stuff on 2017 on your new machine? Will you be able to? You can't answer yes with any certainty.

Bad. Idea.

Re:End of Firefox?

[hairyfeet]

Uhhhh...explain please, because I'm getting a bit if a head scratcher from your question. Why exactly would you need PCI, if you have AGP? It isn't like the old days where the card only does MPG acceleration, any Radeon 4xxx would give you an excellent picture AND H.26x, WMV 7-9, MPG 1&2, and MP4/DivX/Xvid acceleration OOTB, all while probably using less power than your CPU trying to do it by itself.

But to answer your question yes they do make PCI cards that will accelerate H.26x and the above formats. While I can't speak for the 2400 Pro, I have sold a few of the 4350s and for a low power card it certainly accelerates video just fine.

But if you have an AGP slot I would recommend this card as it has a full Gb of RAM for buffering and can even game decently as long as you aren't talking Crysis (I play Bioshock I, SoF 3, and Far cry on mine and it looks good and plays fine) or if you wanted to go cheap and only care about video here is an open box 3650 for less than $50. So breathing new life into an AGP equipped PC really isn't hard or expensive, and any of the above with give you good hardware acceleration for less than $100.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the OS, it's the UI toolkit. Firefox running in Wine uses Wine's emulation of Win32 one. Firefox running natively uses Gtk.

Re:End of Firefox?

[leuk_he]

Wait... It gets better. Look up that person and you are bound to find some more drama.

He, or she is an expert troll (meant as a compliment).

 

Re:End of Firefox?

[morari]

Couldn't that just be done with addons?

Re:End of Firefox?

[Pentium100]

However, all those cards do not accelerate Theora. Since parent said that Mozilla has hardware acceleration capability for Theora then it probably is a separate card that just decodes Theora, which means it should be either PCIe or PCI.

Anyway, my main PC has a video card that does not have hardware acceleration for h264 (Radeon HS2900XT, it was just released when I bought it), but the CPUs (2x Opteron 270) are powerful enough to do it in software.

Re:End of Firefox?

[royallthefourth]

That's a good thing; I don't really want to end up getting goatsed with anusotropic filtering turned on!

Re:End of Firefox?

[SanityInAnarchy]

It is possible for someone other than the patent holder to use patented tech you know?

Yes, but only with permission. In the case of H.264, Mozilla could buy a license, but then anyone who wants to roll their own version of Firefox has to pay for a separate license.

No it wouldn't, it would simply shift it somewhere else.

Indeed. It would shift it to the OSes, and both Windows and OS X already license H.264, among others. Even Ubuntu looks likely to do so. There's also the Fluendo codecs, among others.

It also makes it technically possible for the individual user to violate the patent by downloading unlicensed implementations, like those found in medibuntu. If you don't like patents, that's a much better scenario than simply asking Mozilla to do it -- the MPEG-LA can sue Mozilla out of existence, but they can't sue every Linux user out of existence, especially when some people will buy Fluendo codecs.

Any way you slice it, this puts that "burden" in a much more manageable place. If I'm running Windows, I already have an H.264 license -- why shouldn't I be able to use it in Firefox? Does Mozilla really want to force me to only use it in IE?

Of course you really don't understand patents in the first place

Ad-hom based on less than two paragraphs out of me. That's hardly fair, wouldn't you say?

Re:End of Firefox?

[ultranova]

Because if the USA has it's way, it will, you will all have to suffer from the USA's laws.

Well, every project that escapes the USA is evidence against those laws.

The EU isn't exactly a bunch of angels either.

No, just rationally self-interested.

Great, leaving your largest, smartest, richest, most dynamic open market, seems smart.

The EU is a bigget market than the USA. I'm sorry to say, but the USA stopped being the leader of the free world a long time ago. The only thing you have going for you is the 1st Amendment, and even there Tor and Freenet have superceded you.

Re:End of Firefox?

[spikeb]

is it really theora that sucks, or is it FF playback of it that sucks? because teh second sucks even on higher end machines

Re:End of Firefox?

[LordVader717]

http://www.dvd-intelligence.com/display-article.php?article=836

Re:End of Firefox?

[BZ]

I should have been clearer. Those are just non-US countries in the list; there are plenty of US patents there too.

Re:End of Firefox?

[hairyfeet]

It doesn't accelerate pink unicorns either, your point? NOBODY accelerates Theora in hardware, okay? That is one of the reason why it sucks. Not Intel, not Nvidia, not AMD. Nobody. the ONLY link I could find for hardware accelerated Theora in FF is on a single niche mobile. that's it. Seriously, who cares if FF accelerates on a niche mobile device? Oh here is the link if you care, but really...meh.

For everybody else, you know, the non FOSSies? Yeah the other 99.9998% of the population? They care about formats they will actually encounter in real life and Theora simply isn't used enough to worry about. So complaining it doesn't accelerate Theora is like bitching because it doesn't accelerate Indeo. Nobody uses it dude, at least not enough to matter.

Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but it is pretty obvious that short of Google dropping an On2 bomb and switching to it that H.264 is gonna be the standard, and Theora is gonna be another Vorbis, a niche so tiny nobody really worries about. I don't make the world, I just live in it. And as we saw with MP3, the population really doesn't give a shit about patents, because the odds of them getting bitten in the ass is so low.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Pentium100]

Yes, I know that. I also think that Mozilla should just use DirectShow for playing h264 and stop whining about freedom from being able to watch videos without Flash. I live in a country that does not "respect" software patents so the codec (ffdshow) is totally free for me.

I also need to write sarcasm better, or you need to recalibrate your detector...

Re:End of Firefox?

[arose]

How many mobile devices play all H.264 profiles? How many have additional restrictions even with Baseline?

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you should say that in those words since the famous quote (IIRC, Voltiare) argues pretty much the opposite:

          The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Re:End of Firefox?

[zuperduperman]

This is what I don't understand about the whole debate. Why can't the browser vendors just build their tags to use the *built in* codecs that are available on the underlying platform? All users of (modern) Windows and Mac systems have these codecs. Built in. They are licensed to use them - full stop. They *paid for it* with their Windows & Mac OS license. Why do we need to even talk about re-licensing them? Just use the damn things, that are *already there*. If they are not there, show the user a nice page about software patents and how evil they are.

We don't argue about the fact that FireFox relies on the user having a graphics card that is probably patented from top to bottom to display the graphics FireFox renders. Or an audio card. Or an OS that can display windows etc. These all exist at the layer below the browser. So should the video codecs.

Re:End of Firefox?

[gig]

For the past year, I've been doing projects where I convert Flash video presentations from VP6-encoded video to H.264-encoded video, which also plays in FlashPlayer. Then the website code is modified so that if there is no FlashPlayer, the H.264 video is served without Flash, so it works on mobiles. None of the people I work for has anything but H.264 on their radar, because it plays in Firefox via FlashPlayer. This is happening all over.

The problem in the near term for Firefox is that they're going to be dependent on FlashPlayer when other browsers aren't, they can play the video without Flash. So users with Firefox and a Flash blocker are very vulnerable to a Chrome or Safari switch.

Long term, the problem is that sites are dropping their Flash stuff entirely when they do a redesign, and Firefox will lose inline video altogether. In one of those projects, we show HTML5/H.264 video with a fallback to a poster link to the same video. So in Safari you see inline video, but in Firefox you click a static image to see the video in a helper app. Firefox misses the DOM-based interactive video altogether. Users are going to see some very cool things in Safari and Chrome and be vulnerable to switching away from Firefox.

Almost nobody is going to make nonstandard video just for Firefox. Suggesting Ogg as a substitute for MPEG-4 is like telling a Linux user "you can just use DOS 3.3 instead of Linux, they are both operating systems!" It would be cheaper to take up a collection and pay Mozilla's MPEG-4 license fees than to double the world's video encoding costs.

So yes, I think you're right. Firefox is killing itself if it doesn't have MPEG-4. It's a conceit to pretend Web video is just starting. The fact that W3C and browser makers washed their hands of audio video and gave us the failed XHTML experiment in HTML4 doesn't permit them to pretend that MPEG-4 is not a successful, almost 10 years old standard. Most of the video that plays in Firefox today is H.264 (via FlashPlayer) and it will be for some time to come. If they can compromise to take $50 million from Google they can compromise to give a much, much smaller amount to MPEG-4. The Web is becoming more like interactive TV rather than an interactive printed magazine, so a Web browser that can't play standard video is just going to become less and less of a Web browser.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to point out, re: the whole Ubuntu/Firefox/Chromium thing.

1) It's still just a rumor.
2) They're only talking about switching on the Netbook Remix version of the operating system. That makes some sense, given that Chrome is wicked fast and netbooks generally don't have space for a bunch of overlapping applications.

Re:End of Firefox?

[BZ]

> Here in The Netherlands (computer) algorithms cannot be patented, period.

That's not what the wikipedia article linked to from the article summary says, for what it's worth.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Hurricane78]

No I am not. I am saying FIGHT that bullshit or DIE TRYING.

Yes, if it comes to it, I’ll go guerilla mind-hacker for it.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously man, get organized! NOBODY needs to have 50 tabs open! EVER.

I frequently see my co-worker open a lot of tabs too, but he frequently gets confused with even 10 or so open and just opens the same ones again and again. On the other hand, I simply close tabs that I don't need any longer, because I am done with it. Of course, I can occasionally have 20 or so tabs open, that's in my lunch break, when I open slashdot stories in a new tab to mark them as "to read". When lunch is done, that Firefox window is _closed_.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Hurricane78]

They are not “very muddy waters”. THEY ARE NOT LAW. Period. End of discusison.

If you find the law, show me it. Except that you won’t, because I know for a fact that there isn’t one.
There is only a draft. A draft is not law. A law is law.

Why is this so hard to get?

Re:End of Firefox?

[Kalriath]

Some distributors (Canonical for example) obtain the licenses for you, so it's A-OK.

Re:End of Firefox?

[oiron]

Not a lawyer, but Indian patent law does not allow software patents per se. Software is only patentable as part of a hardware implementation.

And looking at the patents claimed by MPEG-LA:

• IN 213894 (Panasonic) "A DECODING METHOD OF DECODING CODED PICTURES": I think this US patent. Looks like a hardware decoder to me...
• IN 227041 (again Panasonic): this is what shows up, which seems to be a pharma patent... Not sure what relavence it has to H.264... Typo?
• IN 203901 "OPTICAL RECORDING MEDIUM, AZO-TYPE IRON CHELATE COLORING MATTER, AND AZO-TYPE METAL CHELATE COLORING MATTER ADDITIVE" granted to Mitsubishi: Yeah, sounds really relevant to H.264!

I call shenanigans...

Re:End of Firefox?

[hairyfeet]

Nothing wrong with my detector P100 (funnily enough my former gamer P100 is STILL working 5 days a week at a lumber mill) it was the subject. It seems when it comes to FOSSies the RDF is powerful with that group. I actually had one, completely serious mind you, tell me that he didn't believe me about the problems I was having with Linux wireless and in the same breath wrote about how he had to compile from source just to get his working, and how after updating the card that worked before didn't work now. I shit you not!

So I have learned to treat any reply that has to do with FOSSie software as serious, because sadly they usually are. It is amazing the flaming shit hoops some FOSSies will jump through and then act seriously bent that you don't want to jump through them as well. I build computers for a living and my customers want affordable and fast, with good video, and Theora just sucks in that regard.

I can build a bottom of the line AMD dual, add 4Gb of RAM and W7 HP and thanks to the great Radeon onboards AMD uses now video is smooth and the PC very responsive thanks to hardware acceleration. Even with my AMD quad I've found that hardware acceleration makes a BIG difference, in that I can have plenty of CPU intensive tasks going without making my HD video skippy. And with prices for electricity going up those 45w and 65w AMD duals and quads are getting REAL popular, and with those slower chips Hardware acceleration is a must.

As I've said here before, just because something has source doesn't make it great. Without HA Theora is frankly lousy when it comes to performance, but I just don't see the massive effort being put into HA for Theora and getting it into the hands of the masses with good GUI tools for making and editing. Instead all I see is variations on "It works for me, Linux roxors, haha winblowz!" etc, so I figure Theora will end up another "who cares?" format like Vorbis while everyone else uses H.264 just like they ignored Vorbis for MP3. And I agree that Moz should just STFU and use DShow like everything else. It isn't like they can get in trouble for using the user's own installed codecs anyway.

And if it comes down to Flash or H.264? I'll take Adobe any day of the week and twice on Sunday, because Adobe haven't proven themselves to be grade a douchebags like MPEG-LA have.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Tellarin]

Very valid point. If I'm not mistaken these are called method patents (and are specially common in Germany).

Sorry if I indirectly implied a dichotomy, my point was that the Wild Fox guy was talking about software patents, while the replier was talking about other kinds as well.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

The (built-in to Firefox video tag) play doesn't use ffmpeg; it uses libogg / libtheora / libvoris / libsydneyaudio. It previous used liboggplay / liboggz as well; that has now been removed because adding more wrappers isn't always the right answer.

No, it doesn't use xine / DirectShow / CoreVideo either; at least, not as video decoders. I don't know if at this point they are used for raw audio output. They are definitely not used for video output, because they need the raw decoded video data in RGB to mix with the web page.

All this is the current state of things, not what the future may and/or should be. Feel free to browse the Mozilla source code, in the /media directory.

Re:End of Firefox?

[bemymonkey]

When I'm browsing my news feeds or forums, I usually open everything I'm planning on reading, and THEN start reading. If I haven't checked my feeds for a while, that's 400-500 articles, 50 of which I'd like to read on average.

This is on my own time of course - not at work or on my lunch break...

Re:End of Firefox?

[Pentium100]

Well, a lot of FOSS guys like DIY. Compiling from source isn't convenient for most people but sometimes it is needed (one of the reasons I don't use Linux on my main PC) when the hardware is rare enough that nobody cares about it. Linux does not have good drives for some hardware because the manufacturers don't make them, which leads to lower market share for Linux and manufacturers not caring about it.

I'm not a programmer, but, since I am into old electronics (mostly audio stuff - tape decks etc) I have to know how to fix at least simple problems myself (If I went to a repair shop every time some simple problem occurred I'd be out of money) - bad capacitors, transistors, tubes, some other problem. And I actually like it, I don't want to stop using the old tape deck just because I don't want to have to align its heads or replace a bunch of capacitors. So I understand what the FOSS guys are feeling about the software that you can fix yourself. However, I also understand that a lot of people don't know anything about electronics or programming, so an old tape deck may not be for someone who does not know how to hold a soldering iron and does not have money for the occasional trip to a repair shop. The same with FOSS - some programs are really great, Linux for the most part is too, but if you have a nonstandard configuration or something Linux gets really complicated really fast.

Re:End of Firefox?

[icebraining]

Yeah, but requiring a license from a third-party for each copy destroys the freedom to redistribute it, as its OSS license gives you.

Re:End of Firefox?

[pacinpm]

The article is wrong. According to the MPEG-LA, there are patents on H.264 in at least the following countries:

[...] Poland[...]

There are no software patents in Poland. Probably there are no software patents in any EU country.

Re:End of Firefox?

[dangitman]

i DO greatly appreciate the open source community and it's ability to spread the open source love to ALL platforms easily and effectively.

But that's not what's happening here. H.264 is far more widely (and better) supported on multiple platforms than Theora.

if youtube/google DID do this then when you got to their site then it'd most probably announce this in the run up and say "we are moving over to [insert codec here] please go to this link and download and install the appropriate version for your operating system"

Actually, what they will (and actually are with the current HTML5 trial) doing is suggesting users use compatible browsers, such as Safari or Chrome, and that doesn't include Firefox.

It's a better solution, because plug-ins tend to suck, and you're leaving compatibility/security issues to a third party rather than the browser's vendor. It's also much easier for users to understand the concept of a new browser than a "plug-in" or "codec." And users won't have to update the plug-in separately to their browser.

and a similar notice for when a change over happened. it's not like google don't have the resources to carry off such a feat and the open source community, i would imagine would be back it to the hilt.

But Google is backing H.264 and opposing Theora, so that ship has sailed. People are either going to get Chrome or Safari, or IE10 - or use a fork of the Firefox project.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

It all comes down to which implementation of video coding you are using. Using the offical AVC I can run 1080p videos on my 1.6hgz atom, yet with VLC player I cannot even run them on my 3Ghz dual core desktop.

