Mozilla's Original Sin
jwz.org
jwz.org
Then again, if Firefox had refused to implement DRM, I'd probably have switched to Chrome by now, so there's that.
I'm really not a fan of DRM, but I don't think it's fair to blame Firefox for doing what probably a huge part of their user base demands, especially given their pretty dire usage stats. Sometimes, there's wisdom in knowing which battle to pick.
I think if that click was right at netflix and a ff restart away from working, then maybe yes. But most people would just switch browsers, before looking for that patch.
I do get the ideological objection to not wanting to support DRM, although I don't think that's the battle that Mozilla should pick right now. But extra clicks probably wouldn't make anybody who does happy, while inconveniencing most other users.
And what Mozilla should do right now is rather reemploy the servo team(and more), to actually build a innovative browser again.
But I wouldn't choose DRM as the hill to die on. There's probably better examples of things Mozilla did wrong.
> Some will tell you that Mozilla's worst decision was to accept funding from Google, and that may have been the first domino, but I hold that implementing DRM is what doomed them, as it led to their culture of capitulation. It demonstrated that their decisions were the decisions of a company shipping products, not those of a non-profit devoted to preserving the open web.
It's a pretty clever ribbing, 10 for 10. ;)
I've been using it for years and only had to add about 20 exceptions, like:
----
target: imgur.com
origin: -
action: replace
replacement: https://imgur.com/
----
target: amd.com
origin: -
action: target
----
target: google(\w+)?.com$
origin: google.com
action: prune
----
What would have happened if mozilla fought (and won) this DRM battle?
At best, the same content at its lower quality levels would have been playable in the browser (i.e. non in a non DRM manner), but the DRM would have still existed at the higher levels for the "native" apps to use.
At worst, it wouldn't have been playable at all in the browser.
And perhaps somewhat in the middle, it would have been playable in the browser, but at a lower quality level than what is available now.
I'm not sure how this is fundamentally different than allowing patent encumbered codecs in (i.e. either things wont work in browser, or they will work worse in browser). One might argue that its not, but that undermines then the concept of "original sin" as the patent encumbered codecs occurred first.
I also don't get the argument that someone would have "hacked" in support being an argument for not including it. If someone could hack in support, and that version would be come the version people use (instead of the ideologically pure version), what exactly does one's ideological purity get? "No one" (a bit of hyperbole) is using that version.
In my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:
1. Building THE reference implementation web browser, and
2. Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
3. There is no 3.A reference implementation web browser would not have had popup blocking back in the Bad Old Days of IE6 dominance, and would probably never have become relevant enough to impact web standards in the 21st century.
> 2. Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
They tried (and still do try) to do exactly this, but you need market share for it to matter; even if Mozilla outright controlled the standards committees, Google would simply implement whatever they want and developers would use it due to the browser monoculture.
> 3. There is no 3.
Perhaps in the author's next attempt he could eliminate 1 and 2 as well.
And you don't make money selling a browser.
they "sold" their browser, just not to end-users. they sold it to google via "royalties" for google to use as a shield against anti-trust.
I think (1) would more properly be W3C's job, although these days, they probably wouldn't do a good job either (although they did some in the past, and Line Mode Browser has some good features (including a few that modern browsers usually lack), but unfortunately it doesn't work very well).
In either case, it's insultingly immature to have that picture be what the link goes to.
Perhaps @dang can give the author what he desires and block the domain from HN submissions.
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/y-combinator-ceo-wishes-dea...
Copy paste the link and navigate to it directly to bypass that.
(Immature? Maybe. It harkens back to an era where people would do that sort of thing. And hey, it's a better way to deal with this site functioning as a temporary DDOS attack against other people's site infrastructure than failing to serve everybody's requests. And, well, jwz has been around long enough to have earned his opinion of the technorati who frequent the site, self included ;) ).
On-paper prophylactics being the best prophylactics, of course.