On 2014-05-15 17:20, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
On 5/15/14, 6:01 AM, Jim wrote:
Mozilla have supported
the W3C and the EME all the way
Uh... are you serious? The Mozilla people who are on the record
speaking about this issue before today (me, Robert, Henri) come across
that way to you?
Henri seems rather hard to understand, but he seems to have promoted the
EME in the end. Did you ever make a statement on the EME?
Mozilla management are now promoting their pro-EME decision, some good
propaganda there.
Mozilla have a representative on the W3C TAG and the
TAG produced a draft document on the EME that is a complete joke
We have _a_ representative on the TAG. The tag does not require
unanimous consensus for documents it produces, so can produce
documents over the objections of some of its members.
The point is that Mozilla's representative has done nothing! Only Henri
spoke out.
Mozilla has made no formal objection to the EME at the W3C.
That's true, but there is actually little point to doing that: others
have already raised formal objections, we know how TBL will decide on
such formal objections, and we've already made our feelings on the
matter known so there is nothing to be gained from a formal objection
that way.
The public might not know 'how TBL will decide on such formal
objections', and Mozilla could have at least called him out. Part of the
reason for not objecting was that TBL might do even worse, but not
standing up to him is just spineless. Mozilla should not be a member of
the W3C.
On the other hand, given that all of our competitors _are_ shipping
DRM no matter what we, or the W3C for that matter, do, the least bad
option is for them all to ship it behind the same API, at least.
I disagree that following them is 'the least bad option', and it is
certainly not the only option Mozilla had.
You didn't even try to make a case to users to stick with Firefox if
they were forced to use an
alternative browser to view some media content. Windows users already
have IE installed and you could have just deferred to IE for content
requiring EME - users have already chosen to use Firefox over IE so
see
value in Firefox.
I suspect this would have been non-viable, and you overestimate how
much value users see in any browser and how much the annoyance of this
behavior would just drive them to IE completely. But it's possible
I'm wrong, of course.
Mozilla could have mitigated the annoyance, and been in a better place
with users, without supporting the addition of DRM to the web.
There was a proposal made at the W3C that would have
further mitigated concerns of losing market share but Mozilla was not
interested.
Can you link to this proposal please? I'm not aware of it...
As soon as you release the source code I will use it to build an
external media player and define declarative HTML mechanisms for tagging
videos that need to use this player that allow the launching of this
with as little annoyance as possible. An EME/JS version will also be
written that works in EME capable web browsers. Web developers will be
able to target this simpler standard and know it works across browsers,
that is work with JS disabled, that they do not need to use potentially
patent encumbered JS to complete the media player, and that it works in
compliant no-web media players. The media player will be open source and
support a healthy ecosystem that can compete to protect user privacy and
security. The difference between this solution and Mozilla's position is
the real reason behind Mozilla management's decision and it is not
pretty. I will support a Firefox derivative that excludes the EME and
offers such an alternative, lanching one myself if really necessary.
Jim
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