They're making the EXACT same mistakes as the music industry. They don't want a universal format. We have one. It's called ePub. They want universal DRM. Which isn't gonna happen.
The music industry tried the same thing. We wound up with multiple different DRMed formats that only worked on specific devices. All were incompatible with each other. Most were overpriced compared to CDs (the elimination of the physical distribution and associated costs should have been factored into digital sales from day one). And if someone did try to make a tool to unlock your music from a device so you could use it on another device you owned, they were sued... and it was made illegal even for fair use with bought-and-paid-for legislation in the US. So, everyone got used to stealing music, since it was the only way to actually get what you want on the device you wanted it and be able to listen to it anywhere.
Now, the Big Publishing is making the exact same mistakes. Insisting on DRM. All of it is on different platforms in different formats. None of it works with anything else. And the pricing is absolutely absurd compared to paperback sales. So, what happens? Everyone is starting to steal books using file sharing, etc. Big Publishing is already losing, they just don't realize it yet. And for all their whining about wanting a universal format and not wanting to make the same mistakes as Big Music, history is already repeating itself.
If you're satisfied with the console, you can be quite satisfied with PC gaming and dialing down the resolution and quality appropriately. Most major Xbox games don't even hit 720p (let alone 1080p) and often play at 30fps, so even though you have that nice 1080p monitor hooked to your PC, dial the resolution down in the game to get the same playability. Remember that every console is using outdated hardware in comparison to a current PC.
You can't really consider taking your book and making it into an app as a viable distribution mechanism. You have no guarantee it will be accepted for one thing (Apple has serious content restrictions in place and the only place you can sell an app is through their app store). And even if it is, Apple has forced authors to edit the content (removing swear words for instance), so it may not be your book anymore. Add to that the cost of developing the app in the first place, and it's only really worth it for large, safe authors that have a solid chance of not hitting a random Apple wall or a smaller publisher who is also a programmer that likes to mess about and won't be crushed when the app is rejected.
They said they were 'working with Apple on bringing it to the iPhone' which isn't a promise that it would come to the iPhone. They were working on it with Apple at the time. But I'd wager that Apple's increasingly closed, anti-competitive moves (Adobe) made Google think that they'd make similar ones against them (Google's AdMob vs iAd) and decided better than to support a competitor. I doubt we'll see many of Apple's new mobile apps showing up on the iPhone going forward. They'll be on the Android as a competitive advantage and on other open platforms (Blackberry, S60, WebOS, etc) where Google can be assured they'll actually be able to give the app to users, though.
Realistically, that quote "However, Google is working with Apple on bringing it to the iPhone" is just what it says. They were working with Apple to bring it to iPhone. It didn't say it would be coming to iPhone, just that it was being worked on. Obviously, Apple's spoiled-child behavior as of late has made Google question whether it wants to support a platform as closed and anti-competitive as the iPhone is, where Apple has already contractually excluded Adobe in every way they can and, based on Apple's past behavior and new "iAd" abilities, will probably soon exclude Google's AdMob from the platform as well.
Google should pull all development from the iPhone that they aren't contractually obligated to provide already (I'd guess they are obligated to provide Google Maps) and slow down development on the apps they already do provide (Google Maps) so the best features are in the app for their open platform (Android) as well as open platforms that let any developers participate (Blackberry, S60, PalmOS, etc).
From the actual blog post, I'd wager that the issue they're having is building out things that need OS-specific bits for each of the majors OSes. They don't have the resources to do all 3, so they are dropping the OS that has the least profit (the OS of least interest to other hardware and software partners because it has the smallest market share): Linux. Which makes sense. They'll still develop it out and include and test the OS-specific bits for Win and Mac, but either not develop them for Linux (in which case said feature will be disabled or hidden in the Linux build) or develop them and not test them (hence the unsupported build warning). As the source will still be available, anybody is free to build out those Linux-specific bits if it interests them.
None of that requires anything secret or anything close to a violation of the GPL.
