I think it's a valid point that EME reduces the amount of closed-source code. This was among the arguments used by Google and Microsoft when promoting EME.

However, on the other hand:

1. EME is an actual W3C standard. It feels - and is - wrong for an organization like the W3C to promote an API that is not about openness, but rather about the opposite.

2. While EME proponents - and DRM proponents in general - argue "content makers will never accept delivery without DRM", that is far from clear. First, and most importantly, just a few months ago The Interview was sold online, without DRM whatsoever, and it made lots of money. The sky didn't fall. Second, the argument that "DRM is necessary" was also said about digital music, which eventually dropped DRM. Finally, there are also alternatives like watermarking (with their own downsides, to be sure) which over time could be explored.

Overall, I think it is sad that Google, Microsoft and Netflix have won and EME is unavoidable at this point. But, given the power of those entities, only a miracle could have stopped it.

Just for my context - is the browser plugin DOM interface used for plugins (the <object> tag) a W3C standard as well?

I fully agree with point 2. Even if all browser vendors assumed this point to be true however, I think Netflix and other video content providers would have 'happily' run Flash and Silverlight for years and years. There hasn't been a shortage of browser DRM options for a very long time now. EME is an improvement over the Flash/Silverlight situation, and a realistic option at this point for improving the situation right now.

It's a shame Firefox is being derided for being pragmatic or not being perfectly virtuous here. With implementing EME they are still working on improving the openness of the web.

Browser plugins were never standardized. NPAPI was just done at netscape, later used by some other browsers too, but not all - not by Internet Explorer, in particular, which has its own plugin API.

At some point Google proposed standardizing PPAPI, a new plugin API (and a very large and complex one), but it met with no interest.

The argument at hand is that Firefox shouldn't support it, not that W3C shouldn't. (The argument is conditioned on it having been spec'd and adopted by the W3C, and concerns what Firefox's response should be.) Is it more wrong for Firefox to support an open interface to proprietary plugins, than a proprietary interface to proprietary plugins (the "N" in "NPAPI" literally means Netscape; this is something they deployed unilaterally and other people copied)?

NPAPI plugin usage was already declining without the requirement for EME. Most people disabled or uninstalled Java, and Flash was only required for some video and animation sites. Game engine plugins will be replaced by WebGL+JS. Audio/video conferencing plugins can be replaced by WebRTC.

Historically, plugin use was much more widespread, and there were plugins for all kinds of things. You had to have a separate plugin for each of Video for Windows, RealAudio, Quicktime, Shockwave, Java, etc., and there were others for playing different media types like .mod, .xm, .it, displaying image formats, ...

The NPAPI interface was also standard enough that every browser supported it. So yes, it's "more wrong" to add a new interface to new proprietary plugins than it is to continue supporting a dying legacy interface to proprietary plugins. The NPAPI trajectory was downward, while EME's intended trajectory is upward.

> Most people disabled or uninstalled Java

I think this needs data. From my foot in the enterprise world, this doesn't seem even close to true; random SSL VPNs and the like require Java. If anything, most people are running an out-of-date version of Java because corporate IT hasn't approved the one that fixes ten exploits yet.

> and Flash was only required for some video and animation sites.

Due, largely, to (EME-free) HTML5 video and other HTML5 features. EME is not replacing HTML5 video, nor is anyone talking about using EME to replace Flash-played videos that weren't using DRM inside Flash.

There's a lot of implication running around that Flash is being replaced with EME video. It isn't. The vast majority of Flash is being replaced with non-EME HTML5 features. A fraction that was previously implementing DRM in Flash is now implementing DRM in EME.

NPAPI plugin usage, specifically Flash video, was going to continue to be a thing for Flash videos that were using DRM. (You could make the argument that these things would just drop DRM if it were too hard, but given how long Flash stuck around until there was a high-quality replacement that was objectively better than Flash from the content-publisher's side, it's a hard argument to make.)

Well, HN tends to discuss a lot the "UNIX way" and the Open Group is not really that open.