I think the main point is that its not really the codecs that are the problem - its that paid software always more people to work on it longer and come up with extremely efficient solutions. AVCcore for example is amazingly efficient, over 50 times faster than VLC player in many cases. I mean thats an insane speed difference, who knows what could be done with proper funding behind theora, but why would anyone bother with it?

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox has a sizable marketshare.
Theora is 10-20% worse looking than h264 but clean room implemented -> much more difficult to sue without losing face. See S.Jobs.
H264 licensing terms are most unfavorable for business, since it's a big ??? when the current exemptions end. Currently I feel safer installing firefox on PCs for that reason.

I don't see "the right move" being as clear cut as you make it. I see this as giving in too early. Fight for open unencumbered standards or you'll have to liberate yourself again in a few years.

Re:End of Firefox?

[hairyfeet]

But even you have to admit that is completely dissimilar from the crazy RDF that seems to be infecting the FOSSies ATM. You know that the skills it takes to do what you do with tape decks isn't readily available or desired by the general population, but you do it because you can and you enjoy it same as I enjoy taking a bunch of junked parts and building a "frankenputer" out of them.

But that is NOTHING like the land of denial the FOSSies are living in, because they honestly believe because they like compiling from source or dealing with tons of CLI that you MUST like, be capable of, and willing to do the same, else you are nothing but a shill "for teh M$!" or an idiot. Running my own shop, spending time with my GF, and playing bass in a band I simply don't have enough hours in the day to jump through flaming turd hoops just to "fix" whatever was broken on the last Linux update, or to spend hours dealing with CLI bullshit, so according to them I MUST be a troll!

And the worst part is they'll scream all day that "Linux is ready for the desktop!" and the reason Windows sells is all "backroom payoffs by M$! ZOMG!" and in THE SAME BREATH talk about spending a couple of days trying to fix whatever Ubuntu shat upon with their last update (which at 6 months is total insanity) and they HONESTLY believe the skills required to do so are well within the grasp of your average desktop user.

I mean for the love of God these crazy people will actually tell you that you should inform your customers to "embrace the power of the Terminal" like the average PC user is gonna get a woody about being thrown back into an ancient relic of the 70s, complete with NO spellcheck, NO autocomplete, and where a single mistyped word can bork your system! At least you and I don't go around blaming conspiracies because the world hasn't embraced soldering your own caps or frankenboxing. And I apologize about the length, it just still blows my fucking mind how completely otherwise rational and intelligent people can just go bug fucking nuts with regards to FOSS. It is like a crazy cult religion to these people.

And for those that don't know Ronnie James Dio passed away Sunday from cancer. This old metalhead morns the passing of the magical elf and offers the gift of Heaven and Hell live in remembrance. RIP little elf.

Re:End of Firefox?

[BZ]

And the H.264 patents aren't "software" patents under the European patent classifications. They're "method" patents.

Re:End of Firefox?

[jedidiah]

> So to which system libraries should a browser pass the video? Consider these issues:

Also consider the fact that Ubuntu already has a solution in place for it's own "built in" video player.

It's time to stop fanning the flames of false hysteria.

Re:End of Firefox?

[jedidiah]

GStreamer is legal the same way Quicktime would be for some patented codec that Apple hasn't licensed.

It's just a plugin framework that allows you to plug in anything you want at runtime. The interface doesn't have to make any assumptions about what's going to be plugged in. So the framework doesn't have to violate anything.

Re:End of Firefox?

[jedidiah]

> Ubuntu doesn't include those problematic codecs in their ffmpeg. At least until
> the licensed versions start showing up, you'll have to use Medibuntu, which is
> entirely unsupported by Ubuntu. So no,

I play an h264 movie with a fresh copy of Ubuntu 10.04 and it does it's apt-get magic and suddenly I am playing an h264 movie.

No extra futzing is required. Don't have to touch any files associated with apt-get.

I just play the movie and Ubuntu handles things.

I can also install "alternate" video players and also be immediately be in business. (these also exist for MacOS and Windows)

Re:End of Firefox?

[Pax681]

um... VP8?

Re:End of Firefox?

[mab]

So what about: German appeal court upholds Microsoft FAT patent

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/German-appeal-court-upholds-Microsoft-FAT-patent-985550.html

Re:End of Firefox?

[Spaseboy]

I certainly wish it WOULD be done with addons so I could start using it now. Frankly, I think Firefox has past it's time of leading the way for other browsers to follow and has become a follower itself. Personas, Separate Process for Plugins and Weave Sync look like attempts to catch up to Chrome. I personally LOVE Google. I use almost all of their services, but do not love Chrome. It's just OK to me. I would rather Firefox fix things like it's slow ass JavaScript performance and memory leaks (which are still present in the nightly builds).

Mozilla makes most of its money from Google. I don't know how smart it is to spend most of your resources copying your main competitor and beneficiary.

Re:End of Firefox?

[metamatic]

Add-ons are why I quit Firefox.

By the time I had CookieSafe and NoScript installed to provide basic security, and Web Developer and Firebug installed for my developer tools, the whole thing started to get RAM-hungry and crashy.

The Firefox devs aren't interested in providing fine-grained security controls in the browser, so I switched to Chrome, which has all the security and developer functionality built in. The fact that the developer tools actually seemed to work as described (not my experience with Firebug) was an added bonus.

Re:End of Firefox?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I play an h264 movie with a fresh copy of Ubuntu 10.04 and it does it's apt-get magic

I'm guessing that's after you had to click through something about non-free codecs.

I can also install "alternate" video players and also be immediately be in business.

Sure, but that's hardly an endorsement from Ubuntu.

Re:End of Firefox?

[dangitman]

What about it? That' not deployed anywhere yet, and Google is using H.264 for Youtube at the moment.

Re:End of Firefox?

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

"Not a lawyer, but Indian patent law does not allow software patents per se. Software is only patentable as part of a hardware implementation."

I've heard this about other countries as well. All I can say is "oh, good, we can freely encode and decode H.264 video, so long as we don't use any computer hardware in the process".

(Maybe I'm overly cynical, but the "hardware" requirement doesn't seem like it changes the "software patent" problem at all...)

Re:End of Firefox?

[Pax681]

yeah and that may be so.. but and , i admit it's a big but.....

what if, like many have suggested it is opened up and and google use that ... i think the operative words you used for H.264 on youtube was "for the moment"

it will indeed be very interesting to see what they do with it. Seeing as they haven't made an announcement on it not even the mighty dangitman can predict it..lol

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear, hear!

Re:End of Firefox?

[bemymonkey]

Chrome has all the functionality of NoScript and ABP built in with a significantly lower memory footprint? Where do I find this fabled functionality (seriously, I want to know! I'll fire up Chrome right away to try it out)?

Re:End of Firefox?

[metamatic]

Chrome has all the functionality of NoScript and ABP built in with a significantly lower memory footprint?

Here's what I wrote about it. You still need an adblocker, but cookie and script permissions are built-in.

Re:End of Firefox?

[bemymonkey]

Thanks, reading up on that now!

Re:End of Firefox?

[bemymonkey]

Hmmm, isn't looking all too good so far:

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn108/bemymonkey/Capture.png

With Adblock + Flashblock installed and only one tab (Gmail) open, Chrome uses more RAM than Firefox.

Also, Flashblock and Adblock don't work properly in incognito mode, and the Javascript whitelisting is a) a pain in the ass (two clicks + manual refresh every time you add a permission), and b) nowhere near as in-depth as NoScript (no temporary whitelisting of single elements, no explicit whitelisting of the individual domains trying to insert Javascript on the page, no temporary whitelisting in general... it's just a very all-or-nothing solution).

I have a feeling I'll be sticking with Firefox, even if it uses 800MB of RAM when I've got a few windows and tabs open...

Re:End of Firefox?

[pacinpm]

And the H.264 patents aren't "software" patents under the European patent classifications. They're "method" patents.

If they are not software patents than you can create encoders in Poland without any legal problems. There are no "method" patents applicable to software.

Re:End of Firefox?

[BZ]

OK; it's possible that the Polish patents on the list are for pure hardware.

Note that what matters isn't only who can create encoders but also who can create decoders _and_ who can actually execute them. MPEG-LA views the use of an unlicensed encoder/decoder (which is a classification _they_ decide on) as an infringement of their patents. So if you have, say, a web browser including a decoder, then for a user to use it without threat of being sued either the decoder needs to be licensed or the user needs to be in a jurisdiction where none of the patents apply.

Re:End of Firefox?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Not with Galium3D, AFAIK. Linux graphics ftw!

Re:End of Firefox?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Aside from the US, who's the other?

Re:End of Firefox?

[badkarmadayaccount]

The windows version gets more optimizations.

Re:End of Firefox?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Theora is easy on the CPU, except with mobile, softrendering is acceptable for nearly any machine.

Re:End of Firefox?

[badkarmadayaccount]

FFS, GStreamer support DirectShow, and QuickTime as backends. Just use it.

Re:End of Firefox?

[pacinpm]

OK; it's possible that the Polish patents on the list are for pure hardware.

Note that what matters isn't only who can create encoders but also who can create decoders _and_ who can actually execute them.

Which matters only in countries where you have software patents. If you have no software patents you can legally create encoders and decoders as long as you do it in software.

Re:End of Firefox?

[BZ]

The point is that most European countries are not in that situation wrt the patents in question. Poland seems to be an exception. Which means that you could create a browser that uses an unlicensed H.264 decoder legally in Poland, but a user in, say, Germany who runs that browser would be liable if the MPEG-LA decided to sue him

Re:End of Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

The **guy** proposing this is a "woman". You may have heard of them, but it's rare to see them on /.

the point?

[spikeb]

firefox can't even play back theora html5 videos (try it. slow as a dog), now they want to add something else it can't do?

Re:the point?

[hvm2hvm]

dogs are not that slow? what happened, you were too much in a rush to be able to find a decent metaphorical comparison?

Re:the point?

[nacturation]

firefox can't even play back theora html5 videos

This disappoints all three people who have Theora videos.

Re:the point?

[Trepidity]

It's actually a reasonably common idiomatic expression, especially w.r.t. computers, despite not making a lot of sense. See these examples. I've also seen "dog-slow". My guess is that they're slips from "sick as a dog" and "dog-tired", respectively.

Re:the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

commons.wikimedia.org has quite a lot of theora video, and will be one of the groups cheering. "But who uses commons?" Well, all the different language wikipedia's, for starters.

(A lot of people think that google may be releasing the newer "theora" codec (VP8) as open source Real Soon Now, which should end this debate permanently. Let's see what happens.)

Re:the point?

[TheReal_sabret00the]

I've not found it slow at all. On 3.6.x or 3.7alpha's.

Re:the point?

[spikeb]

I'm using 3.6.3 and it plays html5 videos as slideshows :( any idea what I can do to fix it?

Re:the point?

[spikeb]

for further reference, the same machine using chromium plays the videos fine.

watch out for importation to USA

[optikos]

what to still watch out for: making Wild Fox available in the USA could be an infringing importation http://www.managingip.com/Article/2400437/Foreign-infringement-of-US-patents.html

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[gzipped_tar]

Not to mention concerns over invasive species... ;)

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Solution: Host the site in Russia. Any FBI agents who try to set foot there will quickly be gunned down by the phishing mafia...and the US probably isn't willing to start a nuclear war over H.264. :)

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[Elledan]

That's why I specifically mention on the site that this version of Firefox is not meant for anyone in a country which has such patents. No American, South-Korean or anyone from another country which has or will get such software patents can not, is not allowed to and shall never use Wild Fox. Period. Unless they cough up the licensing costs for using a h.264 decoder.


Maya (Wild Fox maintainer)

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they'll ignore you and use it. I know I will.

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[jpg5]

Why they don't just do the same in Firefox website? I mean they can have two builds. One with and one without H264 add say something like: "If you leave in USA, then download the version without H264. If you don't like that, either ask your government to scrap any software patents or go and buy a H264 license."

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[Pentium100]

AFAIK it's because Mozilla is in the USA, so they would be in trouble for infringing the patents even though the users, who live in other countries would not.

However, nothing is preventing Mozilla from making a version of Firefox that uses system codecs (Directshow on Windows etc) and not worrying about where the users would get the codec (those, who have Win7, already have h264 btw).

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[Madsy]

You're kidding, but I wouldn't be so sure. Intellectual property is the only remaining goods the U.S exports. If anything could make the U.S start a nuclear war, it would be something that threatens its economy.

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Then I'll just use a proxy to get it from your site and distribute it through bittorrent.

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[boxwood]

I think a nuclear war would be a bigger threat to the economy than IP infringement.

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[leamanc]

My Macs already have a license for H.264. I assume it's bundled in QuickTime, because H.264 videos in HTML5 work in Safari.

So since I already have a license, why can't Firefox use it on my Macs? (According to the logic of your post, that is...)

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's my problem with the whole "software patents are bad" thought process. And someone correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't practically all of the innovative software that people use everyday worldwide come from the USA? IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Unix, Apple, Mozilla, Arpanet, Adobe, id software, Valve, all from top to bottom. Very little great software comes from countries that don't have software patents. Linux is just a reimplementation of Unix for example. Actually, I'd love to break the yoke of the aforementioned companies but there is really no realistic commercial alternative other than from the US.

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[Anonymous Coward]

No American, South-Korean or anyone from another country which has or will get such software patents can not, is not allowed to and shall never use Wild Fox. Period.

Are you sure that the GPL allows you to restrict the use of your "Wild Fox"? It also makes you sound like a bitch. No doubt, you ought to stand firm with respect to whom is allowed to legally use your software. Porn sites basically due it as "if your local laws prohibit viewing our adult models...". I.e., there is no pro-active enforcment on their part as it would be impossible and counter to the goals of the site. If you provide a helpful "FYI" for which users ought not risk the usage, that is going above and beyond. Lastly, I am an American even if I travel to whatever backwater country you hail from. It would not be against the USA law for me to use your patent encrusted wares. There are some laws that cross borders (sexual in nature, often) and I may not be allowed to return with any Wild Foxen tucked under my shirt, but - surely - I could use it. If your project is sucessful, I may use on accident at a kiosk or whatever internet portal your masters allow.

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't good enough sir, you have to take steps (working steps) that trae where a user is coming from and actively deny them the ability to download your software.

Or you may find yourself being deported to the USA for some prison time, or fined 100X your life expected income.

Just be careful

Re:watch out for importation to USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsflash: Russia declares Nuclear War on America due to a website dispute. Details at 11.

"impossiblefreely".... WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

That a new word?

Re:"impossiblefreely".... WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

kdawson. 'nuff said.

Re:"impossiblefreely".... WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Story posted at the speed of kdawson.

Re:"impossiblefreely".... WTF?

[komap]

That a new word?

yes, thatanewword.

Re:"impossiblefreely".... WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, thatanewword.

Hmm, is that a malamanteau ?

Re:"impossiblefreely".... WTF?

[sohp]

MOD PARENT UP!!!!!

Re:"impossiblefreely".... WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent down

Re:"impossiblefreely".... WTF?

[Bigjeff5]

It's a typo from someone who is clearly a non-native English speaker.

It should read as "impossible to freely use".

Re:"impossiblefreely".... WTF?

[u17]

Mod parent left

Re:"impossiblefreely".... WTF?

[Tellarin]

Oblig. xkcd: http://www.xkcd.com/739/ :-)

Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Kethinov]

This project is yet more proof that software patents are profoundly anticompetitive. People have written open source H.264 encoders and decoders. Software patents literally make these open source projects illegal. Why should anyone have a monopoly so they can charge for what others are willing to give away for free? How does that benefit the economy, or the progress of technology? Absolutely ludicrous.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole concept of patents is to protect the patent inventor against competition and give him or her a monopoly. 'Patents are anticompetitive' is a tautology. It never in the past therefore was considered a valid argument against patents.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Kethinov]

True, but I said profoundly anti-competitive. The negative effects on the market in this case vastly outweigh the general incentive created by the monopoly prize for being first to innovate. I simply don't see the benefit to society in legally denying people the right reimplement proprietary software from scratch.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, "profoundly." Well, fuck. Then that changes everything.