While you may say "please step away from your Slashdot reality distortion field" in relation to DRM, Ubisoft's piss-poor DRM implementation has made a lot of people swear off their games on PC. Assassin's Creed 2 much? All the major game sites covered when Ubisoft's DRM server went down and no one could play it. So that shiny Ubisoft game you bought for your PC will only work when your internet connection is up and Ubisoft's DRM servers are reachable... even though you're not playing the game online. And this after the first one was bad ui, bad drm, bad port and had the same issues.
All of this is well outside the Slashdot reality distortion field and starting to clue people in that you don't actually own a DRMed game. You rent it. And you play it with the temporary permission of the publisher... which they can take away at a whim... or can be taken away by a simple network issue.
This used to be much more true when DirectX wasn't artificially limited to the OS version. You just downloaded your new DirectX version and went to town when you bought a new video card.
DirectX 10 became a "Vista exclusive", despite the fact that unofficial ports made it work on Windows XP without much muss or fuss. It was an artificial limitation. So, in order to upgrade from DirectX 9 to DirectX 10, you had to buy a new video card and a new OS. Even some Microsoft games artificially limited detail to make the game seem better on 10 than on 9. Of course, a few clever hackers exposed this as well. DirectX 11 is and update to DirectX 10 and similarly incompatible with Windows XP.
This bs has left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. Couple that with the absolutely absurd Digital Restrictions Management in some PC games and the taste is downright sour. (Related note: Honestly, if you knowingly buy an Ubisoft game at this point, you're an idiot... their games are basically useless because of DRM now.)
That's an entirely different topic than what we are discussing here (whether Oracle is side-stepping the GPL by only making patches available to paying customers). That's why I said presumably and don't feel like taking the time to download the full Solaris and OpenSolaris packages to see what source is where. Considering they have OpenSolaris with all the source available for all bits we'd be worried about up (and anything GPLed in Solaris is also in OpenSolaris), I think they're good. Either way, it doesn't affect the discussion here, which is that Oracle is within their rights to distribute the patches only to paying customers.
Additionally, there is NOTHING requiring Oracle to separate their GPL and non-GPL patch components to support people who aren't paying for support.
They're not sidestepping anything GPL-wise. The OS patches contain some GPL binaries and some proprietary binaries. They are side by side, which means the proprietary binaries are not subject to the GPL. The entire patch package, therefor, can't be redistributed. The GPL bits within the patch can be freely redistributed. As can the source for those bits, which Sun/Oracle is (presumably) making available as they always have to comply with the GPL.
Actually, Android beat Apple to market. The Nook by Barnes and Noble, which is arguably the best tablet on the market is built on Android. And it has real e-ink (nice for extended reading and over a week of battery life) compared to the iPad's LCD (bad for extended reading and under 10 hours battery life), making it a much better ereader.
This is just another demonstration of the fact that Apple is smart (but evil) and publishers (in any medium) are stupid. If publishers had a *clue* about how to properly participate in this whole electronic and online thing, we wouldn't be seeing any of these big battles.
The two options given in the SourceForge.net project settings are:
1. This project does NOT incorporate, access, call upon, or otherwise use encryption of any kind, including, but not limited to, open source algorithms and/or calls to encryption in the operating system or underlying platform.
2. This project DOES incorporate, access, call upon or otherwise use encryption. Posting of open source encryption is controlled under U.S. Export Control Classification Number "ECCN" 5D002 and must be simultaneously reported by email to the U.S. government. You are responsible for submitting this email report to the U.S. government in accordance with procedures described in: http://www.bis.doc.gov/encryption/PubAvailEncSourceCodeNotify.html and Section 740.13(e) of the Export Administration Regulations ("EAR") 15 C.F.R. Parts 730-772.
The 2nd option is the default and what all projects are currently set to.
In order to select the first, you can't be using any kind of encryption at all. Our project, PortableApps.com, isn't really about encryption, it's about taking your favorite software with you on a flash drive wherever you go. But we do bundle a number of open source apps that use encryption including Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Songbird, FileZilla, KeePass, Toucan, KompoZer, 7-Zip, Miranda IM, Pidgin, PuTTY, SeaMonkey, WinSCP, WinWGet, OpenOffice.org, PDFTK Builder, PNotes and PeaZip. That means we need to keep the 2nd option selected and those countries remain blocked.
