Shouldn't be so surprising in retrospect (like many things), but I never fully got that before.
Power comes from being chosen by end users. Firefox needs power to be able to resist this kind of crap. In this case, they didn't quite have enough power (probably because they let memory bloat get away from them a few years back, giving Chrome the upper hand which is has done a decent job of holding on to).
Google is trying to do the same with EME over HTTPS. Google wants Mozilla to stand together with Firefox and Chrome resisting EME over unprotected HTTP. But they want Firefox to go first (again), even though Chrome is already shipping EME.
Does caving in to commercial pressure and adding unpopular (for its core audience) features like DRM advance it in that direction, or in the opposite direction? I believe "more of the same" isn't going to help it pull ahead, it needs distinctive features such as more privacy, fewer ads, or even a strong anti-DRM stance.
As a (former) large-ish website owner I have to disagree with your assessment. Even browsers with 5% market share (Firefox has 15-20%) have the power to influence design decisions and thus counter browser-based DRM adoption, except strong de facto monopolies (like Google, youtube) that can make or break browsers by supporting or excluding them (youtube has even more influence than Google search currently because of its unique content). It's true that Firefox was simply too bad to use for a couple of years (cue conspiracy theories about Google being their main source of income and desperately trying to push Chrome), but it still had power due to its large user base.
And don't underestimate all the bundleware installs, too. Even today, when upgrading your version of Java in Windows, it still tries to trick you into installing Chrome.
Besides chrome didn't get its market share on technical merit alone, but mostly by paying for its installation and targeted PR.
We don't need counterfactuals to imagine a world without EME; we've lived it.
Also, Flash did not die, just because Apple said so although that certainly had an impact. It also died, because the web was getting better and better; because it was a proprietary tool not available to everyone; because it integrates poorly with the whole architecture of the web - e.g. dynamic generation on the server; because it had a bad reputation due to security and performance issues; and because a plugin, even if widespread, is still a dependency that you want to avoid.
It is a tautology that DRM-based video streaming is going to use some kind of DRM. The point is that if several major platforms provide no support for any form of DRM then DRM will be removed from video streaming. The idea that video providers are going to give up a majority of their customers because their devices support no DRM is not reasonable.
> Also, Flash did not die, just because Apple said so although that certainly had an impact. It also died, because the web was getting better and better; because it was a proprietary tool not available to everyone; because it integrates poorly with the whole architecture of the web - e.g. dynamic generation on the server; because it had a bad reputation due to security and performance issues; and because a plugin, even if widespread, is still a dependency that you want to avoid.
I'm not sure what point you're making... that Flash sucks and died for multiple reasons? Granted. But it was still dying before EME existed and DRM wasn't enough to save it.
Browser makers don't have some crippling monopoly power over how computers work that they can use to force submission on an entire industry (thank god).
The idea that the movie industry will give up on something they view as a fundamental requirement for them to earn money, just because browser makers throw a hissy fit, is not reasonable. The movie industry will find a way because they believe their industry must, or else it will wither and die.
At which point they'll be losing customers. And if the operating system doesn't support apps with DRM, what then? Ask the user to buy a new device?
> Or use Apple TV/Xbox/PlayStation to watch things rather than their browsers.
At which point they'll be losing more customers. And if the dominant console is also something that doesn't support DRM, what then?
> Browser makers don't have some crippling monopoly power over how computers work that they can use to force submission on an entire industry (thank god).
No, but customers do. Which is why customers should choose browsers and operating systems that do what customers want.
> The idea that the movie industry will give up on something they view as a fundamental requirement for them to earn money, just because browser makers throw a hissy fit, is not reasonable. The movie industry will find a way because they believe their industry must, or else it will wither and die.
This is just meaningless rhetoric. It is possible to make money without DRM as proven by the fact that many people are doing it. Piracy does not exclude profitability as proven by the fact that there are more Disney movies on The Pirate Bay than there are in the Disney store and Disney is still making tons of money.
The people who think the movie industry would disappear without DRM are idiots. The harder we make it for those idiots, the more share they'll lose to people who know better and the fewer idiots will remain.
