Mozilla grudgingly adopts H.264 | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla grudgingly adopts H.264

theinquirer.net

28 pointsdevy19 comments

Baker said that the firm resisted the move because it wants to build products that people 'love', and added that using standards that are encumbered by patents does not support this.

This seems to be a perfect representation of what's wrong with Mozilla's stance regarding the whole video codec thing (and perhaps, in general). They conflate "what we think is good for the industry" (i.e. patent-free video dominating) with "what users love", and don't seem to realize that "what users love" is software that works. If someone using Firefox gets a substandard video experience to someone using any other browser (e.g. flash player instead of native video), that's not something they love. They don't know why this happens, all they know is Firefox gives them crappy video and Chrome gives them nice video.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that being against patent-encumbered video is a bad thing. I'm just saying their rationalization for this is bad.

It's the difference between what you love now and what you'll love in six months when a lawyer somewhere says "Money".

I think you're missing the obvious, frequently mentioned point, that users don't 'love' paying money for a free web browser. Patent encumbered video isn't free.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm pretty positive as long as Firefox is free to users Mozilla won't have to pay for the H.264 license. So in that sense, it _is_ free...

The point is moot. They'll never have to pay money at all since they're only supporting this by interfacing with platform codecs. If they were shipping an H.264 decoder themselves it would be a different matter entirely.

Patent encumbered video isn't free.

I understand your sentiment but I've been using H.264 in Chrome and Safari (pretty much every browser, if I include video wrapped in a Flash Player) without paying a dime. From a practical perspective, to most users H.264 usage is free.

This is also a perfect misquote. Read Mitchell's post http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/03/18/video-user-experie...

Thanks for the link. From that post:

For the past few years we have focused our codec efforts on the latter part of this sentence. We’ve declined to adopt a technology that improves user experience in the hopes this will bring greater user sovereignty.

I'm glad to see that Mitchell Baker recognizes that Mozilla's stance towards video codecs goes against user experience.

>I'm glad to see that Mitchell Baker recognizes that Mozilla's stance towards video codecs goes against user experience.

s/goes/went/

They have, at least, recognized that they were fighting a losing battle and changed their policy.

I don't believe they've changed their policy because they suddenly believe that user experience is better. It seems they've changed they're policy because they recognize that what they're currently doing is having no effect. Basically, they're giving up.

"Baker said that the firm resisted the move because it wants to build products that people 'love', and added that using standards that are encumbered by patents does not support this."

That's not at all what Mitchell said. She's said pretty much the opposite, that resisting this standard which is patent encumbered does not help us build products people love.

You really should read the actual posts by Mitchell and Brendan if you think that's "what's wrong with Mozilla" because I'm pretty sure Mozilla's doing the opposite of what you seem to think it's doing.

I did read the post... when you linked it an hour prior to this comment. In any case, this is the first time I have ever seen Mozilla seem to understand this issue. Back when it first arose, they were championing user rights, while at the same time producing a markedly worse user experience, and they did not acknowledge this problem. What's worse, it was pointed out time and time again that Mozilla, in their rush to throw their weight behind "open" technologies, continued to support Flash (a distinctly closed technology) and, in fact, were forcing people to use Flash as a workaround for Mozilla's lack of support for open standards.

Wow ... I really wonder whether this is going to backfire in a couple of years when H.264 becomes ubiquitous and patent holders start charging

MPEG LA’s AVC License Will Not Charge Royalties for Internet Video that is Free to End Users through Life of License http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachme... [pdf]

They'll probably charge for h.265. This is why at least I want WebM to remain as an alternative and continue to be supported by browsers. It would at least keep MPEG-LA from ever charging for their codecs.

Well, since h.264 is in the good enough and has been built into a lot of hardware, I don't think we have much to worry about.

h.264 is already ubiquitous and has been for at least a few years.

The MPEG-LA previously stated that they will not charge royalties at least through 2015 and relatively recently extended that right indefinitely[1]. Obviously we don't know their real intentions, but they have not given me any reason to distrust them so I take them at their word for now.

[1] http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/26/mpeg-la-makes-h-264-video...

You must be new here.

What's the worst case scenario if they suddenly start charging royalties to everyone next year?

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