Are you really going to hang your argument on an adjective? The point, as you've been told, IS to BE anti-competitive. Adjectives and your personal judgement of their application don't change that underlying fact.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Anonymous Coward]

Likewise, holding a patent gives you exactly ONE right.

That right is the right to prevent others from making, using, or distributing your invention.

You aren't granted any positive rights such as the "right" to produce your invention. No, you just get the right to stop others.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, that's an adverb.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[smoot123]

It's defensible because someone had to do the research to figure out the H.264 algorithms. In retrospect, it's easy to say "Duh, of course quarter-pixel motion estimation is a good idea", but someone had to do a lot of grunt work to prove that's really the case.

I'm quite certain math geeks are beavering away at new compression algorithms in corporate labs. Much of that research will screech to a halt if there's no prospect of making money licensing the resulting patents. Not all of it, just a lot. So the benefit to society is we get a 2160i video standard this decade, not next. Is that worth it? I don't know, maybe, but it's not cut and dried.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[intrico]

Hopefully, the supreme court recognizes this as well. The landmark Bilski vs. Kappos case decision is expected to be released by the U.S. Supreme Court any day now. Depending on what that decision is, thousands of patents could be invalidated.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[pizzach]

This project is yet more proof that software patents are profoundly anticompetitive.

Software patents do not make open source software illegal. They do make not paying license fees illegal. There are ways to do this and there is a cap to how much you need to pay.

If the fees were that exuberant, wouldn't there already be another competing standard by now?

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Anonymous Coward]

On the contrary, OOS software writers would be using the latest published mathematical recipes (algorithms) to create H.264 equivalent and better encoders/decoders/software *today* (if not years ago) if were not for the inhibitory effects of existing software patents. We are behind in technology available to the masses because of software patents shooting out rungs in the ladder on the climb to next bigger and better thing for non-moneyed software writers.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but when you pretty much force everyone to use a particular codec? No thank you.

The original point of patents (wiki:) "is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state (national government) to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for a public disclosure of an invention." (In US, it's 20 years from filing)

Patents were always meant for short term because the original goal was to BENEFIT SOCIETY while allowing companies to make their money.

Additionally, we don't need a 2160i video standard. The Internet's not going to have the affordable bandwidth required, and you're going to run your bandwidth cap real fast. =P

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Bert64]

There would still be plenty of research in the field, because video compression is only a tiny part of an overall market... There are plenty of organisations who would find video compression useful and would feel that a better codec would make their products more useful.
And then there is always purely academic research.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Anonymous Coward]

On the contrary, OOS software writers would be using the latest published mathematical recipes (algorithms) to create H.264 equivalent and better encoders/decoders/software *today* (if not years ago) if were not for the inhibitory effects of existing software patents. We are behind in technology available to the masses because of software patents shooting out rungs in the ladder on the climb to next bigger and better thing for non-moneyed software writers.

Right. And who would invent them? Where is demonstration of this inhibited talent? OSS is never pro-active; it's reactive, as evidenced by the current battle waged against H264, a battle lost years ago. If OSS were as progressive as you think, they would already have been working on the next video standard, not musing on their defeat -- ironically, a move that will start this entire cycle all over again.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Anonymous Coward]

Dirac?

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Bigjeff5]

The whole concept of patents is to protect the patent inventor against competition and give him or her a monopoly.

You've got the method, but you don't have the purpose. The purpose for patents is to spur the sharing of inventive ideas for the benefit of society. See, before patents, ideas would generally be held as trade secrets by guilds. Often times these ideas would die, never to see the light of day, if the guild wasn't in a position to make use of them. This severely hampered innovation.

We want to get these innovations to be spread and known as widely as possible. This allows for the fastest implementation of those ideas, as well as speeding up the process of new innovations which are founded by those same ideas.

So, how do you make it so that everybody knows how the latest innovation works, yet still allow the inventor to extract sufficient profit out of the invention to make it worth the effort (and therefore worth inventing the next great thing)?

Simple, you give him a limited guaranteed monopoly that is long enough to extract most of the value from the invention, but make him describe his invention in detail such that another competent engineer could recreate the device. Then, the next great widget can be invented based on the revelations of the previous great widget, regardless of whether or not the new inventor is the same person as the old. Also, it gives the inventor of such a widget many options for monetizing his invention so that he can afford to create new inventions.

The purpose of patents is to benefit society. It is not to benefit inventors. We dangle the carrot of a limited monopoly to encourage as much invention as possible, but the success of the inventor is not the goal of patents. Spread of knowledge is the goal of patents. This is the same goal as copyrights, by the way.

Any time you see someone attempting to limit the spread of knowledge via patents or copyrights, you know immediately that they are working counter to the goals of copyrights and patents.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[mathieuI]

That's what "a monopoly" means.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[jonbryce]

If Bilski goes the right way, it will help, but without a further case, it will only cover "business method as software" patents.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[miggyb]

No it's not, "profoundly" modifies "anticompetitive," a noun, not "are," the verb.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[BitZtream]

Software patents literally make these open source projects illegal

You know, I keep seeing this said over and over again, and I've been letting it go, but I can't anymore ...

A PATENT DOESN'T MEAN ITS ILLEGAL TO IMPLEMENT IT.

It doesn't mean you can't make it open source.

All a patent does is grant someone a right to exclusive use ... IF THEY WANT IT TO BE USED EXCLUSIVELY BY THEMSELVES OR LICENSE IT TO OTHERS.

Having a patent doesnt do anything by itself, it gives the holder of the patent specific options.

It is not illegal to make an OSS h264 codec, you just simply need the license authority to allow you to do so.

You people really need to get a freaking clue before you go ranting about things you don't understand.

Let me ask you, how many people has the MPEG-LA sued over h264 ... there are OSS implementations ... how many of them have been sued? I can count to one higher on my dick, so just stop with the retarded bullshit you're pulling out of your ass.

Whats absolutely ludicrous is how completely ignorant of reality you and the rest of the 'ZOMG PATENT!%!@!@!@' twits are. You know what the biggest problem for patents in OSS is? Ignorant OSS zealots without a clue.

I suppose the fact that Novell, Redhat and Canonical all are patent holders just slipped your fucking mind too right? There are most certainly patented features in the Linux kernel, and it doesn't fucking matter because the patent holders are OK WITH THAT. It actually means that no one else can stop Linux from using those ideas. Patents help OSS too, just like software licensing.

I get that you don't like patents, but what you need to get is a god damn clue about what patents do, how they do it, and why they exist. You clearly don't know any of those 3 things. You're just another one of those people that rant about things they don't understand. Like the twits who rant about software licensing followed up immediately by telling everyone how GPL is gods gift to the world. Pure ignorance and stupidity.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Sparx139]

Patents and copyright, when applied correctly with sane laws, do this, and help advancement by giving people incentive to create. The objection that most* people have on here is when they are used to prevent people from creating because someone is interested in keeping a monopoly and screwing the market, as we see all too commonly.

*Not counting the people that just want everything for free - I mean the people that actually have a reasoned argument and stand on the issue

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not, "profoundly" modifies "anticompetitive," a noun, not "are," the verb.

Nope. It's an adverb modifying the adjective "anti-competitive".

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[drinkypoo]

Having a patent doesnt do anything by itself, it gives the holder of the patent specific options.

Specific options that I don't want anyone to have over me; options they won't have if I don't encode anything with H.264.

Let me ask you, how many people has the MPEG-LA sued over h264 ... there are OSS implementations ... how many of them have been sued?

I don't trust the MPEG-LA. Past performance is no guarantee. Frankly, if their US licensees have any inkling that x264 is cutting into their profits, as publicly traded corporations they are legally obligated to push the MPEG-LA to enforce those patents anywhere they are valid. Apple and Microsoft both qualify. They have a legal obligation to their stockholders to push H.264 over Theora since they get money whenever a H.264 encoder or decoder is sold.

I suppose the fact that Novell, Redhat and Canonical all are patent holders just slipped your fucking mind too right?

Redhat grants use of their patents.
http://www.redhat.com/licenses/ccmpl.html

2. GRANT OF RIGHTS

a. Subject to the terms of this Agreement, each Contributor hereby grants Recipient a non exclusive, worldwide, royalty free copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of,publicly display, publicly perform and distribute and sublicense the Contribution of such Contributor, if any, and such derivative works, in source code and object code form.

b. Subject to the terms of this Agreement, each Contributor hereby grants Recipient a non exclusive, worldwide, royalty free patent license under Licensed Patents to make, use, sell, offer to sell, import and otherwise transfer the Contribution of such Contributor, if any, in source code and object code form. This patent license shall apply to the combination of the Contribution and the Program if, at the time the Contribution is added by the Contributor, such addition of the Contribution causes such combination to be covered by the Licensed Patents. The patent license shall not apply to any other combinations which include the Contribution. No hardware per se is licensed hereunder.

Novell licenses their contributions under the GPL version 2 (they are still carrying notices to this effect, not difficult to locate.) It does not permit redistribution if patent claims prevent it. Novell cannot simultaneously distribute Linux and make patent claims against it.

The Canonical contributor agreement requires that you promise that no patent claims will come from your contributions to canonical, and they make the same promise back to you. Further, Canonical submitted a letter to the European Patent Office arguing against the granting of software patents for EPO EBA referral G3-08.

Or, in short, you are using three companies which have promised not to sue over software patents in comparison to a group which exists specifically to handle licensing and lawsuits of a group of patents encumbering a supposed standard. This is so wrongheaded I just can't even begin to figure out where you're coming from.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Cimexus]

On what planet is 'anticompetitive' a noun? O.o

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Anonymous Coward]

People have written open source H.264 encoders and decoders. Software patents literally make these open source projects illegal. Why should anyone have a monopoly so they can charge for what others are willing to give away for free?

Though this is somewhat off-topic, there is the notification of related to patents at the VLC players home page, stating that the user is responsible of any licencing (MPEG-LA) required to use the software, see http://wiki.videolan.org/Intellectual_Properties. So basically, open source is not an illegal way to implement video software in general, but a different way to distribute the consequences of a possible ip enforcement. The situation is analogous to the payment of Value Added Taxes. Normally the seller pays the tax, so the byers don't have to think about it. Sometimes the customer pays the taxes.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[NeutronCowboy]

It's defensible because someone had to do the research to figure out the H.264 algorithms.

Then they should copyright it.

Much of that research will screech to a halt if there's no prospect of making money licensing the resulting patents.

Not really. Math research was alive and well before software patents came about. And implementing a mathematical algorithm in software... well, isn't that the obvious fricking point of a computer?

So the benefit to society is we get a 2160i video standard this decade, not next. Is that worth it?

Maybe we get, maybe we don't. In the meantime, software patents are screwing a lot of people over who are just marginally tied to some software. I have to figure out whether we have to rearchitect our entire video delivery platform because I don't know how much the patents and royalties on h.264 are going to screw us over. That's a real cost.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point, which is that we want to know for sure that we won't be sued.
And I'm talking the discrete, definite for sure here. Any answer including the words "probably", "likely", "think", or phrases like "it would be stupid", "it's counter productive" or "it would backfire" are disqualified.

The fact that current patent holders are OK with their patents being used is irrelevant, since owners and opinions can change. Thus, we want guarantees.

Your turn. Give us the guarantee.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Arker]

Sure, the 'patent holder' has the option. If a binding promise not to sue for the duration of the patent were to be made, that patent would no longer be a worry. But that isnt the case, nor is it likely to be the case, with most patents. Which only makes sense - what is the point of going to the time and expense of obtaining a patent if you dont intend to ever assert it?

And sure, patents might be technically compatible with 'open source' software, if you construe that to mean simply that the source is available (not enough to satisfy the open source definition, by the way.) But I dont give a crap about open source, except insofar as it overlaps/coïncides with free software, and (absent binding promise not to assert the patent in any way) patents are entirely incompatible with free software. They are a much bigger problem than closed source.

After all, if you create a 'standard' with a closed, binary mushware implementation as the only spec, I can still legally disassemble it, intercept it on the wire, etc. I can reverse-engineer it and create a free implementation. It may not be easy, but it's a technical problem. On the other hand, if you create a 'standard' with beautiful, complete, comprehensible documentation and publish the source for your reference implementation, place all this in the public domain, but hold a patent on a key bit of the tech, the solvable technical difficulties have been replaced with unsolvable legal ones.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[dcollins]

"I'm quite certain math geeks are beavering away at new compression algorithms in corporate labs. Much of that research will screech to a halt if there's no prospect of making money licensing the resulting patents."

I'm guessing that a larger share of such work is being done at research universities, by math or CS people looking to publish academic papers.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Junta]

Software patents literally make these open source projects illegal

The context you skipped was speaking directly to OSS H264 implementations. A patent does not *force* the patent holder to be anti-OSS, but if the patent holder doesn't explicitly grant that liberty, then the OSS project distribution in geographies where the patents apply are illegal and are liable. You may argue that this should be the right of the patent holder to make these restrictions, but don't pretend that all software patent holders are just fine with OSS and that it has no impact.

Let me ask you, how many people has the MPEG-LA sued over h264 ... there are OSS implementations ... how many of them have been sued? I can count to one higher on my dick, so just stop with the retarded bullshit you're pulling out of your ass.

That argument could have been made about GIF and VFAT for *years* before the respective companies started going after their royalties with force. One of the devious things about patents is that they can be 'submarined' while the industry standardizes on it and then the holders can raise their hands and make demands upon the whole industry. In cases like Novell and RedHat where they explicitly license their patents, its ok. For closed/open projects that explicitly get signoff from a patent holder, they are ok. In the case of H264, there are clear demands as to how to legally license that are ignored by many who are *currently* ignored in turn as the holders think it the best current business course of action. Because of the overall soft stance in the community on h264 licensing, they reap the benefits of open source implementations as validating it as a standard while not incurring the risk of losing their right to sue by explicitly granting rights.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Anonymous Coward]

So you think that without patents then companies that would want to create a 2160i video standard television wouldn't just (shock horror) do it themselves?

The example you gave was a poor argument because companies that deal in that sort of thing would still invent so that they have something to sell. The only difference is that they wouldn't be able to patent it.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[gbutler69]

Mathematical Algorithms are expressly forbidden from Patent protection. What people are doing is:

1. 1. I can't patent addition
2. 2. I'll patent using addtion to add Apples together
3. 3. Profit!

That is, most of these so called innovative Patents involve using Mathematics in the exact way it was intended for various things. Frankly, all software patents are illegal and should be ignored. Everyone should blatantly implement them and force the courts to bury themselves. It doesn't really matter though, we're soon to run out of oil and shit like Software Patents won't be worth squat. The only thing that will have value is food and bullets.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[smoot123]

Maybe. Sure, lots of companies want better compression (Google, Netflix, Apple to name a few). Is that enough? I don't know. My point is, there are a ton of other small, no-name players who can contribute, but only if they have the prospect of licensing revenue down the line. With out patents, at least some of them will not bother doing the research, so the pace of innovation will slow down. The judgment call is whether that speedup is worth collateral damage.

Also, don't get me wrong. A lot of software patents are asinine. My company encourages us to file patents to build a portfolio. We don't generally intend to license any of them, it's only a defense when we get sued for infringement. It's silly, but that's the way the system works today. I'd be perfectly happy setting a much higher bar for what is obvious, plus requiring a working implementation.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[smoot123]

Then they should copyright it.

I don't agree. I think an algorithm is more like a device and fits the patent model better. The flow chart and quantization matrix were the important parts, not the characters in a file. Besides, do you want h.264 copywritten for the next 75 years?

Not really. Math research was alive and well before software patents came about. And implementing a mathematical algorithm in software... well, isn't that the obvious fricking point of a computer?

My point is, with the prospect of licensing revenue, math research is aliver and weller.

So the benefit to society is we get a 2160i video standard this decade, not next. Is that worth it?

Maybe we get, maybe we don't. In the meantime, software patents are screwing a lot of people over who are just marginally tied to some software. I have to figure out whether we have to rearchitect our entire video delivery platform because I don't know how much the patents and royalties on h.264 are going to screw us over. That's a real cost.

