Inherent sexism? What about “histrionic” is sexist?
Wouldn’t it be much more helpful to collectively tell them that you’re going to commit to getting every single person you know to see the importance of these issues (that is, have meaningful discussions with people who know you and trust you and look to you for guidance that it’s worth not using Netflix e.a.), and get them to switch to Firefox, so that the next time Mozilla is faced with a similar decision, they’ll know they have the full backing of their users, rather than the fear of losing their relevance due to their users preferring encumbered content over freedom?
Mozilla is in it for the long haul. They need to remain relevant to be able to continue doing good; so the threat of hemorrhaging users is about the only thing which they really must avoid at all costs, making them choose to live to fight another day over a principled last stand. The open web is all for them, though. The vast, vast majority of people working for Mozilla (whether employed or volunteer) care more deeply about these issues than almost anyone, you’ll find anywhere else. Trust in that, trust that they’ve agonized over this for months and months, and have been fighting this every step of the way.
If they had 50% marketshare, with the knowledge that they had that marketshare because their users care, then they could’ve made it stick.
Yet instead they live in a world where people switch to Google Chrome for a tiny perceived speed difference, signaling that they care more about that than about rights or principles. That is something you can help fight, something where your success can help Mozilla stick to their guns.
Think about it. How can you actually make a difference? How can you actually do some good in this fight, rather than just making yourself feel good?
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If you really want to make a difference, wait until the “non-DRM’d” version comes out, and then use it to access Firefox’s websites. Intentionally change the agent string.
But again, what are you really saying? The DRM really isn’t in there until YOU TELL IT TO COME IN. Mozilla will make this an obvious notification. IF you install it, it’ll go into a very tightly controlled sandbox. Now, it does not.
The only way you will have DRM in your Firefox is if you, and you alone, intentionally download and load DRM into your firefox. Just like it is now.
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Ultimately, in all this, what really really chafes me are three very distinct facts.
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This persistant belief that Mozilla is somehow behind this, when in reality, W3C and others stacked their chips behind DRM long ago. Mozilla has always been a browser that tries to implement the standards, and in this case, the standards SUCK. I think Mozilla has chosen to implement the standards in a loud, noticeable way, that will allow users to have maximum control over the software they choose to install. I don’t know what else they can do.
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The belief that DRM is now being introduced into Mozilla’s products when it clearly is not. What is being introduced is a sandbox environment for executing plugins. What we have now is a more porous environment for executing plugins that quite literally was invented by Adobe a long time ago. NPAPI, people forget, was made as a way to embed Adobe’s PDF rendering engine into Mozilla products while allowing Adobe to retain control of key components of the DRM. DRM is NOT new in Mozilla, and Adobe designed the system that we are now currently using. If Mozilla were to disapprove of their new self-created Sandbox (which, yes, admittedly will run Adobe and other’s DRM modules), what would they go back to? Adobe’s initially created system from years ago that is way less security minded and way more focused on Adobe and others…
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This horrible belief that Mozilla is somehow the last bastion of good faith that we can ever have and that they alone are fighting for a perfect and open web, all on their own. Mozilla gets most of their money from Google. Specifically, Google searches and google primacy, based on the number of users using Firefox. If those users drop significantly, those users will cease to be. Yes, Mozilla is an amazing foundation/organization, but they exist because of a competing browser company’s actions. And their existence is paid for by Mozilla users USING that competing company’s resources. This implication that Mozilla is pure as the driven snow and our only hope is a fallacy. They’ve had to make choices to retain funding, and their browser is OPEN SOURCE AND CAN BE FORKED. If it is time to move to an open web that does not involve mozilla, we users and coders can make that happen. No thing is permanent. One of the driving components of Open Source software is the knowledge that when someone makes enough decisions that you disagree with, you can fork their project. Whining and gnashing of teeth and sobbing about the lost internet because a good guy made a decision you agree with is really NOT the open source way.
That’s what bothers me.
That people are blaming Mozilla (and seemingly no one else) for adopting a stupid standard that W3C and even Tim Berners-Lee stood behind, that people think that this somehow is a NEW position for Mozilla on DRM, and that people think there’s nothing that can be done now because a company that receives upwards of 80% of its funding from people USING its browser to google search have to make a tough decision that they believe will help people use their browser.
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I don’t use netflix, I would be even less inclined to switch to chrome since I have very limited interaction with google products. I think you can support a group without endorsing every decision that they make.
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I think Mozilla has chosen to implement the standards in a loud, noticeable way, that will allow users to have maximum control over the software they choose to install. I don’t know what else they can do.
They could have stuck to their own stated principles and let the chips fall where they may. That’s how principles are supposed to work.
The belief that DRM is now being introduced into Mozilla’s products when it clearly is not.
Clearly, it is. And, that’s why this is an argument of principles and not over technological implementation issues themselves.
This horrible belief that Mozilla is somehow the last bastion of good faith that we can ever have and that they alone are fighting for a perfect and open web, all on their own.
That’s a false argument. If you look at some of the detractors, they are exceedingly experienced with open web standards.
For example:
The issue is among popular web browsers, and Firefox did stand alone in resisting DRM in this field:
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And with that, Firefox loses another of its dwindling users!
Great job Mozilla, great job.
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That info graphic looks way off compared to these stats:
Great post by Hickson, btw. Thanks for sharing!
That info graphic looks way off compared to these stats:
Agreed, but yours includes mobile. Mozilla has said they aren’t implementing DRM for mobile Firefox, so I only showed PC market share.
Great post by Hickson, btw. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you! Yeah, Hickson is a smart cookie that’s looking at the bigger picture on this issue.
DRM is a means for corporatist control, not a true vehicle to protect copyrights and he explained in a way that even I could understand.
Actually some of those stats are broken down by desktop + mobile versus just desktop. Haven’t seen IE top 25 percent anywhere. Not sure how you could reach 58 percent market share for IE by any metric.
Actually some of those stats are broken down by desktop + mobile versus just desktop.
Right, but your specific link was to desktop+mobile combined, so I figured that’s what you were pointing to.
Haven’t seen IE top 25 percent anywhere. Not sure how you could reach 58 percent market share for IE by any metric.
Here’s another chart that includes mobile and still puts IE at ~50% market share:
Source: Windows 8.x breaks 10 percent, Internet Explorer 11 makes a splash | Ars Technica
Methodology FAQ: http://netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx
I think either way my point still stands that Firefox was certainly one of the last popular browsers to holdout on DRM among, IE, Chrome and Safari and even the much less popular Opera browser. And, once again, Mozilla has said (for whatever their word is still worth anymore) that they aren’t going to implement DRM in the mobile version of Firefox, so that’s why my focus on is PCs, not mobile.
I don’t dispute your point, but that 58 percent number doesn’t seem anywhere close to what other sources are reporting for desktops. More like 25 percent seems to be the consensus.
Check these out, for instance:
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportClients.htm
http://clicky.com/marketshare/global/web-browsers/
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I guess it comes down to which methodologies you trust.
Ars technica prefers netmarketshare.com:
http://netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Vary
Why does the usage share reported by different sources vary?
It could be a number of reasons. One of the key differences is in methodology of data collection and reporting: Is the report based on unique users or pageviews? Is country level weighting used? Is there a quality control process in place to filter out anomalous data? In addition, having a global coverage versus data collected on a few individual websites also yields drastically different results.
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