Firefox and Codecs: "Face of Mozilla" at Will of Community
Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Foundation cofounder and present at the open source meeting in Munich sponsored by the foundation and OpenOffice.org, recommitted the open course the Firefox browser was taking with video codecs, but still wishes for more user feedback.
She claims to be no "purist" when it comes to the divisiveness of open and close software, in her talk at the meeting in Munich. Nevertheless, she asserted that it was of strategic importance to admit that patent-bound video codecs "do not just disappear once installed."
So far the Firefox browser has been free from the proprietary and cost-based H.264 solution that YouTube recently rolled out, well aware that use was limited to the Chrome, Safari and ChromeFrame-on-Internet-Explorer browsers. Longtime Mozilla developer and ex-IBM researcher Robert O'Callahan set up an FAQ in his blog about why Firefox is not supporting the codec.
Mitchell Baker, cofounder of the Mozilla Foundation, puts the community in the foreground when it comes to Firefox's future.
When a participant of the open source meeting posed the question to Baker whether Firefox would support the HD codec, she at first responded with a defiant shake of the head, then shrugged her shoulders. Apparently, she said, doing so would damage some of the principles behind free software, not to speak of the millions of dollars of licensing fees. However, she became increasingly interested in what the common user has to say about it.
Baker's whole purpose for being at the open source meeting was to comment on the structure of the Mozilla community and particulars of the project. Thus here statements were clearly directed to the consumer, that is, to users. It came to the point, when questioned at the edges of the meeting about whether the foundation provides any commercial support for enterprises, that she had to say, "regretfully, but definitely no." The user and developer community will decide what the browser should support, she asserted. "We don't want to lose the sympathy and support of the community; that would be fatal for Mozilla," she explained.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.