I'm not up on the details, but I thought that was the whole point of MPEG-LA, one stop shopping for all your video licensing fees. I'm much more concerned about everyone else. I have no idea if any software I write infringes on some submarine patent. I agree, that's a real cost. But I think the solution is not to toss all software patents but instead to tighten the requirements before issuing one.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[BitZtream]

Software patents literally make these open source projects illegal.

No, not in any way does it make them illegal. It is perfectly acceptable if you are licensed to use the h264 codec for you to use an OSS implementation.

Stop talking shit about things you don't freaking understand.

I can use any h264 implementation I want as I'm licensed to use h264.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[smoot123]

I'm guessing that a larger share of such work is being done at research universities, by math or CS people looking to publish academic papers.

I can neither prove nor disprove that assertion. The fact than H.264 is encumbered by a ton of patents tells me that many non-academic parties were involved. Having worked in the video industry, I know tons of companies just implement the standards, they don't try to extend them.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Stan92057]

FOSS zelots are against patents because they don't want to have to ask permission and possibly have to pay a license fee. I understand your anger,but you really don't understand the zelot. FOSS is a philosophy,a way of life, thats is what you are forgetting. I personally am for patents,i am against patent trolls. If you have a patient you shouldn't be using it as a purely money maker,unless you are the inventor.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[arose]

Not to mention all the expensive politicizing they had to do to get their patents included in the standard! Such innovation must be rewarded!

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[arose]

OSS is never pro-active;

Can you prove this positive statement? It has in the past, for example TeX has made major contributions to typesetting (before widesread software patents too...). It's still happening, for example, there is Spiro, but it's only coincidence that I have heard of it. Vorbis was pretty darn good, speex is well regarded, FLAC is among the best. I'm not aware of everything that is happening under the popularity radar? Are you?

Why is "no one" (see Dirac, Snow) working on the next video standard? They are not interested in video codecs (lack of focus is a much bigger issue then lack of innovation in FLOSS), they don't want to fuck with patent threats or they are already busily besting the inventors in implementing their inventions (see x264 and similar).

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[GeodesicGnome]

You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!

Gotta wonder what the world would be like if it were not just illegal to steal a car, but also illegal for anyone else to build one.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[GeodesicGnome]

The whole concept of patents is to protect the patent inventor against competition and give him or her a monopoly. 'Patents are anticompetitive' is a tautology. It never in the past therefore was considered a valid argument against patents.

Giving the inventor a temporary monopoly is not the purpose of patents. The purpose of patents has always been to encourage innovation. The means to that end is to ensure just compensation to inventors. Today so many trivial things are patented that it's almost impossible for the small developer (AKA, software inventor) to be sure they aren't violating someone's software patent.
My favorite example is when Xerox forced Palm to abandon Graffiti because it violated Xerox's Unistrokes patent. It's not that Graffiti represented letters the same way Unistrokes did. But Xerox was granted a patent on the very idea of using a single unbroken stroke for each letter. I would definitely call that anticompetitive.

Re:Software patents are profoundly anticompetitive

[Just Some Guy]

I'm quite certain math geeks are beavering away at new compression algorithms in corporate labs. Much of that research will screech to a halt if there's no prospect of making money licensing the resulting patents. Not all of it, just a lot.

And I'm damn sure that none of those are as hard as cranking out the physics underlying the semiconductors that their toys will run on, but that math wasn't patented - and a good thing, too!

There are no valid defenses for patenting math. It's just ludicrous. For every spiffy new algorithm that might not be invented if it couldn't be patented, we have 10,000 software projects that can't implement the most basic, obviously functionality because some jackass patented XOR. Nope, screw 'em. Scorched earth, salted ground, and all that. Software patents are fundamentally dumb and I'd be willing to give up a hypothetical H.265 in exchange for being allowed to do my job without worrying that someone locked up the math.

Not Valid?

[Anonymous Coward]

You may want to check on the international validity of patents. Whether or not a patent is valid in a country is not necessarily related to whether or not the patent was or could have been issued there. While Brazil feels free to ignore patents on AIDS medicine, it made an active decision to do so and to break the patent.

Re:Not Valid?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Whether or not a patent is valid in a country is not necessarily related to whether or not the patent was or could have been issued there.

Oh, how come? When the local law states that algorithms, math etc. can't be patented, what bearing on it has whether there is or isn't a patent on that in, say, the US? If a patent hasn't been issued here, then there is nothing to break here.

This is what the Internet is for

[linzeal]

Route around boys, route around.

Any attempt at controlling information will eventually fail and do so in far more spectacular ways as we progress both socially and technologically as a species.

Re:This is what the Internet is for

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a technological work-around for a legal problem.

When the music industry shut down Napster, some clever programmers wrote up distributed filesharing applications. Hooray, right? Well, no, then the lawyers and the CEOs and the lobbyists went crying to the legislators. And one by one, each country started enacting stricter and stricter copyright laws. Grandmothers are being thrown in prison. Citizens are being fined thousands for a half dozen song downloads. Pirating has reached social acceptance, but hey, so has pot smoking. Social acceptance hasn't changed the fact that your government can throw you in jail at any minute.

Look at the story of The Pirate Bay. We're running out of safe havens, because "routing around" is so much easier than making a stand in your own country, against your own government. Who really wants to go down to their local state/federal legislature and march and protest for the "right to copy data"? Most of us just fileshare for the sake of having some good entertainment to watch in the evening. It's hard to get worked up over relaxation. We don't want to have to work at getting our entertainment, so let's just route around and hope the lawyers don't catch me.

Somewhat related example: China builds a firewall. The clever computer nerds know how to get around it, but for fear of imprisonment, they can't go around blabbing the details. Their own neighbors will turn them in at the drop of a hat. As a result, political dissidence remains horribly unorganized and ineffective. The tools are there, but it doesn't matter, because no one can use them for anything bigger than reading Western newspapers or downloading porn.

Routing around doesn't fix anything. If anything, it releases just enough steam that the public's anger never reaches the critical point to turn around these abominable laws. Quit bragging, about your clever programming tricks. They won't help you when the government/corporations own the tubes, the clients, the servers, and the courts.

Re:This is what the Internet is for

[Anonymous Coward]

No, YOU quit bragging-- about being such a fool.

And 'WE' (7 billion citizens), WILL keep routing, and programming, and downloading the crap that FollyWood spits out... while 'conspiring' to put people who 'think' and 'talk'-- like you, 'away', permanently.

'WE', will continue to gnaw away at that little party 'YOU', and your 'government/corporations', in your disillusionment, think you have control over... LOL!!

Meanwhile, back in the 'real world'...the citizens of Greece and Thailand are showing the world, that it is not impossible to confront the one-world-garbage, that infests our worlds societies...

Re:This is what the Internet is for

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't help you when the government/corporations own the tubes, the clients, the servers, and the courts.

Neither will your little Pirate Party protests on the street corner. Governments and corporations hate geeks and anyone who would campaign for openness and freedom. You say technological solutions will always lose in the endgame, but they are the only option one has. The questions are how long can we prolong the endgame, and how much relative freedom can we enjoy for the time being. Some time in the near future, encryption, onion routing and steganography will triumph in the name of freedom, for a while. When every authority in the world uses deep packet inspection, outlaws cryptography, and mandates cameras in our eyeballs and chips in our brains then we will have lost forever, but by then trivial things like finding affordable entertainment and better web browsers will be of the least concern anyway.

Your China example is also flawed, if most people with a modicum of technical knowledge are capable of bypassing and working around every aspect of the firewall for their own ends then they have won the technological war already. Orchestrating dissidence against the current regime is another war altogether, which indeed does not have a technological solution.

Re:This is what the Internet is for

[karlandtanya]

Pirating has reached social acceptance, but hey, so has pot smoking. Social acceptance hasn't changed the fact that your government can throw you in jail at any minute.

Well, duh.
(long version of "well, duh" follows if you really need it)

Strong personal freedoms make it very difficult to accumulate and maintain power.
Laws against socially acceptable behaviours with draconian penalties exist so that police and DAs can coerce compliance despite constitutional protections.

You can still make a stand, and then complain that losing your house for a couple of pot plants on your property is "cruel and unusual". It won't help.
The drumbeat goes something like this:
"The police and the DA represent the people--cooperation with them is a social obligation.
Those derelict in social obligation have placed themselves outside of the law , and we treat them according to their choice.
Anyone who "aids and abets" an outlaw, may be subject to the same penalties."

But, I hear you cry--constitutional protections--all of them--apply to everyone governed. Equally.
Citizens or not. Even the accused. Even the guilty. Don't they?
No?
Who is it, then, that has failed to fulfill their obligation?
Who is it, then, that has abandoned their moral authority to govern?

Re:This is what the Internet is for

[jthill]

Pirating has reached social acceptance, but hey, so has pot smoking. Social acceptance hasn't changed the fact that your government can throw you in jail at any minute.

Not that the rest of your post isn't on target — I think it is — but, dude, have you been paying attention?

This part is still technically true, but in a growing number of places only technically, and that not for very much longer. We all know the drug warriors are lying and have been lying all along (or rather, largely, to be fair, loyally repeating unexamined falsehoods), every bit as much and for the same reasons as the tobacco industry: because what they do gets them paid, and once they got that working for them they degenerated to raw tribalism, where everyone outside the tribe is, to choose the correct words, fair game.

And this correction is a ray of hope, perhaps an answer: OSS and its relatives can be grown at home, too, and the (if you listen to the tribalists) idealistic unworkable ways of running an economy are repeatedly being shown to work. Even if we ignore the playthings, a large majority of the products of free culture are crap, but have you checked the startup business (i.e. the businesses that got beyond plaything status) failure rate lately? Strangely enough, a large majority of them are crap, too. What's good, lasts. It's almost a tautology.

So support flattr, empty though it is at the moment. Get yourself on the beta invite list, and when you get in drop a euro a week into it, help put enough money in the pool to make it worth indie projects' time to put their products on it. Try to imagine what happens the first time one of the standouts hits.

I'm serious: flattr is the foundation of the right way to do it, it's pay what you want made so easy you can easily ask even kiddies "are you serious? you can't afford a nickel a day?" and not just shame them, but entice them into contributing. Because they can reward their friends, too.

Yes, there are legal issues to work out: how to avoid flattr getting sucked into lawsuits over who has the right to flattr'd material just for starters, so it'll have its ugly spots. Flattr will have to keep records of every transaction going back many years. I think they'll need ways of going back to correct flattrs that haven't yet been paid, so you can redirect or cancel the ones you've found to be plagiarized, or to just not stand up on reflection.

But imagine it again: you're contributing generally exactly as much as you're happy to contribute anyway, and here's something you like. There's the button. Imagine that button on every site you've had the impulse to reward. Imagine what happens when one of the big projects hits a release, or someone posts a genuinely entertaining video or beautiful photograph. Or you go back and reread a favorite article and find it's still worth a bump.

Not quite.

[SanityInAnarchy]

HTML5 requires a bit more control than I think tools like mplayer would provide. However, there's nothing stopping Firefox from supporting local tools -- GStreamer on Linux, QuickTime on OS X, or DirectShow on Windows -- and letting the user get the appropriate codecs, legally or otherwise.

Re:Not quite.

[buchner.johannes]

HTML5 requires a bit more control [...]

Like what for example?

Re:Not quite.

[ciroknight]

GStreamer on Linux, QuickTime on OS X, or DirectShow on Windows

Or, GStreamer on Linux, OS X and Windows, since GStreamer supports playback through QuickTime and DirectShow natively. Why code for three frameworks when one portable one does everything you need?

Re:Not quite.

[joaosantos]

Scripting, showing and hiding controls, and I doubt that you can apply css3 transformations to an embed plugin.

Re:Not quite.

[jonbryce]

GStreamer doesn't ship by default on Windows, so you can't just tell someone to visit getfirefox.com to replace their browser.

Re:Not quite.

[drinkypoo]

These days, Windows users DO have H.264 by default, so not supporting H.264 on Windows is strictly a political decision; there is literally no other reason on that platform. (Oddly, the first hit for "windows h.264" is http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/faq.html and the fourth hit is http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd797815(VS.85).aspx ... that's more than a little lame. Even google has an Apple bias, apparently.

Re:Not quite.

[arose]

And there is nothing stopping Microsoft and Apple from implementing Theora. However you don't seem to demand that their give up their business decisions to do it. Why then is it ok to demand that Mozilla fuck with portability, user friendliness (there won't always be a H.264 decoder on the host and suddenly Firefox works differently without an user-obvious reason) and compromise their goals in regards to openness?

Re:Not quite.

[SanityInAnarchy]

And there is nothing stopping Microsoft and Apple from implementing Theora. However you don't seem to demand that their give up their business decisions to do it.

I would rather they support Theora, and I would rather Firefox support H.264. Right now, H.264 destroys Theora technologically, and there's tons of content in H.264, including content directly from most camcorders.

Why then is it ok to demand that Mozilla fuck with portability,

GStreamer is portable.

user friendliness (there won't always be a H.264 decoder on the host

So it's better to not have a feature at all than to sometimes have a feature? How the fuck is that user-friendly?

Oh, and with Ubuntu's support, it's official: All major modern OSes have built-in H.264 decoders. Most modern desktops come with hardware H.264 decoder support. This is a bit like whining that Firefox doesn't support Windows 98 anymore.

and compromise their goals in regards to openness?

That's what it really comes down to, isn't it? But how about my freedom as a user? Here's my current choices:

1. Don't watch YouTube.
2. Watch YouTube with the proprietary Adobe Flash player.
3. Watch YouTube in HTML5 with the proprietary H.264 codec, on a browser other than Firefox.

Option #1 is what you seem to be demanding, unless you're seriously advocating #2. Between #2 and #3, the choice seems pretty clear -- but it would be nice to have the option to watch it with Firefox.

In any case, this places the choice back in the hands of the user. I'm sorry, but "open-ness" means choice. It doesn't mean forcing the user to go with the "more open" option.

It's also the right technical choice, whether you're willing to acknowledge it or not. Calling out to a separate, native library allows decoders to be implemented in hardware, or at least be hardware-accelerated. Thus, even if people implement hardware Theora decoders capable of full, beautiful 1080p, either Firefox has to implement direct support for every chip, or they have to call out to some native library anyway.

The fact that you're willing to sabotage Firefox technologically for political reasons says a lot about you, and it's a big reason why I'm not using Firefox anymore.

Re:Not quite.

[arose]

I would rather they support Theora, and I would rather Firefox support H.264.

Exactly what every other H.264 advocate says... after being asked about the discrepancy. The internet isn't flooded with complaints about the choice for IE9 or Safari, just about Firefox.

Right now, H.264 destroys Theora technologically, and there's tons of content in H.264, including content directly from most camcorders.

Last I recall the same was said for JPEG2000, that hasn't gone anywhere and the internet world is still turning. JPEGs haven't clogged the intertubes, neither would Theora videos. H.264 content from cameras (the ones that aren't DV anyway) rarely goes live unedited, when it does, make sure you actually have a license to use it commercially.

Oh, and with Ubuntu's support, it's official:

"Support" is not the same as giving an option for OEMs to pay MPEG LA. The Ubuntu that everyone and their dog downloads will not have H.264 bundled or available for free and legal download.

It's also the right technical choice, whether you're willing to acknowledge it or not.

So was using ActiveX, calling out to native code in a controlled manner.

The fact that you're willing to sabotage Firefox technologically for political reasons says a lot about you, and it's a big reason why I'm not using Firefox anymore.

The fact that you want to sabotage the stated goal of a project you aren't even using says a lot about you.

At the end of the day companies get a free pass when they make political decisions for competitive reasons and FLOSS gets pounded into the ground by non-users.

Re:Not quite.

[arose]

That's what it really comes down to, isn't it?

Yes it is, there are three browsers I can publish HTML5 video for with a free software stack. Legally. If the other two ever join it then the goal of a free baseline is accomplished and H.264 advocates can enjoy their technically superior codec where permitted by law. But why would anyone want to publish outside of AOL^H^H^HYouTube anyway?

Re:Not quite.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Exactly what every other H.264 advocate says...

And when did I become an H.264 advocate?

The internet isn't flooded with complaints about the choice for IE9 or Safari, just about Firefox.

Mostly because we expect more from Firefox. Also because there aren't currently any major video services which provide an HTML5 viewer with Theora-only content.