In reality that means pretty much every project on source forge that is or includes a web browser, ftp client, email client, scp client, im client, archive tool, etc will have to keep the 2nd option selected and remain blocked as well.
If you're doing a PC game, bringing it to the 360 isn't a huge undertaking and vice versa. Development is designed around that. The PS3 is a bit more work, being a very different architecture. And if you're doing a western-style RPG and are mainly US-centric, focusing on the 360 makes a lot more sense. It has nearly double the install base of the PS3 in the US.
The licensing fees for H.264 are well-known and widely published. The current cap is $5,000,000 per year (which Mozilla easily hits considering their userbase). The cap is going up again next year. Previous raises were an additional $750,000 per year, but you never know what it's going to be. There's no contractual limit on how much they raise the cap, only a promise of how much they raise the per-unit fees which doesn't affect Mozilla (they have so many units, they'll always hit the cap).
And what exact advantage does it offer over Ogg? It has the exact same chicken and egg issues (namely that TONS of stuff supports H.264 and *almost nothing* supports Ogg or Dirac.
It's the exact same argument, but with a different codec.
And someone will have to pay for it since shipping H.264 support costs $0.20 per unit. Either that or you have to avoid all countries that support software patents. That means you may to host downloads yourself, too, since all the big players in open source project hosting (SourceForge, Google Code, Ohloh, etc) are US entities.
If Mozilla were bundling H.264 support right now, it would be closed source (so forget about seeing it in Ubuntu by default) and it would cost them $5,000,000 this year. Next year, the fee will be even higher. So, Mozilla would have to allot 6% of their revenue (revenue, not profit) to supporting this one proprietary video codec.
H.264 is only supported by Chrome and Safari (less than 10% of those online). Let's keep it that way and keep the barrier for entrance into the browser market from reaching insane proportions. Otherwise we'll be left with fewer choices in the browser wars since lots of people can't pay $0.20 per unit for a product they give away for free. Mozilla and Opera certainly can't. But for Google and Aple, supporting H.264 in their browsers is free since they already hit the $5,000,000 cap this year (Google due to all the encoding and streaming of it, Apple due to licensing it for iPods/iTunes).
So, it's EASY for Apple and Google to support it since it's free and they already ship closed source products (Safari is closed source even though the underling webkit is open, Chrome is closed source even though the underlying Chromium bits are open). Mozilla would have to pay a ton of cash (and increasing) and add closed source bits to Firefox.
All sites that support H.264 will continue to provide Flash video. They have to. Safari+Chrome (the only HTML5 H.264 supporters) is less than 10% of the online population. So that's not changing.
I don't know any geeks using Safari. It's decent on Mac OS, but it's a loser on Windows. And it's a good chunk of closed source (geeks still prefer open). And Chrome is a privacy nightmare. Geeks don't like that. Chromium and the variants that don't have the privacy issues won't support H.264.
They won't lose anything. Sites that only use the proprietary codec will also support Flash. They *have* to. Chrome + Safari (the only browsers that support it) is less than 10% of online users.
HTML5 video only really had a chance to supplant it if it was open and free. If H.264 is what sites were all going to use, you're just replacing one proprietary thing (Flash) with another.
The problem with H.264 is both its patent status and the licensing cost. The patent means that it can't legally be used in software licensed under the GPL/LGPL 3.0 in countries like the US. So, Mozilla would have to add a closed-source component to Firefox for it to be able to work.
But the other problem is the licensing fee. Firefox ships so many software units that it will hit the enterprise cap for H.264 licensing every year. In 2006, that cap was $3,500,000. In 2007 it went up to $4,250,000. In 2009 it went up to $5,000,000. In 2011, it is going to go up again. So Mozilla will have to pay out $5,000,000 (and climbing) per year, just to support this one video codec in a product that they give away for free. Their revenue in their last fiscal year was $78.6 million.
