OS X and Windows have licensed encoders, right? Is it possible for Firefox and others to use those on OS X and Windows and use a less-than-legal decoder on Linux as is, AFAIK, done for MP3s and DVDs?
The GIF fiasco illustrated very visibly what cans of worms can be opened when propriatary, patented technologies undermine open standards.
I tend to agree with the author that it's more of a pr coup then anything else.
The first time there is an exploit in system-provided video decoder (any decoder, not just H.264), you can be sure, who will get blamed for that - the browser, of course. So any browser maker wants to make sure, that they can update anything, that is being touched by web.
In case of Apple and Microsoft, they both can update the system provided H.264 decoder. In case of Opera, Mozilla and Google, they can not. This is one of reasons, why all three browsers bundle their own decoders (the another one is multi-platform consistency).
Do you think so little of the ability of the Mozilla team to communicate on the details on a matter of platform security?
When programming anything, you have to decide what components you're going to depend on, and what you're going to write and maintain yourself. On a codec, or C library, or whatever.
And if there are issues with the foundation, then applications will have issues. Other applications will have issues, too.
And if you're rolling your own code for common tasks, there will still be issues. You'll all of them, too. And you'll have a much larger project.
Considering he never said that... no?
> Do you think so little of the ability of the Mozilla team to communicate on the details on a matter of platform security?
Pointless, that'll still get them blamed.
> And if you're rolling your own code for common tasks, there will still be issues. You'll all of them, too. And you'll have a much larger project.
You have a larger project but you control all the variables, or as many as you can anyway. And you can handle everything on your schedule, you don't have to depend on a third party which may or may not play ball with you (and may have absolutely no interest in playing ball).
How are they doing now with Flash? Any record of users complaining with Firefox for a Flash bug?
Uh yes? Users complain about the browser when Flash crashes it, why do you think Firefox finally moved Flash to an external process, following the lead of Chrome and Safari (and MSIE?). Sure Flash having no 64b support plays a role, but it's not like most users realize it when Flash is involved in making their browser burst in flames or crawl to a halt.
Often you hear of some security flaw in this or that program that requires Microsoft or Apple to patch the OS. When those happen, are people demanding a fix from Microsoft/Apple or Mozilla?
But suddenly now people complain because a piece of software doesn't have control of their pieces...
How are these two views consistent?
(incidentally: I like the Linux's way, and try to replicate it as possible with Macport).
Also, you need to remember that GNU/Linux projects do have a certain amount of control over upstream, seeing as the source is publicly available and can be forked/modified. On the other hand, if Firefox relied on proprietary software, they would be completely at the mercy of decisions made upstream.
Is this really the case? Aren't there security flaws in platform code all the time that affect browsers along with other apps on the platform? Are those blamed on a specific browser? If both Firefox and Safari use Mac OS X's built-in h.264 and there's a hole in it, is there going to be significant widespread outrage against Firefox?
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Mozilla-Flaw-Lets-Links-Ru...
>Current versions of Mozilla and Firefox pass unknown protocol handlers to the operating system shell to handle. In this case, the location passed to the shell is a program name that the shell executes.
>Internet Explorer is reported as being less vulnerable. When the user clicks on the link, it opens an "open/save" dialog box in which the user is allowed either to run the program, save it to disk or cancel. Mozilla and Firefox simply run the program without any further user action.
For platforms that haven't paid the license, leave a plug-in way to do it and let others fill it just like they are letting Adobe do now.
Firefox only has to worry about niche, tech-forward sites that feel they can disregard all pre HTML5 browsers and also actively choose to ignore Firefox (and Opera) as well by not providing a WebM fallback video. No ordinary business can afford to simply refuse to deliver a Flash video to 1/3rd of their audience when they've already built it and are serving it to another 1/3rd on older version of IE. (This obviously occurring at some future time when the HTML5 video delivery is preferred over Flash for any platform other than the Apple ones that don't have Flash, otherwise the Flash would be going out to 99% of browsers anyway).
There's not much downside for Firefox except pissing off people who really passionately hate Flash, but are quite happy with H.264's patent situation. I'm thinking the crossover is pretty small on those two populations and probably shrinking greatly now that Apple has let Adobe use their hardware acceleration API for H.264 decode, certainly not big enough to derail a browser used by tens of millions of ordinary people.
They originally were going to only use H.264, and only provide IE9 on operating systems where they themselves had provided the H.264 codec (Vista & 7).
They've since committed to supporting a user install of WebM but I've seen no technical details of how this will pan out e.g. what if you install more than one WebM codec from different sources? They have been clear that no other codecs (e.g. DivX, WMV, Dirac, Theora) will be picked up regardless of built in support or user installation.
As you rightly note Mozilla, particularly on XP which makes up about 60% of their user base, would be relying on god knows what kinds of codec packs that users have acquired over time, a known malware vector and so bundle their own codecs.