Last I recall the same was said for JPEG2000, that hasn't gone anywhere and the internet world is still turning.

Was it really? Because I see a ton of H.264 content, and I don't see -- can't ever remember seeing -- tons of jpeg2k content.

The Ubuntu that everyone and their dog downloads will not have H.264 bundled or available for free and legal download.

My mistake... unless, of course, it happens to be installed on a computer with an nVidia card. Then again, I don't advocate that Ubuntu to ordinary users -- I tell them to buy a computer with Ubuntu preloaded.

So was using ActiveX, calling out to native code in a controlled manner.

Do I really have to spell out how an arbitrary native-code plugin system is different than a specified and controlled codec system? That's a bit like comparing the image tag to ActiveX just because a browser might link against a local image-processing library.

Let me ask you: Does Firefox implement its own printing system? I was under the assumption that they used whatever the native OS did. Same for windowing. Same for audio output. And apparently, Firefox is implementing WebGL -- surely that's evil native code that shouldn't be allowed?

The fact that you want to sabotage the stated goal of a project you aren't even using says a lot about you.

Let's actually find a manifesto to work from, because I can't imagine "refusing to use the capabilities of the host OS" was ever Firefox's goal. The closest I can find is "Meet the world’s best browser, made just the way you like it."

Well, except it's not just the way I like it, because some asshat decided I shouldn't be able to watch H.264 videos.

And since this is a primary reason I'm not using it, why would you dismiss my opinion out of hand as a "non-user"?

At the end of the day companies get a free pass when they make political decisions for competitive reasons and FLOSS gets pounded into the ground by non-users.

Well, except the FLOSS which does it right. Like, say, Chromium -- I can link it against ffmpeg if I'm in a country which doesn't have those restrictions, or I can download Google Chrome. But Theora also works.

Or, say, mplayer. Not only can I download versions with or without the restricted codecs, but I can even use my native H.264 decoder.

At the end of the day, you're trying to promote open-ness by adding restrictions. That makes about as much sense as a suicide-bombing pacifist, and users will perceive it in about the same way.

If it makes you feel better, I hate IE9 largely for other reasons, and I won't use Safari so long as I have free alternatives. Instead, I'll send users to Chrome, where these things Just Work.

Re:Not quite.

[arose]

And when did I become an H.264 advocate?

"H.264 playback in Firefox" advocate if you prefer.

Was it really? Because I see a ton of H.264 content, and I don't see -- can't ever remember seeing -- tons of jpeg2k content.

I was commenting on the "destroys Theora technologically" part. If you want to see how ignoring tons of content didn't destroy the internet look at IE6.

Do I really have to spell out how an arbitrary native-code plugin system is different than a specified and controlled codec system.

I'm well aware of the differences. None-the less ActiveX was technically superior to the competition (Java) in regards to execution speed and a (Windows) compatibility. If you don't agree you'll have to spell out your definition of "technically superior", since, at face value, that doesn't include non-technical considerations like vendor independence and future-proofness. Then again simplicity is also part of technical superiority, but that is seldom mentioned considering what beast H.264 is.

Well, except it's not just the way I like it, because some asshat decided I shouldn't be able to watch H.264 videos.

There is no magical "play H.264 as per for HTML5" function call that Mozilla decided not to use. They still have to write the code, test it and, most importantly, support it in future versions. You present it as if they blocked some existing functionality, instead of deciding against creating said functionality.

And since this is a primary reason I'm not using it, why would you dismiss my opinion out of hand as a "non-user"?

It wasn't clear from your post if H.264 support specifically, Mozilla's political stances in general, or the (unspecified) other causes were your main reason for abandoning Firefox. I inferred that H.264 was a big, but not decisive factor.

At the end of the day, you're trying to promote open-ness by adding restrictions.

I didn't invent the patent system or gamed the MPEG to include as many patents into the standard as possible. Also, the failure to produce/include code for/into a free software project is not a restriction. Hindrance maybe.

Instead, I'll send users to Chrome, where these things Just Work.

Be sure to tell them how to turn off the various data collection features. Otherwise it's a decent browser.

Re:Not quite.

[SanityInAnarchy]

ActiveX was technically superior to the competition (Java) in regards to execution speed and a (Windows) compatibility.

Key word there. I was advocating implementing platform-specific solutions until someone mentioned that GStreamer already handles the appropriate backends on all platforms, making even that excuse weak. However, ActiveX requires platform-specific content, while this wouldn't.

There is no magical "play H.264 as per for HTML5" function call that Mozilla decided not to use. They still have to write the code, test it and, most importantly, support it in future versions.

Which they can do once for "play anything GStreamer supports," which would cover Theora, VP8 if it's ever opened, and everything else. It would also allow codec development to happen independently of browser development.

the failure to produce/include code for/into a free software project is not a restriction. Hindrance maybe.

What I'm getting from you and others is that it's more than your unwillingness to do it yourself. I'm actually getting the distinct impression that even if there was a magical playAllCodecs() library call you could make today, you wouldn't do it. Even if someone else did 100% of the work, you'd reject it out of hand, just so H.264 doesn't win.

Be sure to tell them how to turn off the various data collection features.

Sure -- it's right there in options.

Otherwise it's a decent browser.

I love it, but it's far from perfect. One of these days, I'll write my own...

Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[Beelzebud]

If Ubuntu omits Firefox, it will be the first thing I do on any new version, is remove Chromium, and to manually install Firefox.

Until Chromium has addons like Firefox I'm not interested in using it. If they actually go with Chrome, that will be a joke. I actually value my privacy rights, and I don't want Google's browser snooping on me, and reporting my web usage to their advertising servers.

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[SanityInAnarchy]

If they actually go with Chrome, that will be a joke. I actually value my privacy rights...

If you look at the list of stuff Chrome adds over Chromium, you won't find much you'd actually care about as far as privacy rights.

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[GigaplexNZ]

Chromium does have addons now, and since it is an open source project it'll be rather difficult for Google to hide snooping mechanisms in it. Also, I highly doubt that Ubuntu will decide to stick with Firefox as the default purely because one user who knows how to uninstall software and install an alternative expressed that they will change from the default.

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[correnos]

Chromium is an open source project. Open source projects have community developers. They have to look at the code to change it. They are not whining about privacy violations. As a user who has not looked over the source code and checked for the, uh, evil google snooping service, what makes you think you have some knowledge about Chromium's privacy issues? I think this is a great move for Ubuntu to a more modern and less bloated browser. Also it advances Webkit, the renderer that powers a huge selection of smaller browser projects I happen to like. In regards to plugins, the most important one in existence (adblock plus) works fine in Chromium, as do a decent selection of youtube downloaders. What are you complaining about again?

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[mmaniaci]

Google knows that 99.999% of users will keep Google as the default search on Chrome, so why would they ever need to add reporting mechanisms to the browser? I think the point of Chromium is to force the browser ecosystem to evolve, and not to spy on users.

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[MrNonchalant]

You were saying?

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[Bigjeff5]

Google knows that 99.999% of users will keep Google as the default search on Chrome

Hell, 99.999% of Firefox users keep Google as the default. Also remember that nothing makes money for Google like Google Search - it's 95% of their revenue.

They don't need to track you through their browser, they already track you through their search engine and you* love them for it. ;)

* By "you" I mean people in general, not necessarily you specifically

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[Bent Mind]

Chromium has limited support for addons. I installed Chromium, and went to look for my favorite addons. It was easy to find imitations, addons that borrowed the name of popular Firefox addons. However, going to DownloadThemAll's site brought me to: No Google Chrome support. The short article talks about Chrome's limitations. The gist of it can be shown in this quote: "While support for some types of extensions was added to Chrome just recently, the extension system in Chrome simply doesn’t cut it. It is only very limited in what you can do."

The end of the article links to Why Chrome has No NoScript. That short post goes on to link to forum posts and bug reports showing why basic addons can't work with Chrome.

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[BitZtream]

Nothing will ever fix your paranoia, regardless of what browser they install.

Let me give you a hint about your privacy ... NO ONE GIVES A FUCK ABOUT YOU OR WHAT YOU BROWSE.

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[hedwards]

I haven't had a chance to try it, but SRWare Iron is basically Chrome without the privacy problems. Or at least that's their goal, it basically just strips a lot of the Google stuff out. SRWare Iron

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a world of difference between using Google search (which has at most an IP address to identify you with, (assuming you don't do anything dumb like stay logged into a google account), and using a browser that can call upon all kinds of interesting factoids about your life and browsing habits, as well as being a much more unique identifier than an IP address.

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[moonbender]

Here's a hint, writing stuff in all caps doesn't make it true.

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[drinkypoo]

Until Chromium has addons like Firefox I'm not interested in using it.

Not only has Chromium had "Extensions" for months, including all the most important favorites like Adblock, Flashblock, and AutoPager, but it also supports Firefox Plugins (not firefox extensions, of course) so these days you even get flash, vlc, etc if you want them. The only thing I'm currently having trouble with is getting a PDF to display in the browser window, which is not a big problem but is slightly annoying. Why don't you do a little research before posting your next comment so you don't come off as some kind of troll?

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[Hurricane78]

Didn’t you know? The new fad with Linux desktop environments (not everything else Linux) is to make them just as much a PITA for everyone who actually got a brain, than Windows and MacOS: By setting all the defaults in a way that only the dumbest of the dumb like it.
Because apparently because they scream the loudest, they are the most important ones. And ever will be. Even when that whole behavior just lowers the whole Gaussian curve of intelligence distribution every time, creating new, worse, idiots.

I’m not trolling. I got proof that you can check yourself:
In a freshly installed KDE4, this can be shown beautifully with Dolphin. Start it, go to the settings, and just blindly set every checkbox to the opposite. And suddenly Dolphin behaves in a much more sane way, where it’s much more usable. (Don’t forget to also go to systemsettings and set the global option from “mousover + single click” to “click and double-click“ [don’t know the exact names].)
This also works beautifully for most other things KDE4.
And it would also work for Gnome, if the Gnome team would still give you any option to change it. ;)

Again: I’m really just talking about the topmost UI layer. The libs are mostly pretty nice and QT is just beautiful internally in my opinion.

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Yes, I've seen that, and I don't really see the point. The biggest privacy concerns in Chrome itself -- Chrome, not Chromium -- can be dealt with by un-ticking a checkbox or two in options.

I honestly don't see what the big deal is.

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm getting sick of people pointing this out. Yes, Chromium has addons. No, they are not as capable as the Firefox addons.
Addons such as AdBlock+, FireFTP, Firebug and many more simply can not be ported completely to Chromium/Chrome.

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[Anonymous Coward]

MY DICK IS HUGE!

*looks*

shit.. you're right :(

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[manicb]

BLASPHEMY!

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[mahadiga]

https://chrome.google.com/extensions

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[badkarmadayaccount]

Can someone tell me how technically feasible it is to support FF extensions in Chrome?

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[drinkypoo]

FF extensions are a big fail. Some plugins work. You can reuse code since it's all javascript but when it comes time to deal with the browser...

Re:Ubuntu should stick with Firefox.

[badkarmadayaccount]

Well, WebKit and Gecko offer similar functionality, right? What about a compatibility layer?

H264 patients in various countries

[Unfocused]

"Only two countries in the world have software patents"

That's not exactly accurate - MPEG LA has been granted patients in numerous countries: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/bz/archives/020400.html

Re:H264 patients in various countries

[Anonymous Coward]

MPEG LA has been granted patients in numerous countries

Oh shit, they have overtaken health-care too?

Re:H264 patients in various countries

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they just miss doctors to analyze the patients...

Re:H264 patients in various countries

[Billly Gates]

As we saw with Decss it doesn't matter if other countries support the law. Us law is international law due to corrupt treaties paid by lobbyists. They can have the president issue an order like they did to poor Jon Johnsen for daring to have people watch their own dvds that they own on their own computers with Linux.

Unfortunately, this is not going away anytime soon.

Re:H264 patients in various countries

[andersa]

One of the central patents cited is EP 0443676 which concerns the MPEG-2 codec which is granted by the European Patent Office, not the national patent offices. Had the patent application been filed in any of the member states, their patent office would likely rejected the patent on grounds that algoritms are not patentable. EPO has no such qualms, however and will happily grant software patents, even though they know they are probably not enforcable.

There is a case running in the Danish Maritime and Commercial court regarding the MPEG-2 patents between Phillips and Danish company Dicentia A/S. Dicentia has requested that the patent be invalidated in Denmark.

Re:H264 patients in various countries

[noidentity]

That's not exactly accurate - MPEG LA has been granted patients in numerous countries

Yes, but how long until this patience wears thin?

Re:H264 patients in various countries

[Hurricane78]

Uuum, that list is clearly bogus fearmongering. There is no such thing as software patents in Germany. (Where I live.) And the same is true for pretty much all the other EU countries. The move by EU pseudogovernment to make it law, is proof that it isn’t already.

Re:H264 patients in various countries

[BZ]

The patents involved are method patents, not software patents.

I'm not sure whether you meant to accuse me or the MPEG-LA of fearmongering, by the way. Care to clarify? I just abstracted a list the MPEG-LA provides.

Re:H264 patients in various countries

[evilviper]

That's not exactly accurate - MPEG LA has been granted patients in numerous countries: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/bz/archives/020400.html

Yes, it is "exactly accurate". It's just misleading...

In countries without software patents, you can implement an H.264 decoder that runs on your PC, free of charge, no problem. HOWEVER, as soon as that code gets flashed into the firmware of a device, it's now a hardware patent, and you're either paying the patent license fees, or having your devices seized by authorities, in just about any country in the world...

See:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5312696.stm
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/12/15/german_court_rules_on_sansa_snatch/

Re:H264 patients in various countries

[Hurricane78]

I accused the one of fearmongering, who created the list. Not you. You only linked to it. :)

For <audio> tag

[figleaf]

Please include support for mp3 and aac.

Thanks for creating this project. Support H.264 for the <video> tag is the right thing to do.
Good luck for your effort.

Uh, sourceforge is in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

How do they expect to be able to host it at sourceforge?

Also, there are already patches to use gstreamer or similar, why is he talking about 'possible' or 'options for'???

Re:Uh, sourceforge is in the USA

[moriya]

In the event that HTML5 takes off and the video markup becomes commonplace, Firefox would be the only browser that doesn't support it. By creating this project to have the codec support built into a Firefox codebase, Firefox can retain the userbase instead of losing out to other browser that implements H264 support. It is not simply adding support using some 3rd-party framework in place. Gstreamer is not commonly found in Windows-based systems and OS X probably has their own framework for multimedia playback and handling.

A lot of people still stick to Firefox due to extensions. Many are probably reluctant to even ditch or use anything else because of all the features that they depend on.

Soon we'll be at a crossroad where you have Firefox with HTML5 support but no H264 support, IE with H264 support with trivial HTML5 support, or Chrome. Where would the majority go with if it means being able to play back videos on HTML5-based YouTube?

Re:Uh, sourceforge is in the USA

[Billly Gates]

Wrong

H.264 is not html5. They are not related and this myth has to die. Firefox is the only browser that supports html5 that I am aware of right now

Re:Uh, sourceforge is in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't say it was. He explicitly called them out as separate things.

Nobody has anything close to full HTML5 support, and everybody has full releases with partial HTML5 support (even IE8! -- though minor). You need very specific goalposts to say that only Firefox supports html5.

(It would be impossible to have full support, considering it isn't in Candidate Recommendation and isn't expected to be for another 2 years and some parts are very clearly incomplete).

coming to a .deb near you!

[Anonymous Coward]

i cant wait for wild weasel!

</sarcasm>

Re:coming to a .deb near you!

[Pentium100]

Wouldn't that be tame weasel?

Shouldn't it be a user option?

[grilled-cheese]

This sounds an awful lot like other patent/export issues we've had in the past. Linux support for WMV, MP3, or DVD codecs as well as SSL encryption are restricted in various countries for patent and export reasons; yet many successful projects have enabled users to make the choice on these features. If a linux user chooses not to pay the appropriate patent license fees, it's not the media player's fault that a user made that choice. Likewise, shouldn't Mozilla simply find a way to load this support as a plugin for those on the planet not bound by US patent trolls?

Re:Shouldn't it be a user option?

