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Google Chrome's H.264 support not true "free" software

ianweller.org

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Re: Google Chrome's H.264 support not true "free" software

#41

Post by DarkShikari »

blasdel wrote: post #20
mortenjorck wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a relatively simple solution to this that another heavy hitter in the FOSS world has been using for years: Prompt for a "restricted package" install when the user first encounters an h.264 video, similar to how Ubuntu deals with non-FOSS drivers, plugins, and codecs. It's the best of both worlds; you stay free and you get to be compatible.

Mozilla links directly with liboggplay and actively avoids abstracting it in any way. It can't handle any non-ogm container formats, and ogm was intentionally designed not to handle any other codecs. They're just assholes. If software patents are repealed in the US they'll mourn the loss of the mainstay excuse with which they force earnest activist wankery on their users. If patents were the real obstacle they'd dist…

This is pretty much accurate.

There are plenty of other containers, audio formats, and video formats that are believed to be mostly patent-free; the same status as Theora. Firefox won't support any of them. Not Dirac the video format, not Matroska the container format, not FLAC the audio format, and so forth. Despite the fact that, for example, Matroska is far better-designed, more capable, and more popular than Ogg.

Mozilla could care less about patents: all they want is to promote their pet solutions at the expense of everyone else.

Re: Google Chrome's H.264 support not true "free" software

#43

Post by DarkShikari »

mieses wrote: post #39

The number of comments trashing the FOSS position towards video codecs is strange given that it's equally popular to trash the proprietary flash player. Maybe this thread is a statistical anomaly or people are just inconsistent.

What "FOSS position"?

The vast majority of people I know in FOSS, both users and developers, could care less about patents. The apparent "FOSS position" comes from a vocal minority, not the majority of FOSS users and developers.

Re: Google Chrome's H.264 support not true "free" software

#45

Post by Sanguinez »

DarkShikari wrote: post #36
wmf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's going to pay the licensing fees? If you fork, you probably don't get access to the Google money spigot.

VLC is one of the most popular open source programs in the world. Over 100 million copies have been downloaded since the 1.0 release, with an all time download count of nearly 400 million. They support not only H.264--which has a relatively reasonable, low-cost licensing system--but many formats whose licensing models are absurdly overpriced and unreasonable (e.g. MP3). And furthermore, VLC not only supports open sta…

VLC's faq should give you some answer :

Regarding Patentable Inventions, the second paragraph of article 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) states:

    The following (..) shall not be regarded as [patentable] inventions: scientific theories and mathematical methods; (...) programs for computers (...).
The VideoLAN project only provides software, i.e. "programs for computers". Those are outside the scope of patentability. Hence there is not need to obtain any patent licenses for VideoLAN software within the European Union. In other venues, please check any applicable law.

Please note however that the combination of software with hardware may yield something patentable. As such, if you do make a hardware product with VideoLAN software, you may conceivably need to obtain patent licenses for the hardware parts.

Re: Google Chrome's H.264 support not true "free" software

#46

Post by blasdel »

novas0x2a wrote: post #34
blasdel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patches are not welcome. Mozilla is not going to back down on this. Their implementation is designed to make it extremely difficult to swap in other codecs from a plugin or straightforward patchset. You'd have to fully fork at least Gecko and XULRunner, and extend Firefox. Due to their strong Trademark policies, your fork couldn't use their names or logos (see also: Iceweasel).

You're right on the former, I was under the impression that it was an economy-of-effort thing rather than an ideological thing. However, I'm not sure I agree that it would be as hard as you think. The mime types are registered here[1] and the impls are here[2]. Each media type is implemented as a state machine that could wrap ffmpeg. That's where I would start, I suspect. EDIT: Looks like someone's already blazing th…

Scroll down a bit, the only reason it's alive in bugzilla is because it's intended solely for use in Fennec, the current attempt at "Mobile Mozilla": https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=422540#c105

Re: Google Chrome's H.264 support not true "free" software

#48

Post by blasdel »

pavlov wrote: post #38
blasdel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla links directly with liboggplay and actively avoids abstracting it in any way. It can't handle any non-ogm container formats, and ogm was intentionally designed not to handle any other codecs. They're just assholes. If software patents are repealed in the US they'll mourn the loss of the mainstay excuse with which they force earnest activist wankery on their users. If patents were the real obstacle they'd dist…

The "ogm" file format is an old, unsupported, deprecated variant of the Ogg container. Do you mean "ogv"? Sorry, this may seem like nit-picking, but such a fundamental mistake makes it harder to take your strong claims about Mozilla's design and intentions at face value.

I intentionally used it to avoid a similar riposte if I had said 'ogg', an even older and shittier container. I didn't know they had implemented a new one, but from what I can tell they took special care to recapitulate all the mistakes of the last one.

Re: Google Chrome's H.264 support not true "free" software

#49

Post by zokier »

wmf wrote: post #16
btucker wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I was wondering. If this is true that what we're talking about is linking against proprietary libraries that already exist on the user's machine, then I don't understand the argument against it. By the article's logic they should pull the plug on firefox for windows & mac since they are more "non-free" than h.264.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2009/06/directsh... Firefox won't use system codecs because they might be insecure, they might be buggy, and Mozilla wants to encourage Web authors to use Theora.

So using Flash/WMP/QT -plugin to playback video via / -tags is OK but using native APIs to play -tags is insecure and buggy. Riiight.

Re: Google Chrome's H.264 support not true "free" software

#50

Post by blasdel »

mieses wrote: post #39

The number of comments trashing the FOSS position towards video codecs is strange given that it's equally popular to trash the proprietary flash player. Maybe this thread is a statistical anomaly or people are just inconsistent.

The exact same people are trashing both, and it is in no way inconsistent.

Mozilla's obstinate asshattery around is the biggest present obstacle to getting rid of Flash Video. It's entirely possible that the next IE will ship with full support, and then Mozilla will be the very last obstacle.

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