It's not even like this is a fight. It's just widespread misunderstanding. DRM is bad for the movie industry. It locks customers into closed platforms which put the companies that control those platforms between the studios and their customers. It causes viewers to derive less value from DRM-encumbered content, which causes them to consume it less often and not be willing to pay as much for it. It causes piracy to increase because it has zero effect on the experience of downloading from The Pirate Bay and a negative effect on the experience of paying customers. The studios have been sold a bill of goods.
Video on the web was a reality before flash came to be.
The whole idea behind the no flash movement was to move services that relied on a plugin, away from the web and onto the app store.
Apple wasn't fighting for free technology, they were pushing users onto Apple's own version of EME.
Let's imagine all web browsers drop flash, silverlight, EME and all the other common technologies used for DRM. What do you think netflix will do on the desktop? Will they move to pure HTML video or will they start building desktop apps?
That's the trouble. They practically did it by accident. Imagine they actually were fighting for free technology. Then they wouldn't allow DRM in any apps either and what you're worried about goes away.
You get to the same place with licensing instead of restrictive app stores for actually free systems. For example put some language in the license (call it LGPLv4) for all the libraries for putting video on the screen that requires any application implementing DRM to be distributed under the GPL. You can have all the DRM you like as long as the source code is provided and anyone is allowed to make and distribute changes. :)
You might as well say, if the developer community got its act together and stood on principle, no company could caputure 'market share' without their consent.
The problem is not the Mozilla non-profit knuckling under -- it is developers failing to have an institution similar to other professions, such as the Bar or AMA, giving them principles.
A professional organization would have no control over that whatsoever. People have principles. Principles don't come from bureaucracies. Professional organizations are full of politics and politics and ethics are entirely orthogonal.
If anything professional organizations are used to undermine an individual's principles: Economic interests pressure the professional organization to approve some unethical behavior and then anyone who objects to it is pointed to the professional organization's approval and told to shut up and do it.
Try setting up an alias in your bashrc? If you really want to point-and-click just add the appropriate entries to your launcher/menu?
Sandbox = CPU sandbox, not just cookie isolation.
To achieve that in Firefox will require massive re-writing of lots of code to basically do all the stuff Chrome was built to do. Chrome doesn't allow the CPU process running the webpage to access any OS services or hardware. All access to those are in other processes that do tons of validation that what the page is asking for it should be allowed to access. That way, even if there's a code execution bug it's unlikely to be able do any damage.
http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?v...
http://www.cvedetails.com/product/3264/Mozilla-Firefox.html?...
Until that number changes I'm not switching to back to Firefox.
Maybe you should switch then, why?
A lot of this information is subject to interpretation.
# of Vulnerabilities in 2014: Chrome: 127 Firefox: 108
The code exploit stats show how many exploits were found and patched, which is completely different from the number of exploits that a browser has.
Only 4 exploits were found and fixed in Chrome whilst 55 were found and fixed in Firefox... in my opinion that makes Firefox the leader as they found and fixed more vulnerabilities.
Firefox sucks a lot (no usable UI integration, missing many basic modern features, changes stripping user of choice, and more) but chrome sucks to infinity and is automatically disqualified, I would consider Iron but not chrome. Now my hopes are for vivaldi, I'm waiting for it to get out of tech preview.
Also Chrome doesn't bundle itself with anything other than a special more secure version of flash which you can turn off. If you got a version bundled with something else that was a fake install by a 3rd party. The same thing happens to firefox
Here's a search for chrome. First 3 links are fake installers made by a 3rd party that likely installs a virus/trojan/rootkit
http://i.imgur.com/RpXy3bz.png
Here's a search for firefox. first link is also a fake installers made by a 3rd party that likely installs a virus/trojan/rootkit
Mozilla is made of google money and advertising money.
Doing the right thing means doing it regardless of market share and piles of money.
These are only a few examples off the top of my head, but one does not have to look very deep to find a trail of not doing the right thing at mozilla along its history. Sorry if pointing this out infuriates the fanboï in you, but mozilla has done its share of wrong along the otherwise good stuff.
The reason Firefox is allowing this is that browsers and operating systems produced by nonprofits acting in the public interest don't have enough market share to resist being dictated to by for-profit corporations. Imagine FirefoxOS had the market share of Android and Debian had the market share of Windows. Would we still be having this conversation?
The free software people have been preaching this for decades. It turns out they're right.
So don't install Chrome, use Firefox. Then next time it will be easier for Mozilla to do the right thing.