[Abcd1234]

Shouldn't it be a user option?

Ahh, I see your mistake. You believe Mozilla is making this choice for pragmatic, legal reasons.

That, of course, is bullshit.

Firefox *could* be written to simply use ffmpeg or gstreamer or DirectShow, and then it could support basically *any* video codec. It would give the user and the website author *more* choice.

But that's not the point. The point is Mozilla sees themselves as some kind of defender of the internet commons. You know, hero-in-shiny-armour kind of stuff. It's absurd, of course, as Mozilla is *massively* overestimating their influence. And as a tradeoff, they're screwing their users.

But, they've chosen their ideals over being pragmatic. And now we have this ridiculous situation.

So thanks Mozilla. Thanks a lot. I hope, when you go to bed tonight, you sleep easy, enjoying your dreams of being a Jedi-like freedom fighter. Meanwhile, I get stuck with a crippled browser. Suddenly Chrome isn't looking like such a bad option...

Grammar note

[Anonymous Coward]

Split the damn infinitive! You are allowed to do that, stuffy English teachers be damned!

Ubuntu has never supported Firefox

[Rix]

Has any version of Ubuntu had uninterrupted support for the then current version of Firefox? They seem to think it's ok to wait months, and then only update with the entire OS.

Re:Ubuntu has never supported Firefox

[boxwood]

I remember seeing major bugs reported in the newest version of firefox and everyone being told to update immediately. But that didn't effect me because Ubuntu wasn't on the bleeding edge of firefox releases.

One of the big criticisms of ubuntu is that they're pushing bleeding edge software all the time. now you're saying they're wrong for not pushing the bleeding edge firefox? Ca't have it both ways.

Re:Ubuntu has never supported Firefox

[Tubal-Cain]

They seem to think it's ok to wait months, and then only update with the entire OS.

That's their policy for all software. Try the backports repository.

Only In Non Software Patent Countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's stopping me from just finding a copy and using it in whatever country I please? As soon as this hits the web, every nerd in the world is going to check it out, regardless of geological position.

Do it right

[shutdown -p now]

If you really are considering a fork, it's a chance to do it right at last: go for platform-specific codec framework support out of the box. DirectShow on Windows, GStreamer on *nix, QuickTime (?) on OS X.

Re:Do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

If they wanted to do it right, they'd go for qt and use phonon for the multimedia stuff. That way you're always using the native frameworks and minimize your own coding. I can't belive the amount of bad arguments that kept being raised against this such as that you're "limiting" yourself by using a cross platform toolkit etc, which is such an obvious fallacy I won't even answer it. I really whish Mozilla would wake up, smell the coffee and drop the dead meat who fight rational code reuse well beyond the point where it gets absurd.

Re:Do it right

[drinkypoo]

If they wanted to do it right, they'd go for qt and use phonon for the multimedia stuff. That way you're always using the native frameworks and minimize your own coding.

Uh, you misspelled "That way you're never using the native frameworks". Anyway, they'd have to convert the whole thing to Qt, or have redundant rendering libraries, which would be stupid. Converting the whole thing to Qt would also be stupid because they'd either have to massively rework it to do things the Qt way, or have a program which uses Qt badly. In short, it would make more sense to hack on Chromium.

Re:Do it right

[shutdown -p now]

No, I think what he means is just using Phonon from Qt. And it does, indeed, use native frameworks on all platforms that it runs on; to quote the documentation:

"The backends of Qt use the media systems DirectShow (which requires DirectX) on Windows, QuickTime on Mac, and GStreamer on Linux."

So it is a good point. If there already is a single common API that wraps the "big three" and lets one write portable code against them all - and Phonon looks like it's it - then why not use it?

Say no to H.264

[Billly Gates]

All this is doing is making H.264 standard and this is going to kill Linux and Firefox once the lawyers come out when it monopolizes the market.

This patent bs has got to stop. If enough users (firefox users) do not support it then we have a fighting chance to fight it.

Re:Say no to H.264

[voodoo cheesecake]

I don't care about patents or lawyers. The days of making something "standard" are evaporating - just an illusory method of control anyway you poke a stick at it.

Re:Say no to H.264

[Hurricane78]

Then fucking fight THEM, instead of us, your allies!

You know how the US always makes jokes about the French giving up in WW2? (Despite it not being true.)
Well, you now have to accept that we will make fun of you, because the first thing you do when faced with a threat of someone murdering your children in their beds, is to quickly murder them yourself to “prevent” it.
(That’s essentially the position your comment supports.)

Re:Say no to H.264

[evilviper]

this is going to kill Linux and Firefox once the lawyers come out when it monopolizes the market.

And yet, many Linux systems are capable of playing DVDs, even though MPEG-2 is just as patented as H.264.

Stupid.

[RichiH]

Firefox has a large enough install base to actually stop or at least slow down H.264 adaption. IIRC, the Mozilla Foundation is in large part responsible for H.264 not being part of the offical HTML 5 standard, same as Apple & Nokia are the main players behind stopping Ogg Theora.

Having Firefox refuse to move to the patent- and licence-encumbered time-delayed scatter bomb that is H.264 has been very important. Software patents will be around for some more time and every user (in the broadest sense; i.e. everyone touching H.264 in any way) is required to get a licence. Sure, there are some limited free-as-in-beer rules, but that will not help anyone if the MPEG LA changes the licence terms in 2015 (I think that's when the current licences expire). Also, that will not help any FLOSS project they decide to smash into the ground. And of course, no large company like MS or Apple would ever indirectly fund such a thing. Unheard of! And yes, I know that this part is speculation and what-if.

Anyway Ogg Theora has lost the race as

1) it has slightly larger file sizes meaning significantly more cost to large companies deploying it (they scale to a _lot_ of video)
2) there is (almost) no hardware support, meaning that it drains batteries, can not be played on cheap mobile devices etc due to higher CPU usage
3) it has no 500-pound gorilla behind it; merely a 200-pound one.

Well, Ogg Theora is based on VP3 by On2 Technologies which they released to the Xiph Foundation a few years back. VP6 was good enough to be the default in Flash 8, VP7 was supposedly better than H.264 in 2005 (no idea if that is true) and recently, google bought the company.

Rumour has it that google will release VP8 to the public under a Free Licence at their I/O conference which will start next tuesday, May 18th 2010.

So imo the project is a bad choice in the first place, has really bad timing, no consideration for the underlying issues at all and is generally a bad idea.

Re:Stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect the author of WildFox works for either Apple or Microsoft and sees this as simple a way of beating Google to the pass.

Re:Stupid.

[westlake]

Firefox has a large enough install base to actually stop or at least slow down H.264 adaption.

The geek refuses to look beyond the browser.

Firefox is roadkill. Little Dolly Dumpling tied to the railroad tracks.

H.264 has the support of 817 of the biggest names in global manufacturing: Fujitsu. LG. Mitsubishi. Panasonic. Philips. Samsung. Toshiba...

In cable, broadcast and sattelite distribution. In CCTV.

In home video.

In PCs. In cell phones. In mobile devices of every sort.

It is backed by Adobe, Apple, Google, Microsoft - and Canonical.

 

Re:Stupid.

[BitZtream]

...

If the don't use h264 they are at more risk from the MPEG-LA suing them than if they do use it.

They aren't going to sue them for properly licensing and using the h264 codec, the assertion that its a 'ticking time bomb' is fucking retarded.

The time bomb would be using some other codec with no one behind it to provide protection from such lawsuits because it infringes on something like h264s pool of patents.

no consideration for the underlying issues at all and is generally a bad idea.

What you mean is ... you're pissy that not everyone wants to fight your battles for you. Get over it, some of us are done playing these silly little games and just want to move on to more important things.

Re:Stupid.

[CowboyBob500]

Software patents will be around for some more time and every user (in the broadest sense; i.e. everyone touching H.264 in any way) is required to get a licence.

Did you not even read the summary? In what way does the people of the USA and South Korea needing a license cover "every user"?

This is a sensible move. It means the rest of the world can move on and ignore all this patent bullshit. It might be bad for the people of the USA, but really, other than Americans who else really cares?

Re:Stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a great idea for anyone living outside software patents and needing to use firefox because of plugins.

Re:Stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

To clarify, hopefully unnecessary in the long run, but good thing that product can stay functional regardless of silly regulations in some part of the world.

Re:Stupid.

[BZ]

> IIRC, the Mozilla Foundation is in large part responsible for H.264 not being part of the
> offical HTML 5 standard

Actually, a large part of this is that W3C standards are required to be implementable royalty-free. So as long as HTML 5 is a W3C standard it can't require H.264, unless MPEG-LA licences H.264 royalty-free for purposes of HTML 5 implementation.

Re:Stupid.

[Draek]

And the nerd refuses to acknowledge the fact that, if it's not meant to parse HTML5 content it's irrelevant in the discussion of HTML5.

Remove all devices that don't have a reason to care about HTML5 from your list, and what are you left with? mobile phones, IE and Apple's sorry excuse of a browser.

Re:Stupid.

[cjjjer]

Firefox has a large enough install base to actually stop or at least slow down H.264 adaption.

So you want to use your monopoly to force change?

How Microsoft of you...

Re:Stupid.

[RichiH]

Proper licensing is impossible in FLOSS context, easy as that.

Re:Stupid.

[RichiH]

No, but the geek acknowledges that there are different fields of battle. Just because H.264 is a done deal for Blu-Ray does not mean that all is lost for the web.

The medium which is the most open, which changes at the fastest pace, which is able to influence all others is... The web.

And once VP8 gets hardware decoding support because smartphones need to do it to display web content properly, the same hardware schematics can easily make it into other hardware players.

Not saying this is bound to happen, but it's better than just roliing over, playing dead and hoping the MPEG LA or its associates will never try to leverage H.264 against FLOSS.

Re:Stupid.

[RichiH]

Did you not even read the links in the discussion? After minimal research, there are about two dozen more countries in which those patents apply. Including all major EU countries and several Asian ones. Oups.

Re:Stupid.

[westlake]

Remove all devices that don't have a reason to care about HTML5 from your list, and what are you left with?

Everything that outputs, switches, records, edits and processes [in hardware or software] video for your HTML 5 browser to parse.

A search of Google Shopping returns 1,600 hits for "WiFi H.264 Camera."

Security cameras for home, commercial and industrial use. Would it be convenient to remotely view the video and control the camera through an ordinary web page? Of course it would.

A search of Google Shopping returns 3,600 hits for "H.264 Camcorder."

The HD "Flip" pocket camcorder beginning at $125-$150. The pro-sumer Sony Handycam at $4,000. Product in stores now. Does it make sense to transcode or store all the H.264 videos these cameras output as Theora or VP8? Probably not.

It makes even less sense when you are serving video directly to the "Internet-enabled" Blu-Ray player, set-top box, video game console or HDTV.

Knowing that 100% of the manufacturers of these devices are MPEG LA licensors and licensees of the H.264 codec.

Re:Stupid.

[RichiH]

At ~30% adaption in the EU, which is the largest regional ratio world-wide, I question your definition of a monopoly.

Re:Stupid.

[RichiH]

Nice, didn't know that. Will google around unless you beat me with a link to sources. Thanks :)

Re:Stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, the fork author doesn't foresee that quality difference for the same bitrate is actually marginal between theora or 264, or maybe he only misses the native youtube. While sw. patents aren't relevant in many countries, Mozilla should follow the law in most relevant ones, which USA clearly is.

PR minus is that they aren't even providing option to plug in h.264 despite being perfectly possible using x.project, so their decision can be called purely political (but still smart and far sighted), same as with IE9 supporting only h.264. Fortunately, whoever forks Firefox to add the codec, can't use the name anymore.

Re:Stupid.

[BZ]

http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Licensing first paragraph.

Re:Stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're listing the people paying the patent fees and concluding that they support the format, which seems backwards. They are the people with most to gain from switching to an alternative to avoid fees or to benefit from price competition from a competitor.

When Apple and others were pushing the (MPEG-LA collected) patent fee bearing Firewire standard the people paying the fees (e.g. Dell, HP etc.) got together and blessed the patent royalty free USB 2.0 standard as a replacement. It wasn't as good, but it meant they weren't paying an extra fee on every product they built. (I recall when iPods were firewire only, I get the feeling most young whippersnappers in IT don't even know what it is).

The only thing these businesses are waiting for is a viable alternative to H.264.

Re:Stupid.

[Skapare]

The only thing these businesses are waiting for is a viable alternative to H.264.

Dirac is already here.

Re:Stupid.

[Draek]

Does it make sense to transcode or store all the H.264 videos these cameras output as Theora or VP8? Probably not.

It makes as much sense as it does to transcode all the RAW photos to JPEG images or uncompressed audio to MP3, both of which we do all the time.

Plus, what are you going to do once there are h.265 cameras out there? leave h.264 users in the dust and switch all to the newest shiny? no business would drop almost its entire customer base just to cater to the technophile, so they'd transcode regardless. Or are you going to force manufacturers *not* to use the better codec for their products? yeah, sure.

Standards are so because they are unchanging. Cutting-edge technology is so because it is perpetually moving forwards. They're inherently incompatible with each other, and if they've managed to overlap these recent years in the video arena it's merely by sheer luck but it won't be so forever, and as long as the cutting edge moves forward again (and it *will* move fowards, soon most likely) you'll have all the problems Theora would have plus all those that are specific to h.264.

Re:Stupid.

[westlake]

Plus, what are you going to do once there are h.265 cameras out there?

"Although some agreements about the goals of an H.265 project have been reached, e.g. computational efficiency and high compression performance, the current state of technology proved not yet mature for creation of an entirely new H.265 standard, and all contributions are modifications to KTA JM11, a reference H.264 encoder by the MPEG/VCEG Joint Video Team. In April 2009, the scope of the project was changed to H.NGVC, with a H.264+ standard being the most likely outcome." High Efficiency Video Coding

Re:Stupid.

[westlake]

You're listing the people paying the patent fees and concluding that they support the format, which seems backwards. They are the people with most to gain from switching to an alternative to avoid fees or to benefit from price competition from a competitor.

See a penny, pick it up.

Everyday you will have good luck.

Licensing H.264 costs next to nothing for corporations the size of LG, Panasonic, Samsung and Mitsubishi Electric.

   

Re:Stupid.

[CowboyBob500]

Bollocks. Software patents do not apply in the EU. Doesn't matter how much you wish it were true, it just isn't.

Re:Stupid.

[RichiH]

a) They apply. Live with it.
b) SOFTWARE patents? How are they relevant? We are talking hardware, here.

Re:Stupid.

[CowboyBob500]

a) No they don't. They get granted by the EU Patent Office to anyone who is stupid enough to pay as the EU Patent Office is a commercial entity that will sell anything to anyone. However, they are not enforceable.
b) In what way is Firefox hardware?

So basically, the US can shove it's software patents up its ass. H.264 software patents do NOT apply in Europe - and nor will they - there have already been at least two votes on the subject in the EU parliament that were lobbied for by the industry, and both times the proposal was thrown out - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4655955.stm

Re:Stupid.

[RichiH]

Sorry, I glitched a line and thought you replied to my comment that Palm/HP has a patent on slotting a mobile phone into other hardware to use the phone as a modem.

Still, for all intents and purposes, software patents are still very much alive in the EU. And the EU Patent Office is working hard to bypass any and all parliaments with their new EU patent court. Yes, including the EU parliament. So that fight is not over and software patents still need to be considered valid and enforceable. Anything else opens you up to a lot of potential pain.

Pardon my ignorance, but . . .

[smithfarm]

which two countries have these patent issues?

Re:Pardon my ignorance, but . . .

[msclrhd]

The Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.

Free in the next 5 yrs = a-bit-long-term try

[monoself]

It is always impossible to freely use H.264. "On February 2, 2010 MPEG LA announced that H.264-encoded Internet Video that is free to end users would continue to be exempt from royalty fees until at least December 31, 2015. However, other fees remain in place. The license terms are updated in 5-year blocks." Multiple standards is the trend, sadly but true. // Also reminds me of GTK and Qt

New 'video' tag without standardized codec

[FlorianMueller]

It's true that the new <video> tag in HTML 5 would suggest that a standardized codec be used by all browsers claiming to be fully HTML 5 compatible.