Is it really worth it to spend 6% of your total yearly revenue on the licensing fee for one video codec?
Apple doesn't care, since they already hit the yearly cap anyway (see: iPod/iTunes) so it's free for them to include it in Safari. I'm not sure if Google does (can't think which apps it would be), but they have the money to do it either way. Opera and Mozilla don't currently have this expense... and they can't afford it. Nor can any other upstart browser since once they hit 200k 'units' per year, they have to start paying $0.20 per download.
Folks like being able to customize their browser. Chrome had been using this as one of its selling points in their online ads. Personas are simpler than themes and can be easily switched in and out. They don't require a reboot to apply. And you can try them out right on the site. So, we're likely to see more work going into personas than themes. You can see that there are about 400 Firefox themes available. And 35,000 personas. So, that's where the work is going.
It's very nice technically. And it'll be useful in specialized scenarios. But it's not going to touch HDMI in terms of installbase. HDMI is the de facto standard and everything already supports it. My cable box, Xbox 360, TV, laptop, desktop and dual monitors are all HDMI. I don't need to go introducing another standard into that to have wires desktop-monitor-monitor instead of desktop-monitor for both (same number of wires, just different configuration) or to save having a wire to the USB hub in my monitor (which my monitors don't have because I'd never use it anyway).
It's still based on selection. When you select the text (which occurs when you finish the click, drag to highlight, release operation)... and Tynt modifies the selection to add their bit and sends back to the server what you selected. Then, when you hit CMD-C, your browser sticks the selected bit in your clipboard and *unselects* the text. Since the selection changed, Tynt gets another ping.
It's not the clipboard, it's what you selected (and then unselected) that's the trigger. Javascript can't get at the clipboard by default.
Slashdot Mirror
They're making the EXACT same mistakes as the music industry. They don't want a universal format. We have one. It's called ePub. They want universal DRM. Which isn't gonna happen.
The music industry tried the same thing. We wound up with multiple different DRMed formats that only worked on specific devices. All were incompatible with each other. Most were overpriced compared to CDs (the elimination of the physical distribution and associated costs should have been factored into digital sales from day one). And if someone did try to make a tool to unlock your music from a device so you could use it on another device you owned, they were sued... and it was made illegal even for fair use with bought-and-paid-for legislation in the US. So, everyone got used to stealing music, since it was the only way to actually get what you want on the device you wanted it and be able to listen to it anywhere.
Now, the Big Publishing is making the exact same mistakes. Insisting on DRM. All of it is on different platforms in different formats. None of it works with anything else. And the pricing is absolutely absurd compared to paperback sales. So, what happens? Everyone is starting to steal books using file sharing, etc. Big Publishing is already losing, they just don't realize it yet. And for all their whining about wanting a universal format and not wanting to make the same mistakes as Big Music, history is already repeating itself.
If you're satisfied with the console, you can be quite satisfied with PC gaming and dialing down the resolution and quality appropriately. Most major Xbox games don't even hit 720p (let alone 1080p) and often play at 30fps, so even though you have that nice 1080p monitor hooked to your PC, dial the resolution down in the game to get the same playability. Remember that every console is using outdated hardware in comparison to a current PC.
You can't really consider taking your book and making it into an app as a viable distribution mechanism. You have no guarantee it will be accepted for one thing (Apple has serious content restrictions in place and the only place you can sell an app is through their app store). And even if it is, Apple has forced authors to edit the content (removing swear words for instance), so it may not be your book anymore. Add to that the cost of developing the app in the first place, and it's only really worth it for large, safe authors that have a solid chance of not hitting a random Apple wall or a smaller publisher who is also a programmer that likes to mess about and won't be crushed when the app is rejected.
