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Did Mozilla Have No Choice But To Add DRM To Firefox?

JimLynch (684194) writes "Mozilla has been in the news quite a lot over the last few months. This time the organization is being hammered by open source advocates for adding Adobe DRM to Firefox. But did the folks at Mozilla really have a choice when it comes adding DRM? An open source project like Mozilla is not immune to market pressures. And with so many competing browsers such as Chrome adding DRM for Netflix, etc. how could Firefox avoid adding it? Is it realistic to think that Firefox can simply ignore such things? I don't think so and the reason why is in Firefox's usage numbers over the last few years."

3 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not denying something is different from forcing by StripedCow · · Score: 4, Funny

    But Mozilla's scheme may be:

    1. Implement DRM to make sure the users don't massively ditch Firefox.
    2. Attract more users, get >90% market share
    3. Ditch DRM

    --
    If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
  2. Re:Not denying something is different from forcing by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm a socialist. And by that I mean that I'm strongly against both capitalism and communism. I believe everyone should profit from his work and only from his own work. I believe it should be illegal to profit from someone else's work. So you can guess I'm also totally against social democracy and taxation.

    That's......an unusual viewpoint for a socialist.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. Re:They made me do it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Yes, it was a terrible terrible decision. Now users who want DRM will be able to watch their videos with Firefox, and those of us who dislike DRM will have to continue opting out of it. And worse, you just know that Google, MS, Apple, Netflix, Adobe et al were shitting in their pants about this. Whatever would they do if Firefox didn't cave in and lost even more of its clout and userbase? It would have been such a better idea to hold their ground, like they did with Theora. That worked out amazingly well. YouTube, Netflix, and everyone else just used Theora instead of h264, and Google fulfilled their pledge to remove h264 from Chrome. Firefox only gained users, and I'm the King of England.