Comments on: Dear Mozilla, Please Don’t Kill HTML5 Video!

By: Car DVD Players

Car DVD Players — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:21:00 +0000

In my eyes, Mozilla ARE the cool guys, and if they go to ANOTHER party, I’ll follow them there. I’ll rather be a little less cool in the eyes of strangers then to accept terms that can change at any time.

By: Natanael L

Natanael L — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:14:33 +0000

The last patent covering GIF expired in 2006.

By: Natanael L

Natanael L — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:13:29 +0000

The reason for we didn't get screwed was because the submarine attack failed, ok? What if it wouldn't have failed?

By: Natanael L

Natanael L — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:10:24 +0000

They have chosen to support video-capable devices. Not H264, they don't care about the technology.
Same thing with iPhone, unfortunately, it's the only thing that could provide what a lot of people wanted in a phone. Now the only thing that's unique about it is the hype. And the hype seems to be enough for it to stay big, at least for now and a while into the feature.

By: Natanael L

Natanael L — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:06:09 +0000

Totally free, yes.

By: Natanael L

Natanael L — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:59:27 +0000

"At the codec level, the quality and low bandwidth of H.264 is exponentially better than Ogg, not just a little better. Google did a study of moving YouTube to Ogg and found that today's Internet does not have enough bandwidth for it, even if YouTube were the one and only Web site."

I want to see numbers. As far as I can tell, that is all lies. Theora beats H264 in all the low-bandwidth tests that I have seen.

"The discussion of HTML5 video markup standards started in 2005 or so and ended in 2008 or so. The fact that we are talking about both of these settled issues right now is totally Mozilla's fault. "

No, it's Apple's fault for refusing to touch Theora. If they would have accepted it, then we would have had a free codec to use everywhere. Even MS would probably have accepted it then. Anyway, WebM is out and free now. Let's hope it can do the job.

By: Natanael L

Natanael L — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:56:03 +0000

If they don't pay about $5 million/year, they can be sued by MPEG LA for that.
And what OS does it play H264 on/what extra software do you have? It might just be using something like ffmpeg or gstreamer to do it.

By: Natanael L

Natanael L — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:52:34 +0000

In my eyes, Mozilla ARE the cool guys, and if they go to ANOTHER party, I'll follow them there. I'll rather be a little less cool in the eyes of strangers then to accept terms that can change at any time.

By: Natanael L

Natanael L — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:49:39 +0000

This actually sounds like trolling in my ears.

The license violate the spirit of free software. The license actually cost money (what I've heard, 50 SEK or ~$5 per user) that the end user will have to pay. Even though it may seem little, it adds up when Mozilla would add it. They would have to pay $5 000 000 (actual number, this is confirmed) per year to distribute Firefox with it.

And here's the biggest catch: They wouldn't be able to ship the code with the codec (just like with Chrome and Chromium), and whoever else that want to distribute Firefox with the codec would have to pay.

Too bad for the developers. But who cares, I guess they don't need any freedom, right? Isn't that what you said? They'll just have to pay up if if they want to help Firefox with adding cool features to the video playback functionality, unpaid too. That's what you wanted, right?

Everybody has to pay at some point. And depending on what they do, they might end up having to pay thousands of dollars some day in the future. You should know that promises are not legally binding.

Who cares about "how likely" it is that MPEG LA will sue people. People have thought all kinds of things were unlikely, and yet they got sued. Just think of GIF.
Remember that the the reason for it being implemented today is that the GIF submarine patent attack failed (they didn't get much money, probably nothing) and that the patents also has expired, and that some people still use it for animations.

I hope that WebM really can replace h264 soon.

By: Gerv

Gerv — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 03:33:55 +0000

Any further comments now WebM has arrived? Do you still think Mozilla should have given in and supported H.264?

Gerv