They said they were 'working with Apple on bringing it to the iPhone' which isn't a promise that it would come to the iPhone. They were working on it with Apple at the time. But I'd wager that Apple's increasingly closed, anti-competitive moves (Adobe) made Google think that they'd make similar ones against them (Google's AdMob vs iAd) and decided better than to support a competitor. I doubt we'll see many of Apple's new mobile apps showing up on the iPhone going forward. They'll be on the Android as a competitive advantage and on other open platforms (Blackberry, S60, WebOS, etc) where Google can be assured they'll actually be able to give the app to users, though.
Realistically, that quote "However, Google is working with Apple on bringing it to the iPhone" is just what it says. They were working with Apple to bring it to iPhone. It didn't say it would be coming to iPhone, just that it was being worked on. Obviously, Apple's spoiled-child behavior as of late has made Google question whether it wants to support a platform as closed and anti-competitive as the iPhone is, where Apple has already contractually excluded Adobe in every way they can and, based on Apple's past behavior and new "iAd" abilities, will probably soon exclude Google's AdMob from the platform as well.
Google should pull all development from the iPhone that they aren't contractually obligated to provide already (I'd guess they are obligated to provide Google Maps) and slow down development on the apps they already do provide (Google Maps) so the best features are in the app for their open platform (Android) as well as open platforms that let any developers participate (Blackberry, S60, PalmOS, etc).
From the actual blog post, I'd wager that the issue they're having is building out things that need OS-specific bits for each of the majors OSes. They don't have the resources to do all 3, so they are dropping the OS that has the least profit (the OS of least interest to other hardware and software partners because it has the smallest market share): Linux. Which makes sense. They'll still develop it out and include and test the OS-specific bits for Win and Mac, but either not develop them for Linux (in which case said feature will be disabled or hidden in the Linux build) or develop them and not test them (hence the unsupported build warning). As the source will still be available, anybody is free to build out those Linux-specific bits if it interests them.
None of that requires anything secret or anything close to a violation of the GPL.
While you may say "please step away from your Slashdot reality distortion field" in relation to DRM, Ubisoft's piss-poor DRM implementation has made a lot of people swear off their games on PC. Assassin's Creed 2 much? All the major game sites covered when Ubisoft's DRM server went down and no one could play it. So that shiny Ubisoft game you bought for your PC will only work when your internet connection is up and Ubisoft's DRM servers are reachable... even though you're not playing the game online. And this after the first one was bad ui, bad drm, bad port and had the same issues.
All of this is well outside the Slashdot reality distortion field and starting to clue people in that you don't actually own a DRMed game. You rent it. And you play it with the temporary permission of the publisher... which they can take away at a whim... or can be taken away by a simple network issue.
This used to be much more true when DirectX wasn't artificially limited to the OS version. You just downloaded your new DirectX version and went to town when you bought a new video card.
DirectX 10 became a "Vista exclusive", despite the fact that unofficial ports made it work on Windows XP without much muss or fuss. It was an artificial limitation. So, in order to upgrade from DirectX 9 to DirectX 10, you had to buy a new video card and a new OS. Even some Microsoft games artificially limited detail to make the game seem better on 10 than on 9. Of course, a few clever hackers exposed this as well. DirectX 11 is and update to DirectX 10 and similarly incompatible with Windows XP.
This bs has left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. Couple that with the absolutely absurd Digital Restrictions Management in some PC games and the taste is downright sour. (Related note: Honestly, if you knowingly buy an Ubisoft game at this point, you're an idiot... their games are basically useless because of DRM now.)
That's an entirely different topic than what we are discussing here (whether Oracle is side-stepping the GPL by only making patches available to paying customers). That's why I said presumably and don't feel like taking the time to download the full Solaris and OpenSolaris packages to see what source is where. Considering they have OpenSolaris with all the source available for all bits we'd be worried about up (and anything GPLed in Solaris is also in OpenSolaris), I think they're good. Either way, it doesn't affect the discussion here, which is that Oracle is within their rights to distribute the patches only to paying customers.
Additionally, there is NOTHING requiring Oracle to separate their GPL and non-GPL patch components to support people who aren't paying for support.