However, the new tag could also be used (even though in a less useful way than otherwise) if there is, which is unfortunately the most likely scenario, no industry consensus on a single codec. Assuming that there are two camps (H.264 and Theora; or maybe three if Google pushes for VP8), web servers could then provide different Uniform Resource Identifiers for the files, based on the browser that makes the web page request; or the file names (thus the URIs) could be identical but dependent on which browser is in use, a different file could be provided.

I have discussed the HTML 5 aspects of this in a recent blog post, "Video codecs: The HTML 5 dimension". While I am against software patents (I founded the European NoSoftwarePatents campaign in 2004, I just try to take a realistic perspective on the fact that software patents exist and get enforced all around the globe (as far as codecs go, there's aggressiv enforcement even in Europe, such as dozens of search warrants and confiscations every year at the CeBIT trade show.

Re:New 'video' tag without standardized codec

[PastaLover]

However, the new tag could also be used (even though in a less useful way than otherwise) if there is, which is unfortunately the most likely scenario, no industry consensus on a single codec. Assuming that there are two camps (H.264 and Theora; or maybe three if Google pushes for VP8), web servers could then provide different Uniform Resource Identifiers for the files, based on the browser that makes the web page request; or the file names (thus the URIs) could be identical but dependent on which browser is in use, a different file could be provided.

The video element allows you to list several sources with different codecs. You don't need to do any web sniffing, just let the client decide. The problem here is that transcoding a video to two different codecs means you about double your CPU and storage requirements. Given enough video (like on any of the video sharing sites) it's just not (commercially) feasible to support multiple formats at the same time. So video providers such as Google on youtube will go with the following solution: they'll transcode to h.264, make that available and serve it via flash to whomever doesn't have h.264 video support. Firefox users get shafted either way.

Theora will remain in niche use, but I don't see any way that h.264 doesn't end up winning over the major sites, especially since it has the support of all the proprietary browser vendors.

Advocates of Theora/VP8: Do your patent clearance!

[FlorianMueller]

Despite the typo with the excessive "i", the post was right on: those patents exist all over the world. It's not just that they exist, they also get enforced. Even in Germany, despite the fact that we (I founded the NoSoftwarePatents campaign in 2004) defeated a proposal for an EU software patent law, those kinds of patents get enforced quite aggressively. Every year at CeBIT, there are dozens of search warrants and confiscations, most of them related to MP3 and presumably an increasing number related to MPEG video codecs.

In recognition of the unfortunate realities that those patents exist and get enforced, I believe the proponents of other formats than H.264 -- be it Theora or be it VP8, in case Google opensources it -- would have to make some well-documented patent clearance effort and explain -- at least with respect to the patents held by the MPEG LA pool -- why their proposed codec doesn't infringe. I proposed so in a recent blog post, "Video codecs: Food for thought".

It may appear unfair and yes, it's harder to prove that there's no infringement than to prove that there is one, but I believe those propagating certain formats should accept responsibility for all third-party developers who might use their code and incorporate it, on open-source terms, into their projects and then run into serious legal problems. I wouldn't expect this kind of effort from a small open-source project but if there are large companies involved, or a deep-pocket non-profit such as the Mozilla Foundation, then I believe it's not unreasonable to ask them to do so instead of putting people at risk who would be unable to perform that kind of analysis.

Can't say no to H.264 without reliable alternative

[FlorianMueller]

As much as I regret to say it (btw, I founded the European NoSoftwarePatents campaign in 2004), I don't think this kind of resistance to H.264 is going to lead to a solution in the event some of the patents in the MPEG LA pool (just the H.264 pool contains 1,135 patents, and they have more pools under management there) get infringed by an alternative format that everyone would advocate, be it Theora or VP8. In that case, "the lawyers" would come out anyway to collect royalties and impose other terms and conditions.

As a result, whatever alternative that infringes on those patents would end up being unfree (neither free beer nor free speech) anyway.

The call for resistance to H.264 will make a great deal of sense if and when there is a reasonably reliable basis on which it can be assumed that a format such as Theora and/or VP8 doesn't infringe patents. While it's impossible to check on every one of the millions of software patents that exist around the globe, at the very least the proponents of Theora or VP8 (which Google might opensource very soon) should make a well-documented patent clearance effort with respect to the patents held by the MPEG LA consortium and explain why they their preferred codec doesn't infringe on those. Companies like Google or a deep-pocket non-profit such as the Mozilla Foundation could certainly do so if they wanted. I explained this thinking in a recent blog post.

The problem isn't the patents...

[onitzuka]

The problem isn't the patents, but instead the problem is why is a patented codec being approved in the open HTML5 standard?

How'd that happen? Who let it happen? Why wasn't the choice restricted to open codecs?

That, my friends, is the real problem here.

Re:The problem isn't the patents...

[jonbryce]

HTML 5 doesn't specifify any codecs. You could use .wmv on your html 5 page if you really wanted to, and it would be valid html 5. Nobody has a browser that could watch such a video, but that is another issue.

Re:The problem isn't the patents...

[onitzuka]

So then why is there this concern about H.264? The solution should be to use unencumbered formats. Why is that not happening?

Re:The problem isn't the patents...

[jonbryce]

There is a concern because there aren't any major video sites that provide anything other than h.264 or flash, and the fragmentation of the market with firefox and opera supporting ogg theora, safari supporting h.264, chrome supporting both, and the currently shipping version of ie supporting neither means that people are less likely to adopt html 5.

Re:The problem isn't the patents...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many reasons why this is not happening, so this is going to be pretty long.

More than 60% of the video on the web today is H.264 and the percentage is growing. Wide deployment of the codec has started in 2007 when Adobe added it to Flash and the iPhone was released prompting Youtube to convert all its video to H.264. Two years later, when it was already the dominant format and after it had already been dropped as a required format for HTML5, the Xiph guys came along with the first halfway decent release of Theora (1.1) and expected everyone to change what they had been doing for the last couple of years.
By then H.264 had already become somewhat a de facto standard for video on the web and had wide support in software and hardware, especially mobile phones and home media centers. Since everyone already been pushing for H.264, the licensing fees for the encoders/decoders were cheap and there are no fees on free web video no one had an incentive to reencode all their content to a technically inferior format with way less compatibility to existing hardware and software. For the video providers there is no savings. If anything they'd need to spend extra money to reencode and they'd need more storage/bandwith to provide the same quality in Theora.

The state of the Theora encoder and the technical inferiority of the format is also a hindrance to adoption.
Currently H.264 encoding on Youtube is done by x264, an open source encoder that is also used by other companies (Facebook, Criterion,...) who also sponsor development of certain features. x264 is one of the best H.264 encoders around, is highly configurable and can provide high speed and quality. Gregory Maxwell, one of the Theora developers, posted in a comparison that x264 contains more lines of handwritten assembly than the entire size of libtheoras C encoder codebase. So in its current state the Theora encoder is relatively slow for a format as simple as that.
Then there is the quality issue. If you compare metrics, Theora needs about 30% more bitrate than H.264 baseline profile and about 100% more bitrate than H.264 high profile to achieve the same quality. If you look at the actual subjective quality the situation is worse than that, although the current development version of Theora (1.2) should cut that by a couple of percent. Unfortunately when it comes to quality H.264 has more room to grow than Theora. While most video provided for cell phones today is H.264 baseline profile recent phones support High Profile (Nexus One, iPhone 3GS,...) and the share of available High Profile content is also growing.

Re:The problem isn't the patents...

[Skapare]

What the standard SHOULD do is provide for at least ONE codec as a minimum requirement, to ensure that there is at least one format that ensures universal functionality. Then it can ALLOW any additional that others wish to use. That one minimum required codec must also be an unencumbered one to ensure free access by all browsers. This one minimum doesn't even need to be the best technology; it just needs to basically work and be usable.

Re:The problem isn't the patents...

[Arker]

.wmv is not a codec.

Re:The problem isn't the patents...

[shutdown -p now]

There are no modern video codecs in existence today which are proven to be non-patent-encumbered. We have some (e.g. Theora) where creators claim that they aren't, and some third parties claim that they are.

Other than that, your best bet for a patent-free format is, apparently, Motion JPEG.

Re:The problem isn't the patents...

[Skapare]

NOTHING is proven to be non-patent-encumbered. What we have to work with is the best information available. Dirac and Theora are both making such claims. The count claims appear meritless. But Dirac has more substantial big-entity backing. Check it out. And, yes, MJPEG has its uses. Dirac has a similar mode.

Way to go.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have just extended the HTML5 war.

Congratulations idiot.

I assume you work for either Microsoft or Apple...

What two countries??

[Krakadoom]

"Only two countries in the world have software patents"

If you mean the US and EU, then you're at least partly right. Otherwise I think you may need to bone up on your patent law. Most countries allow for software patents, but in roundabout ways.

Re:What two countries??

[lightversusdark]

The EU is not a country. The union does not recognise software patents.

Re:What two countries??

[Lotunggim Ginsawat]

Oh really? Why is then the poster child of software patents that is Microsoft FAT patent, was uphold in Germany?
This nonsense about software patents not valid in EPO members nations (which includes significant number of EU members) simply has to stop.

Too late

[westlake]

Why? It capitulates to a non-free standard, and if H.264 becomes the defacto standard for HTML5 it effectively destroys the ability of any free browsers without deep pockets behind them to compete in the market

H.264 has unstoppable momentum beyond the browser:

Cell phones. Professional production. High Definition Video. Cable, sattelite and broadcast technologies.

CCTV (Think Medical, Industrial and Security Video.) The list goes on and on and on.

H.264 has the support of industrial giants like LG. Mitsubishi. NTT. Philips. Samsung. Toshiba - and, quite literally, hundreds of licensees that would be considered first tier in their chosen markets.

China-Japan-Korean support for the codec is anchored in bedrock.

The decoder is in your HDTV. Your Blu-Ray Player. Your "Flip" Camcorder. Your cell pone. Video Game Console. Set Top Box.

Your Mac, Windows, and OEM Ubuntu Linux PC.

The decoder is - for all practical purposes - free-as-in-beer almost everywhere in the world. In the US licensing maxes out at $5 million a year. That is not a problem for Apple, Microsoft, Cannonical or Google.

Not a problem for HP or Dell. For Netflix. For Adobe. For Canon. For Nintendo. For Panasonic or Vizio.
   

Re:Too late

[arose]

H.264 has unstoppable momentum beyond the browser:

So should we just give up on this whole web-bound HTML and go with the clear outside winner that is Word Documents?

Re:Too late

[arose]

Also, how is not giving buyers permission to use video from their cameras commercially "not a problem" for Canon and Panasonic?

Re:Can't say no to H.264 without reliable alternat

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is that impossible?

Google is a search company.

If anyone can do an exhaustive international patent search to prove VP8 or VP9 does not infringe any existing still-extant patents that have not been licensed openly to everyone and for no charge, it is them.

I would suggest that is why this long delay. They are making sure they can do it right, and if they have to change the codec a little to do it, they most likely will.

Exuberant Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

If fees are exuberant enough they will be filled with unrestrained joy.

Re:Can't say no to H.264 without reliable alternat

[am 2k]

Google is a search company.

No, Google is an advertising company.

If anyone can do an exhaustive international patent search to prove VP8 or VP9 does not infringe any existing still-extant patents that have not been licensed openly to everyone and for no charge, it is them.

Computers still can't understand and interpret human language, it has to be done manually, by someone who understands the codecs and is able to read that patent legalese contained in 1135 patents. See the problem?

Youtube already transcode video

[Anonymous Coward]

Youtube already transcode video therefore the current state or lack of h264 is irrelevant: they used to use h261 and that's worse than Theora. And so a site that has LOTS of video wants a video compression that is available to ANY putative viewer. This is NOT a patented compression. The cost of bandwidth and storage for a Theora feed of equal quality to an optimal h264 is nothing compared to the licensing costs for the algorithm for a site like youtube.

For smaller sites, offering multiple coded streams is less of a problem and they may more easily have a tool for h264 production. The finished product could then be transcoded into other streams with no cost: the data volumes aren't prohibitive.

PS your ending tag assumes that encoding is free. It was cheaper for the BBC to write their own codec and ensure it was patent free than to license an OTS solution.

Licensing is not cheap and the vendor can smack you up any time they want. See GIF and FAT for examples.

Re:Youtube already transcode video

[Pentium100]

Really? IIRC there is a cap of how much the license can cost and it is a few million $, which, to google, probably is rounding error.

And, even if google decided to use Theora for Youtube, it would still need to have h264 encoded files (and pay for the license) because there are devices that do not support Theora or Flash (iPad for example), so you can't have only Theora files and a Flash player. So, google will keep the current arrangement (h264 files + Flash player if browser does not play h264 directly).

Re:Youtube already transcode video

[PastaLover]

My point was that h.264 is available to everyone they care about, either natively or through flash. Concerning transcoding, there's a difference between transcoding old videos, and providing duplicates of every single video on the site at four different compression ratios.

I did not mean to imply that encoding in h.264 is free. But it's by no means cumbersomely expensive for major operators like Google. Whether or not the BBC chose to develop their own codec only on the basis of price is something I think would need some more looking into.

Let me just add that I want a free and open format just as much as the next guy. But there's what we'd like to happen and what is going to happen. I'm not trying to argue that h.264 is the better choice, I'm arguing that, as things stand, it's the only choice, by virtue of its support from the major vendors.

Taint

[Schoktra]

I have not read all of the other comments and apologize if this has been covered before. That being said, starting the wild fox project is a horrible idea. H.264 and other patented softwares are left out of firefox with good reason. Writing a program that is open source but implementing closed source softwares such as the H.264 codec create license tainting issues for the open source project. Another good issue is why would someone want to support softwares which are not open. I do not like the idea of ever having to use software in which I have zero input on the outcome of the product. If the H.264 codec were to do something stupid such as run code in the kernel such as Windows 7 fonts were doing, that could have catastrophic outcomes. Being able to alter my own copy then submit the changes to the dev group for inclusion into the main project is a great comfort to me.

Re:Taint

[badkarmadayaccount]

GStreamer. BTW, codec issues are not browser issues. The FF maintainers care about the browser. If you wanna tweak the code, replace Windows codec with a tweaked FOSS implementation.

Re:You might be interested in...

[burni2]

Well, thanks for this .. it's so important like the news that Richard Stallman can sometimes get mixed up with a homeless man.
Or that the main character from Torchwood is openly and 110 percent pure gay.

It's like .. fox news, nobody is interested in sex, but everybody talks about it.

Thank you for your "public service".

HOW many countries?

[ignavus]

TFA mentions "a small number of countries, including the USA and South-Korea", which sounds like there would be other countries too, but the summary says "only two countries". The Wikipedia article referenced in TFA is very murky and unclear about what things could be patentable in (say) Australia, as well as other nations.

All up, how reliable is the claim that WildFox is legal in all countries in the world apart from the US and South Korea?

Re:HOW many countries?

[glorpy]

The summary is a *lie*.

MPEG-LA's patent list at http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx shows patents in the US, Canada, Germany, Russia, South Korea, France, United Kingdom, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, China, Finland, Italy, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Turkey and Lichtenstein - and that's in the first 4 pages of a 56-page document, with most of the patents quite live.

Sure, patent law isn't enforced as vigorously in some of those countries as it is in the US, but to say that just South Korea and the USA are problem states is misleading and dangerous, particularly with ACTA coming down the pipeline.

Re:HOW many countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

In many of those countries, software patents are NOT ENFORCEABLE. Patent offices are granting lots of patents that shouldn't be actually granted and would be void in a court of law. In France there is no such a thing as patenting a software algorithm.

Patent offices will grant anything as long as you pay the dime, it's not like they actually study the patent or prior art anyway. Which is why the MPEG LA is "bragging" with their list of countries where they own patents.

MOD PARENT NORTH

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Re:You might be interested in...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am both intrigued and disgusted; congratulations.

Two countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are those two countries? The free world and the unfree world?

H.264 patents are held in every country where electronics are assembled,
designed or programmed.

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.pdf

Re:Can't say no to H.264 without reliable alternat

[drinkypoo]

The call for resistance to H.264 will make a great deal of sense if and when there is a reasonably reliable basis on which it can be assumed that a format such as Theora and/or VP8 doesn't infringe patents.

