Firefox can keep completely out if it's just another plugin. Not even a shadow of legal doubt and no extra manpower to maintain a codec back end that they can't even tell users to install.
It's also sending a strong signal to web developers that the push for a free-for-all web infrastructure is over. That is not how Firefox gained it's market share...
I can only assume you were not around before IE7 or something like that, because that's how long it took to get proper PNG support (in the form of the alpha channel you tout as a killer feature) all major browsers. It was anything but easy.
Oh, and by the way, it's royalty free so you won't get hit by those fees that everyone's starting to have to pay for producing or reading GIFs.
Oh, the MPEG LA is revising their licensing terms as we speak, I don't expect them to drop the price do you? Also, there was never a problem reading GIFs to my knowledge.
That is exactly the problem, an external package that you can't transparently install due to patent concerns is exactly the opposite of "just works".
Why are they seemingly so unprepared for this?
Just because they don't do exactly what you want them to do, doesn't mean they are unprepared. Trying to standardize HTML5 on Theora was step one, and if nothing else brought attention to the issue. Implementing it ASAP was step too, it gives web developers, power users and alike the ability to play with it.
Now it's time for the trenches of the mindshare battle, they don't need to win youtube, just enough people that Theora can't be conveniently ignored. Do you think it's because of Opera's spoofing that there are hardly any significant IE only sites left on the public internet?
It worked with PNG, even if it took a while. And it worked with Vorbis to a limited extent (there is another option when you need it, there is reasonable hardware support and the lives of game and other developers have been made easier), but that battle wasn't about the web before HTML5 and Firefox 3.5.
Yes, it's a slow process, but with h.264 there is are 15 years or so where it can make a difference, this was not the case with PNG as the patent covering GIF creation expired or MP3, which had a bigger head start in a different marketplace.
The proper response, though, is not to put up some sort of error message, but to use an external solution such as mplayer, ffplay, vlc, gstreamer, or whatever, and make it "someone else's problem".
The "someone else" will be the user, if they don't have the framework of choice set up, that's the problem. Youtube (or any other major site with a significant portion of IE hits) is not about to drop flash support any time soon. On Windows this is handled transparently for Firefox, so no breakage occurs. On Linux the Gnash, swfdec and Adobe (with the help distro maintainers) will make it work one way or another with minimal headache for Firefox developers. Yes, technically part of that runs into the same old patent problems, but they are the same as the ones in your suggestion.
The upside on the other hand is that Firefox is playing it by the book and can work on support for truly free solutions.
Make it a non-USA release, similar to PGP/PGPi in the past.
Not with being incorporated in the US. They'd have to at least double overhead to set up a separate company/organization to distribute this version, since explicitly doing it under the US entity would be considered exporting a product, and letting the community do it would cut of the revenue from Google and confuse less tech savvy users.
Option #2 is recommended, as a pragmatic decision.
I elaborated on this above.
Basically I consider that the pragmatic and the idealistic approach leads down the same road in this case, even if it doesn't seem to at first glance (as is often the case in FLOSS). Since Chrome also supports Theora and support in Opera is on the way (that covers all major, cross platform browsers as well as all Windows browsers with video tag support), the strategy is basically the same as in the "take back the web" days, convince the people who haven't/are not likely to invest in h.264 to take advantage of the feature (with fall backs where appropriate) and see if Microsoft's and Apple's hands can be forced.
This is not idea, but it's practical and strategic.
Practical? What are you going to do, put a yellow bar on top when people visit a site with h.264 video that says: "Sorry, due to patent restrictions we can't play this video, we would tell you how to work around this issue, but it might expose us to lawsuits, happy hunting"? You can't have a polished user experience without transparent handling here, and you can't have transparent handling without exposing yourself (and Firefox isn't small enough to fly under the radar).
Any sort of back room deals with MPEG LA would basically remove one option from the triple license, thus alienating a huge chunk of the tech savvy base that made the browser into what it is. If it was me I'd take the chances by being marginalized due to lack of codec support instead of being marginalized due to brain drain to webkit and possible replacement as the default browser in major Linux distributions. Brainshare matters, especially with Chrome up and coming.
You might have a point if google had been subscription service. However I don't consider things that go from a paid service to free to be a good example as it changes the dynamic completely.
In short, I'm wondering if there is a service that permanently lowered it's rates after introducing ads.
Has it actually ever worked that way when ads get introduced to a previously ad free service? It sure seems to gravitate to 'free money' instead of 'pass along the savings'.
I was commenting on the general attitude of "just cross license". It may 'work' between big companies, but at that point it's just a way to keep others out of the market.
Apple has an 8th of their market cap in cash and then enough to cover their costs if they spend it? I don't think even Apple fanboys can overspend that much.
or do you think Qualcomm who makes the iphones GSM chipset doesn't pay nokia?
It really depends on the terms Qualcomm has with Nokia to make them, doesn't it? They might have an arrangement where paying license fees for parts is the responsibility of the end user device manufacturer. Pure speculation obviously... just like yours.
And Nokia said "give us multi touch for essentially free or we will make it very difficult for you to operate a cellphone because we control the patents on talking to celltowers"
It's not "essentially free" when they get something very valuable for it. Now if Nokia or Apple was paying hard cash for the others patents, but then gave a license for theirs then would the other party have something for free. In the scope of the existing patent system Nokia isn't asking for anything for free.
And this is why the patent system is broken, big companies can force the 'small innovator' (the classical emotional case for patents) to cross license (possibly under strict terms imposed on the smaller party. Your advantage is gone, and while you may have access to a big pool of patents now, you can't compete meaningfully as your first mover advantage is gone.
And I'm saying that they were created without a computer. Just because something works (for some people) is not a good reason to stop looking for better tools (for the rest).