They're not sidestepping anything GPL-wise. The OS patches contain some GPL binaries and some proprietary binaries. They are side by side, which means the proprietary binaries are not subject to the GPL. The entire patch package, therefor, can't be redistributed. The GPL bits within the patch can be freely redistributed. As can the source for those bits, which Sun/Oracle is (presumably) making available as they always have to comply with the GPL.
So, they are sidestepping nothing.
Actually, Android beat Apple to market. The Nook by Barnes and Noble, which is arguably the best tablet on the market is built on Android. And it has real e-ink (nice for extended reading and over a week of battery life) compared to the iPad's LCD (bad for extended reading and under 10 hours battery life), making it a much better ereader.
This is just another demonstration of the fact that Apple is smart (but evil) and publishers (in any medium) are stupid. If publishers had a *clue* about how to properly participate in this whole electronic and online thing, we wouldn't be seeing any of these big battles.
The two options given in the SourceForge.net project settings are:
1. This project does NOT incorporate, access, call upon, or otherwise use encryption of any kind, including, but not limited to, open source algorithms and/or calls to encryption in the operating system or underlying platform.
2. This project DOES incorporate, access, call upon or otherwise use encryption. Posting of open source encryption is controlled under U.S. Export Control Classification Number "ECCN" 5D002 and must be simultaneously reported by email to the U.S. government. You are responsible for submitting this email report to the U.S. government in accordance with procedures described in: http://www.bis.doc.gov/encryption/PubAvailEncSourceCodeNotify.html and Section 740.13(e) of the Export Administration Regulations ("EAR") 15 C.F.R. Parts 730-772.
The 2nd option is the default and what all projects are currently set to.
In order to select the first, you can't be using any kind of encryption at all. Our project, PortableApps.com, isn't really about encryption, it's about taking your favorite software with you on a flash drive wherever you go. But we do bundle a number of open source apps that use encryption including Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Songbird, FileZilla, KeePass, Toucan, KompoZer, 7-Zip, Miranda IM, Pidgin, PuTTY, SeaMonkey, WinSCP, WinWGet, OpenOffice.org, PDFTK Builder, PNotes and PeaZip. That means we need to keep the 2nd option selected and those countries remain blocked.
In reality that means pretty much every project on source forge that is or includes a web browser, ftp client, email client, scp client, im client, archive tool, etc will have to keep the 2nd option selected and remain blocked as well.
If you're doing a PC game, bringing it to the 360 isn't a huge undertaking and vice versa. Development is designed around that. The PS3 is a bit more work, being a very different architecture. And if you're doing a western-style RPG and are mainly US-centric, focusing on the 360 makes a lot more sense. It has nearly double the install base of the PS3 in the US.
Here's a quote about it from Mike Shaver, VP of Engineering at Mozilla:
http://www.osnews.com/story/22787/Mozilla_Explains_Why_it_Doesn_t_License_h264
The licensing fees for H.264 are well-known and widely published. The current cap is $5,000,000 per year (which Mozilla easily hits considering their userbase). The cap is going up again next year. Previous raises were an additional $750,000 per year, but you never know what it's going to be. There's no contractual limit on how much they raise the cap, only a promise of how much they raise the per-unit fees which doesn't affect Mozilla (they have so many units, they'll always hit the cap).
And what exact advantage does it offer over Ogg? It has the exact same chicken and egg issues (namely that TONS of stuff supports H.264 and *almost nothing* supports Ogg or Dirac.
It's the exact same argument, but with a different codec.
And someone will have to pay for it since shipping H.264 support costs $0.20 per unit. Either that or you have to avoid all countries that support software patents. That means you may to host downloads yourself, too, since all the big players in open source project hosting (SourceForge, Google Code, Ohloh, etc) are US entities.
If Mozilla were bundling H.264 support right now, it would be closed source (so forget about seeing it in Ubuntu by default) and it would cost them $5,000,000 this year. Next year, the fee will be even higher. So, Mozilla would have to allot 6% of their revenue (revenue, not profit) to supporting this one proprietary video codec.
