[whatwg] on codecs in a 'video' tag.

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Apr 2, 2007, at 11:50 AM, Maik Merten wrote:

> Maciej Stachowiak schrieb:
>> It's not immediately clear to me that a Mozilla license would not  
>> cover
>> redistribution, for instance the license fees paid by OS vendors
>> generally cover redistribution when the OS is bundled with a PC. I  
>> think
>> someone would have to look at the legal language of the agreement  
>> to see
>> if it covers redistribution.
>
> Mozilla can also be compiled and distributed by third parties. E.g.
> Debian distributes a slightly modified version of Firefox as  
> "Iceweasel"
> AFAIK. They wouldn't be covered by a license Mozilla buys.

This may be the case, but it is not immediately obvious to me.

>>> - They appreciate that there are a wide variety of distribution  
>>> models;
>>>   for browsers, and do not want to choose technologies which work  
>>> only
>>>   for some of those;
>>
>> Unfortunately, Ogg does not work for some browsers either.
>
> Well, for text browsers or on platforms that don't have the processing
> juice to decode it (then they couldn't decode MPEG4 whatever-part
> either). I'd say that are platforms that usually don't even have  
> feature
> complete browsers anyway.

As mentioned many times before, there are widely available hardware  
implementations of MPEG4, making it usable for low power devices. And  
yes, there are mobile devices with feature-complete browsers.

>> I don't think that is true, but it would depend on the details of the
>> MPEG-LA license agreement. Also, at most the MPEG4 implementation  
>> would
>> not be free software, this would not have to affect the rest of  
>> Firefox.
>
> I think many people would find it absolutely unacceptable if a "free
> speech" version of Firefox would miss proper support for a core  
> feature
> of the "official" mozilla.org binary (if the free and the official
> version diverge at what content they can display something is serious
> messed up).

Well, the official EULA for the Firefox download already prevents  
certain forms of modification, but granted the logo, name and so  
forth are not core features.

Regards,
Maciej