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Firefox can keep completely out if it's just another plugin. Not even a shadow of legal doubt and no extra manpower to maintain a codec back end that they can't even tell users to install.
It's also sending a strong signal to web developers that the push for a free-for-all web infrastructure is over. That is not how Firefox gained it's market share...
Only creation of GIF's was covered by the patent.
How do you stream Netflix to it?
I can only assume you were not around before IE7 or something like that, because that's how long it took to get proper PNG support (in the form of the alpha channel you tout as a killer feature) all major browsers. It was anything but easy.
Oh, the MPEG LA is revising their licensing terms as we speak, I don't expect them to drop the price do you? Also, there was never a problem reading GIFs to my knowledge.
That is exactly the problem, an external package that you can't transparently install due to patent concerns is exactly the opposite of "just works".
Just because they don't do exactly what you want them to do, doesn't mean they are unprepared. Trying to standardize HTML5 on Theora was step one, and if nothing else brought attention to the issue. Implementing it ASAP was step too, it gives web developers, power users and alike the ability to play with it.
Now it's time for the trenches of the mindshare battle, they don't need to win youtube, just enough people that Theora can't be conveniently ignored. Do you think it's because of Opera's spoofing that there are hardly any significant IE only sites left on the public internet?
GPLv2 is a problem as well if it ever comes down to it, see section 7.
It worked with PNG, even if it took a while. And it worked with Vorbis to a limited extent (there is another option when you need it, there is reasonable hardware support and the lives of game and other developers have been made easier), but that battle wasn't about the web before HTML5 and Firefox 3.5.
Yes, it's a slow process, but with h.264 there is are 15 years or so where it can make a difference, this was not the case with PNG as the patent covering GIF creation expired or MP3, which had a bigger head start in a different marketplace.
The "someone else" will be the user, if they don't have the framework of choice set up, that's the problem. Youtube (or any other major site with a significant portion of IE hits) is not about to drop flash support any time soon. On Windows this is handled transparently for Firefox, so no breakage occurs. On Linux the Gnash, swfdec and Adobe (with the help distro maintainers) will make it work one way or another with minimal headache for Firefox developers. Yes, technically part of that runs into the same old patent problems, but they are the same as the ones in your suggestion.
The upside on the other hand is that Firefox is playing it by the book and can work on support for truly free solutions.
Not with being incorporated in the US. They'd have to at least double overhead to set up a separate company/organization to distribute this version, since explicitly doing it under the US entity would be considered exporting a product, and letting the community do it would cut of the revenue from Google and confuse less tech savvy users.
I elaborated on this above.
Basically I consider that the pragmatic and the idealistic approach leads down the same road in this case, even if it doesn't seem to at first glance (as is often the case in FLOSS). Since Chrome also supports Theora and support in Opera is on the way (that covers all major, cross platform browsers as well as all Windows browsers with video tag support), the strategy is basically the same as in the "take back the web" days, convince the people who haven't/are not likely to invest in h.264 to take advantage of the feature (with fall backs where appropriate) and see if Microsoft's and Apple's hands can be forced.
Practical? What are you going to do, put a yellow bar on top when people visit a site with h.264 video that says: "Sorry, due to patent restrictions we can't play this video, we would tell you how to work around this issue, but it might expose us to lawsuits, happy hunting"? You can't have a polished user experience without transparent handling here, and you can't have transparent handling without exposing yourself (and Firefox isn't small enough to fly under the radar).
Any sort of back room deals with MPEG LA would basically remove one option from the triple license, thus alienating a huge chunk of the tech savvy base that made the browser into what it is. If it was me I'd take the chances by being marginalized due to lack of codec support instead of being marginalized due to brain drain to webkit and possible replacement as the default browser in major Linux distributions. Brainshare matters, especially with Chrome up and coming.
Easy to speak when it's not your ass on the line for patent infringement.
Who moded this interesting? Pidgin most certainly does video, I've used it, it works. Try it for yourself if you don't believe.
You might have a point if google had been subscription service. However I don't consider things that go from a paid service to free to be a good example as it changes the dynamic completely.
In short, I'm wondering if there is a service that permanently lowered it's rates after introducing ads.
Has it actually ever worked that way when ads get introduced to a previously ad free service? It sure seems to gravitate to 'free money' instead of 'pass along the savings'.
If you want to run MS DOS apps use dosemu or dosbox. In fact do this in 32bit Windows as well...
You might dislike the workflow of Ufraw, but there is no question about it being usable.
I was commenting on the general attitude of "just cross license". It may 'work' between big companies, but at that point it's just a way to keep others out of the market.
Apple has an 8th of their market cap in cash and then enough to cover their costs if they spend it? I don't think even Apple fanboys can overspend that much.
It really depends on the terms Qualcomm has with Nokia to make them, doesn't it? They might have an arrangement where paying license fees for parts is the responsibility of the end user device manufacturer. Pure speculation obviously... just like yours.
It's not "essentially free" when they get something very valuable for it. Now if Nokia or Apple was paying hard cash for the others patents, but then gave a license for theirs then would the other party have something for free. In the scope of the existing patent system Nokia isn't asking for anything for free.
And this is why the patent system is broken, big companies can force the 'small innovator' (the classical emotional case for patents) to cross license (possibly under strict terms imposed on the smaller party. Your advantage is gone, and while you may have access to a big pool of patents now, you can't compete meaningfully as your first mover advantage is gone.
No reason to use scare quotes on derivative works. They are.
False, this is a case of saying that Indian elephants are clearly the only kind on earth because we haven't found any others yet.
And I'm saying that they were created without a computer. Just because something works (for some people) is not a good reason to stop looking for better tools (for the rest).