H.264 is only supported by Chrome and Safari (less than 10% of those online). Let's keep it that way and keep the barrier for entrance into the browser market from reaching insane proportions. Otherwise we'll be left with fewer choices in the browser wars since lots of people can't pay $0.20 per unit for a product they give away for free. Mozilla and Opera certainly can't. But for Google and Aple, supporting H.264 in their browsers is free since they already hit the $5,000,000 cap this year (Google due to all the encoding and streaming of it, Apple due to licensing it for iPods/iTunes).
So, it's EASY for Apple and Google to support it since it's free and they already ship closed source products (Safari is closed source even though the underling webkit is open, Chrome is closed source even though the underlying Chromium bits are open). Mozilla would have to pay a ton of cash (and increasing) and add closed source bits to Firefox.
All sites that support H.264 will continue to provide Flash video. They have to. Safari+Chrome (the only HTML5 H.264 supporters) is less than 10% of the online population. So that's not changing.
I don't know any geeks using Safari. It's decent on Mac OS, but it's a loser on Windows. And it's a good chunk of closed source (geeks still prefer open). And Chrome is a privacy nightmare. Geeks don't like that. Chromium and the variants that don't have the privacy issues won't support H.264.
They won't lose anything. Sites that only use the proprietary codec will also support Flash. They *have* to. Chrome + Safari (the only browsers that support it) is less than 10% of online users.
HTML5 video only really had a chance to supplant it if it was open and free. If H.264 is what sites were all going to use, you're just replacing one proprietary thing (Flash) with another.
The problem with H.264 is both its patent status and the licensing cost. The patent means that it can't legally be used in software licensed under the GPL/LGPL 3.0 in countries like the US. So, Mozilla would have to add a closed-source component to Firefox for it to be able to work.
But the other problem is the licensing fee. Firefox ships so many software units that it will hit the enterprise cap for H.264 licensing every year. In 2006, that cap was $3,500,000. In 2007 it went up to $4,250,000. In 2009 it went up to $5,000,000. In 2011, it is going to go up again. So Mozilla will have to pay out $5,000,000 (and climbing) per year, just to support this one video codec in a product that they give away for free. Their revenue in their last fiscal year was $78.6 million.
Is it really worth it to spend 6% of your total yearly revenue on the licensing fee for one video codec?
Apple doesn't care, since they already hit the yearly cap anyway (see: iPod/iTunes) so it's free for them to include it in Safari. I'm not sure if Google does (can't think which apps it would be), but they have the money to do it either way. Opera and Mozilla don't currently have this expense... and they can't afford it. Nor can any other upstart browser since once they hit 200k 'units' per year, they have to start paying $0.20 per download.
Folks like being able to customize their browser. Chrome had been using this as one of its selling points in their online ads. Personas are simpler than themes and can be easily switched in and out. They don't require a reboot to apply. And you can try them out right on the site. So, we're likely to see more work going into personas than themes. You can see that there are about 400 Firefox themes available. And 35,000 personas. So, that's where the work is going.
The portable version of Firefox 3.6 from PortableApps.com was just released in 15 languages, too:
http://portableapps.com/news/2010-01-21_-_firefox_portable_3.6
It's very nice technically. And it'll be useful in specialized scenarios. But it's not going to touch HDMI in terms of installbase. HDMI is the de facto standard and everything already supports it. My cable box, Xbox 360, TV, laptop, desktop and dual monitors are all HDMI. I don't need to go introducing another standard into that to have wires desktop-monitor-monitor instead of desktop-monitor for both (same number of wires, just different configuration) or to save having a wire to the USB hub in my monitor (which my monitors don't have because I'd never use it anyway).
It's still based on selection. When you select the text (which occurs when you finish the click, drag to highlight, release operation)... and Tynt modifies the selection to add their bit and sends back to the server what you selected. Then, when you hit CMD-C, your browser sticks the selected bit in your clipboard and *unselects* the text. Since the selection changed, Tynt gets another ping.
It's not the clipboard, it's what you selected (and then unselected) that's the trigger. Javascript can't get at the clipboard by default.