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

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

[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: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: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: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?

[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:Not quite.

[joaosantos]

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

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: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: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?

[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. :)