Comments on: Firefox3 Launches!…What about html5 video? http://metavid.org/blog/2008/06/18/firefox3-launcheswhat-about-html5-video/ This Blog covers the metavid project and related politics. Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:07:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: dave http://metavid.org/blog/2008/06/18/firefox3-launcheswhat-about-html5-video/#comment-86029 dave Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:16:02 +0000 http://metavid.ucsc.edu/blog/2008/06/18/firefox3-launcheswhat-about-html5-video/#comment-86029 I was intrigued by a comment on a recent Mozilla blog about this: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2008/06/html5_video_codec_downloader.html The comment, from Robert O'Callahan says: "Gerv, it's not "use the system framework *rather than* built-in codecs", it's *in addition to*. There probably isn't an open source video codec we can ship --- and that's definitely a discussion for another time --- but we can probably ship Ogg Vorbis for audio and I'm hoping we will." So they'll 'probably' ship Vorbis for audio despite it not being mentioned explicitly in HTML5 but for unspecified reasons they can't ship Theora for video. Seems odd to me, my guess is the patent boogeyman has scared the Mozilla lawyers, but it would be nice to hear confirmation of that. I was intrigued by a comment on a recent Mozilla blog about this:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2008/06/html5_video_codec_downloader.html

The comment, from Robert O’Callahan says:

“Gerv, it’s not “use the system framework *rather than* built-in codecs”, it’s *in addition to*. There probably isn’t an open source video codec we can ship — and that’s definitely a discussion for another time — but we can probably ship Ogg Vorbis for audio and I’m hoping we will.”

So they’ll ‘probably’ ship Vorbis for audio despite it not being mentioned explicitly in HTML5 but for unspecified reasons they can’t ship Theora for video. Seems odd to me, my guess is the patent boogeyman has scared the Mozilla lawyers, but it would be nice to hear confirmation of that.

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