If it turns out that they do infringe patents, you're no worse off than before. If it turns out they don't, then you win. Either way it makes more sense to use an alternative to H.264.

Re:For tag

[Hurricane78]

Think like a programmer: Generalize: Include ffmpeg, and be done with it. Tons of codecs. Tons of features. Works on every OS. And since it’s an external dependency, the whole “problem” vanishes into thin air. It’s beautiful! :)

Why not as an addon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm not an expert on Firefox addon functionality, but would this be possible as a plugin? I rather install a plugin than a new browser; and the project would not have to support different platforms

You're crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

What Firefox was on track to do was to make standard HTML more pervasive, and they succeeded on that front. Now products like Chromium have a much easier time entering the market.

but your aiding in infringement again

[Anonymous Coward]

cause we know once you do this the mad rush to "acquire" these versions will outstrip any other version of firefox LOL

you will be lime wired

Innovative?

[Skapare]

Let me ask you this ... what is the likelihood that, had the inventors of this patent (or set of patents) not done so, that someone else would have, even if not precisely identical (something about as good)? If the answer is "good" or "high", then I'd say the patent is really NOT an innovation worthy of a patent system that is supposed to be a balance between encouraging genuine innovation at the cost of taking the rights (of intellectual property) away from other inventors who just happen to create the same innovation.

How many Slashdot readers could, with no exposure to any existing video coding and compression methods, come up with one that works? My guess is a few could, if they'd just stop reading Slashdot for a few weeks and work on it.

Re:H264 doesn't ship by default on Windows...

[Goaway]

Yes, it does.

Dirac?

[Skapare]

And what about Dirac?

-1 Wrong.

[SanityInAnarchy]

The point of standardizing stuff is not to make the browser one giant monolithic pile of crap. The point of standardizing stuff is to make a standard interface that developers can rely on -- <object> didn't provide support for things like altering the video with CSS, controlling it (pause/play), etc.

This project will take years

[1155]

Why is this news? People make sourceforge projects all the time, do 2 days of work, and then quit doing it. The project dies, etc etc. How is this news?

Simple workaround

[Makali]

Most Firefox users have the Flash plugin, the Flash plugin plays H.264. An extension or greasemonkey script could replace tags with a flash video player - patent fees paid for by Adobe, no need for a new browser fork, problem solved? Or is it more complicated than that?

Re:Simple workaround

[Pop69]

The idea is not to use flash because it's a buggy, insecure and badly written piece of crapware.

Using it to play HTML5 video just completely misses the point

Re:Simple workaround

[Skapare]

You get the source code and fix the bugs ... and do peer review by releasing the source code to Slashdot so we can all make sure you did your job right.

Peer reviewed software is where it's at.

Re:Simple workaround

[Makali]

No, the point is that Mozilla have a philosophical issue with putting patent-encumbered video support into the Firefox code. Flash's relative merits are irrelevant to this topic. Crap as it very well may be, it's installed virtually everywhere, and it's been playing H.264 for years - it also gets installed whether or not you use it to play HTML5 video.

H.264 is widely used, and all the other major browser vendors have signed on to it for future releases. It would be foolish for Mozilla to make a stand on this at the expense of their users - most of them don't care. They'll simply see that their browser doesn't "work", and they'll switch to one that does.

By making Firefox play H.264 through its existing plugin/extension architecture, Mozilla can maintain its stance on the patent issue without losing the goodwill and support of its users, just like they did by adding PNG support to support the move away from the LZW-patent-encumbered GIF, without actually removing GIF support. Firefox makes use of a number of technologies that are subject to patents, and they've taken a pragmatic approach to those. It's not unreasonable to suggest that they do it again.

Re:Simple workaround

[shutdown -p now]

It's not that simple:

1) It would change the DOM tree, which would be visible to all JS running on the page - and in particular any that'd try to walk that tree to find <video> there.

2) HTML5 also specifies a <video> scripting API for JS. This would have to be fully emulated.

Re:Simple workaround

[O'Nazareth]

There is even simpler. I have tried a script that replaces the "src" valure of the video element by a stream from a plugin that can convert a H264 stream to Theora stream. It works. However, the recompression takes a lot of processor resource, and random access in the stream cannot be done before the whole file is converted. What would be nice is to be able to have a raw YCbCr + PCM stream, and have a plugin that handle random access (so that there is no caching of the uncompressed stream needed).

The USA and who?

[Trelane]

So, the USA is clear. The other must be Germany? http://lwn.net/Articles/384556/

can this be done as an add-on instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of a fork, if this could be done as an add-on/extension (potentially changing the currently available API to do so) that seems far better than a fork.

In other news...

[arose]

Microsoft and Apple still refuse to support Theora without collective outrage, and Mozilla continues to be held to a different standard.

Hardware

[Skapare]

Most of those solutions are in HARDWARE. But that may not be bad. Just make a video card with an OPEN INTERFACE that allows sending the H.264 video stream in, and display the decoded result of that stream at specified coordinates on the video output. Add on using the same video card for ENCODING (raw video stream in, compressed H.264 out, undisplayed). Just make sure the interface (description how the driver sends and receives data) is open and the problem is solved.

Alternatively, AMD could integrate this in their CPU/GPU combo chip, and have a killer product.

Is your country ready to absorb a mass exodus?

[tepples]

H.264 is a free standard in most of the world. That's the point: why should the rest of us suffer from USAs bad laws?

Because the rest of you don't appear willing to absorb 307 million immigrants from the USA, 82 million from Germany, and 48 million from the Republic of Korea.

Re:Is your country ready to absorb a mass exodus?

[ultranova]

So why don't the 437 million of you tell your overlords to fuck off? Seriously, it's somewhere between million to one odds and thousand to one odds. Tell them to fuck off and repeal software patents. And, while you're at it, retake your countries in every other way too - the rest of us would love to have a "leader of the free world" to look up to again. All you have to do to reclaim that position is to be worth it; come on, you can do it if you try!

There's this concept called a spine. Try having one, it's been a wild success in every species that's ever tried it. Seriously, your forefathers had it, you should try having it too ; then you wouldn't have to worry about moving to other countries.

The copyright term is Europe's fault

[tepples]

This is about the point where some loser will blame "Europe" for the utter shambles that is the US system of copyrights and software patents.

The copyright term is Europe's fault. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was passed because some organizations threatened to shift first publication to Europe to take advantage of its life plus 70 year copyright term, as opposed to that in the United States which was life plus 50 at the time.

Re:The copyright term is Europe's fault

[dbIII]

Thus "Europe" is not to blame but instead "some organizations" because countries in Europe and most places elsewhere are not burdened with the counterproductive IP bullshit that plagues the United States.
It can be fixed locally instead of just shaking heads, muttering about treaties and giving up completely.
The United States showed a few years ago that it doesn't give a shit about what the UN thinks let alone the European Union. There is no point just giving up and pointing fingers in the wrong place.

License

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I get a license to use H.264 in Firefox if I install it on Windows or a Mac?

Oh, the irony!

[Chris Tucker]

"Just sayin' ".
--
Illiterate? Write for free help!

Re:Oh, the irony!

[inamorty]

Jesus, I don't remember Chris Tucker being this lame..

Re:Oh, the irony!

[Chris Tucker]

Alas, I had no time to be as insightful as I usually am...

Oh, wait.

No, I am NOT that annoying, so-called "actor" that shucks and jives in those Jackie Chan films.

License incompatibility

[tepples]

It is possible for someone other than the patent holder to use patented tech you know?

Yes, it's called a "license". But the H.264 patent holders require license terms that are not compatible with the terms under which desktop Linux distributions are most commonly distributed.

Immigration?

[tepples]

There are only two countries in the world with software patents. TWO.
And frankly, I declare them the “axis of evil” and don’t fuckin’ care about their “laws”.

Is your country taking refugees from these countries' patent regimes?

Re:You might be interested in...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

All that is still rather nice, I won't dare to imagine how *you* look inside (especially inside the cranium).

Re:Can't say no to H.264 without reliable alternat

[phillipsjk256]

In a previous blog post, you explain that there is no such thing as a patent-free video codec. The reason being that the existence of prior-art is not sufficient to prevent a patent from being granted.

This implies that even video (or image-based) codecs in existence for nearly 20 years will still be patent-encumbered when any original patents expire in a few years.

While it may be prudent for a large player like Google to vet their codecs against the MPEG-LA license pool, the real problem is that software patents are unworkable.

Clueless

[westlake]

How many Slashdot readers could, with no exposure to any existing video coding and compression methods, come up with one that works? My guess is a few could, if they'd just stop reading Slashdot for a few weeks and work on it.

To be a player in this league you need to understand all of the following text without a crib sheet:

The JCT-VC is currently evaluating modifications to current coding tools, such as

        * adaptive loop filter (ALF),

        * extended macroblock size (EMS),

        * larger transform size (LTS),

        * internal bit depth increasing (IBDI), and

        * adaptive quantization matrix selection (AQMS),

as well as new coding tools, such as

        * modified intra prediction,

        * modified de-block filter, and

        * decoder-side motion vector deviation (DMVD).

Many new features are proposed to meet the requirements:

        * 2-D non-separable adaptive interpolation filter (AIF)

        * Separable AIF

        * Directional AIF

        * Motion compensation with 1/8-pel motion vectors (no longer available)

        * "Supermacroblock" structure up to 64x64 with additional transforms

        * Adaptive prediction error coding (APEC) in spatial and frequency domain

        * Competition-based scheme for motion vector selection and coding

        * Mode-dependent KLT for intra coding

It is speculated that these techniques are most beneficial with multi-pass encoding.

High Efficiency Video Coding

Re:Can't say no to H.264 without reliable alternat

[evilviper]

The call for resistance to H.264 will make a great deal of sense if and when there is a reasonably reliable basis on which it can be assumed that a format such as Theora and/or VP8 doesn't infringe patents.

No clue about VP8, but as for Theora, On2 specifically went out of their way to avoid patented tech at the time. It's now old enough that patent expiration may have already voided any patent which DID apply, if any ever did. It's been sold commercial by On2 for years. Xiph did their patent research an gave it a clean bill of health. AOL uses VP3 extensively, and paid for VP5/6 (IIRC) licenses, which they also use extensively. Damn near everybody uses/has used VP6 thanks to Adobe including that as the latest greatest codec in Flash 8. etc.

In short, if any patents ARE found, the whole planet is already massively screwed...

MP3 patent enforcement in Europe

[lindi]

"A shipment to a German distributor was accidently mislabel with "MP3" (The Openmoko can't play MP3's unless modified). That was enough for the German customs to seize it according to European piracy protection laws."

-- http://info.openmoko.se/Home/mp3

"The Linux-based phone, OpenMoko is currently in a patent dispute with Sisvel, as known as Societ&#224; Italiana per lo Sviluppo dell'Elettronica."

-- http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/11/OpenMoko-MPEG

Re:MP3 patent enforcement in Europe

[Hurricane78]

The first one has nothing at all to do with patents. Copyright is not patents.

The second one is hardware-related.

You fail. ^^

Re:MP3 patent enforcement in Europe

[lindi]

Doesn't "hardware-related" also forbid you from selling preinstalled computers that can decode MP3? Or what do you exactly mean? Openmoko has no hardware acceleration for MP3 decoding.

The other 306,990,000 of us

[tepples]

There's this concept called a spine

It's not that I lack a spine. It's not that 10,000 of us lack a spine. It's the other 306,990,000 of us that either lack a spine or even benefit from the status quo. For example, I've discovered that the movie studios decide who gets elected in two ways. I wanted to vote for Ron Paul in 2008, but because the MPAA-puppet cable news networks gave the other Republicans so much more time, he was eliminated before the primary even came to my state.

Re:The other 306,990,000 of us

[ultranova]

So only 10,000 of you care about this at all, and even you are too lazy or inept to do anything except passively wait the decisions of your overlords. You won't, say, campaign for the candidate you want elected, yet you expect there to be a mass exodus over a version of Firefox being available on the USA (which it would be, thanks to the Pirate Bay)?

I'm sorry if I come accross as harsh, but your combination of proposals here is ridiculous.

Re:The other 306,990,000 of us

[tepples]

You won't, say, campaign for the candidate you want elected

How do we outcampaign the combined weight of CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, and CNN?

MPAA news

[tepples]

Thus "Europe" is not to blame but instead "some organizations"

The mainstream news media control what the electorate thinks, and these "some organizations" control the mainstream news media. So how do we get a Congress that's not captured by "some organizations"?

Software patents in Europe

[kiwix]

Software patents officially do not exist in Europe, they are quite explicitly ruled out.

However, this does not prevent people from applying for such patents, and the patent office being what it is, those patents are of course granted. (You can even patent the wheel in some countries...).

So if you implement something that is covered by software patents, you will probably have to go to court at some point. Obviously, if you don't have the money to afford a good lawyer, you're screwed. If you're rich and lucky enough, the court applies the "no software-patent" rule and the patent is deemed invalid. By if the patent owner succeeds in pretending that's it's not only a software issue, and that it has some technical effect, you're screwed.

So it's definitely not as easy as "there are no software patents in Europe". And even if it was, obviously invalid patents can still do do a lot of harm (just have a look at what SCO is doing...).

Re:For tag

[Cougar Town]

Even better: Support the underlying media layer on the OS. Windows and Macs already come with licensed codecs for H.264... why not use these, which are completely legal in countries with these annoying patents? If the OS itself already handles what you want, why not use it?

Linux distributions may not be able to ship with H.264, but it can be left up to the user. Then at least they have the option, instead of nothing at all (other than using a different browser).

Not to mention that, at least on Windows 7, the licensed H.264 codec makes use of nvidia's (and maybe AMD's?) full hardware decoding of H.264, giving a *far* better experience than software decoding (for example, my buddy's media box can play H.264 1080p movies at about 9% CPU usage... on an Atom 330 with the ION chipset)

Just let the OS handle it and not worry about patents or codecs or hardware acceleration or anything else.

Re:For tag

[Hurricane78]

Even better: Support the underlying media layer on the OS.

No it isn’t better, since that would mean you’t have to write your own adapter layer for every OS’s API.
Guess who already did that... ^^

Think long term.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually the pipes will be large enough so that you won't need a codec, you will simply be able to transfer the raw video data in real time. Problem solved.

Shared libraries anyone?

[shtrom]

I may be completely out of it, and I admit that I haven't done much research on that point, but something still escapes me.

Why does Firefox have to implement the codec themselves? Can't they just rely on the operating system's set of libraries to decode as much content as possible?

I understand the need for an uncluttered standard. It's a very valid and very necessary point.

Is Mozilla making a political statement to push this by *disabling* (i.e. not using even if available) support for H264 (or any other codec) they could get from the system, or are they re-implementing the wheel (if so, why?!) and fear possible legal issues if they re-implement H264?

As predicted

[RichiH]

And... as predicted:

http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/webm-open-video-playback-html5.html
http://openvideoalliance.org/2010/05/google-frees-vp8-codec-for-html5-the-webm-project/?l=en
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Google-open-source-VP8-as-part-of-the-WebM-Project-1003772.html

Wildfox? Stupid.

Re:As predicted

[RichiH]

PS: For the lazy, quotes from [1]

Software supporters include Adobe, Sorensen and Skype while the hardware supporters include AMD, ARM, Broadcom, Freescale, Logitech, Marvell, NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. The Ogg Theora foundation is listed as a supporter.

Google is licensing its intellectual property, which includes On2 technologies IP assets, under an open source license which is only revocable if a licensee files a patent infringement lawsuit against the VP8 code as released by Google.

The software is open sourced under a BSD-style licence, and is optimised for the web with a "low computational footprint" for hand held and other portable internet devices.

Early builds of browsers supporting WebM include Chromium and Mozilla nightly builds, with an Opera Beta coming soon, and a Google Chrome early access release available on May 24th.

Google have already begun converting videos on YouTube.

Weeeeeeee!!!!

[1] http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Google-open-source-VP8-as-part-of-the-WebM-Project-1003772.html

god no, please kill interlacing

[Anonymous Coward]

i would rather progressive vga than to deal with the pain of imperfectly converting interlaced video to progressive. ive got nothing against crt's, i think they're wonderful, but a decade ago we had these resolutions in progressive, not interlaced.