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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."
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...
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
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.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Story posted at the speed of kdawson.
That a new word?
yes, thatanewword.
yes, thatanewword.
Hmm, is that a malamanteau ?
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.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
"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
---- Don't lick something unless you really mean it.
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.
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.
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?
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?
~ Old Warriors Society
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.
http://saveie6.com/
Wouldn't that be tame weasel?
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.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
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! :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
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.