I still think that EME were a mistake for web standards to implement. I disable them by default and yet see widevine requests as part of analytics, the occasional bot captcha, and other inappropriate locations all the time. I really just wish the whole thing would bog off - its anti consumer and approving the standard was I think a really foolish mistake. At least Firefox has an "off" button. Would that it was off by default.
>its anti consumer and approving the standard was I think a really foolish mistake.
The alternative is that Netflix et. al can't be played on firefox and you need to install chrome just to watch it, which weakens firefox's market share even more.
Mozilla making choices specifically to try to "keep up" with Chrome has objectively failed: Firefox's marketshare has plunged so far that it's getting harder to keep using it on the web, as developers simply stop testing or caring much if it works with their site.
I think this is because simply chasing Chrome didn't have the desired effect anyway. By doing so, Mozilla hurt Firefox by gradually reducing what differentiated it from Chrome in the first place, relegating it to be kind of just a worse Chrome that looks even weirder.
A similar statement would be something like, "Firefox may as well pledge to support Web Environment Integrity; otherwise, people will just use Chrome."
In a totally different vertical, Valve has made interesting choices. To my knowledge, they do not provide a way to do attestation on Steam hardware devices, so games that want to support Steam hardware simply have to get rid of their intrusive DRM and anti-cheat, or at least significantly loosen it. Depending on how you look at it, this has either been a massive success or a massive failure. After all, a lot of big games don't run; Fortnite, Valorant, etc. But on the other hand, it remains a very powerful incentive for publishers and developers to reconsider their choices, as these devices still do have a non-trivial marketshare. (And for smaller games this obviously is hard to ignore, probably often moreso than intrusive DRM.)
Mozilla may have been ultimately correct that the choices they made helped them stay relevant; it's hard to know for sure how much their marketshare would be different today if they made bolder choices, but in the long run I think it has doomed them, as it is now unclear what even really differentiates Firefox. The last remaining thing seems to just be that you can run the full version of uBlock Origin, which is pretty valuable and all, but I'm not sure it makes up for the deficiencies. (I also like Container Tabs, but I think that feature is pretty niche, possibly somewhat by virtue of the fact that Firefox is now pretty niche.)
I'm currently using Librewolf. My long term hope was that Ladybird would become the browser that does what Firefox should have, but when I asked Andreas Kling whether or not Ladybird would try to support EME/Widevine in an HN thread, there was no reply, which is pretty close to "probably".
Firefox should've gone the same route as Internet Explorer and forked Chromium. Firefox could focus its energies on creating features that are different instead of recreating the same ones.
We already have "no compromises" forks / side-versions of Firefox.
FF cannot pull a Steam because they don't have a big enough userbase, and the userbase won't grow if they are too purists, sadly.
Firefox lost the battle to Chrome over 10 years ago, partly due to its faults (it was heavy and slower to load that back in the day Chrome) and also because Google shoved Chrome down its users' throat (I perfectly remember the Chrome banner in Google's home page, not even SERP).
>Firefox's marketshare has plunged so far that it's getting harder to keep using it on the web
any examples? i only use firefox, including for work, as well as encourage all of my students to use it, and i cant think of any sites that dont work.
if anything, i would say its sort of the opposite (getting easier to use). some microsoft websites were wonky ~5 years ago, but now all seem to work perfectly in firefox.
I fairly regularly come across websites that are broken even in normal Firefox, like, even on Hacker News. I've had to use Chrome for some local government stuff but I reckon they broke Firefox on accident rather than on purpose and hopefully it is fixed now. Google's own Cloud Console was unusable in Firefox for a couple weeks a few years ago :) This is very different from sites not explicitly supporting Firefox, but it does happen. If I think of/find an explicit example of something broken right now I will link it here.
To be completely fair, some of it isn't really by choice. Like, the qmk configurator doesn't support Firefox, but that's because it needs APIs Firefox intentionally doesn't have. Should Firefox have these APIs? The WebUSB thing doesn't personally bug me the way Chrome implements it so I'd say sure. I'd certainly prefer having that over EME.
>I think this is because simply chasing Chrome didn't have the desired effect anyway. By doing so, Mozilla hurt Firefox by gradually reducing what differentiated it from Chrome in the first place, relegating it to be kind of just a worse Chrome that looks even weirder.
That logic might work for firefox's product direction as a whole, but narrowly looking at the EME issue, what should have they done? If they didn't implement EME, then people will have to install chrome to watch netfilx. The users who are there as a matter of principle (eg. HN readers) might still use firefox as their daily driver, but they'd almost certainly lose some normies who were using firefox on inertia. Meanwhile because they refused to negotiate, they won't be able to influence the direction of the standard, which means no sandboxing of DRM modules and other privacy features. Both firefox and their users lose out in this scenario.
Simple: allow those users to be lost to preserve the product. The entire Internet is not Netflix. Most Netflix users today don't even use their laptops or desktops for Netflix: they use it on their TVs, phones, video game consoles.
Firefox is a bad way to use Netflix anyways. It doesn't support high resolutions because it has limited Widevine support anyways. It doesn't support Widevine l1 and never has. So... It is a worse way to watch Netflix.
I'm sorry but this "we can't possibly take a risk like this" mentality is cancerous. It is comfortable to "play it safe" and all, but nobody takes any risks for anything anymore. It's not calculated when the calculation is "avoid risk at all costs".
> Simple: allow those users to be lost to preserve the product.
Lose the users lose the funding. Firefox can't live out of HN as its sole userbase. Have you checked how much it costs to build and maintain a modern browser?
Plenty of users who have no money for TV or consoles, watch it on their laptop on low quality. I am one of those who watches Netflix on Linux Firefox :)
This isn't just any risk. It's an existential one for Firefox. You are asking them to make something that would be unpopular to the majority of its userbase at a point when they are borderline extinct. You are asking Mozilla to jeopardise Firefox for the same of a feature that YOU dislike enough to want to burn Firefox to the ground to get rid of it.
Yes I am asking them to have principles. I'm sorry this is such an insane concept to understand or appreciate. Maybe the next Mozilla will understand that having principles is not optional.
Sorry for any misinformation; I did try to quickly verify that this was still true, and I made the silly mistake of just assuming the Google AI Overview was good enough confirmation:
> Firefox does not support Widevine L1 (hardware-based DRM) on any operating system, and is restricted strictly to Widevine L3 (software-based DRM).
> But on the other hand, it remains a very powerful incentive for publishers and developers to reconsider their choices, as these devices still do have a non-trivial marketshare.
There's really nothing to suggest this has been the case.
I very much expect Valve to implement a hardware backed attestation and signed driver model for future hardware.
> The alternative is that Netflix et. al can't be played on firefox and you need to install chrome just to watch it, which weakens firefox's market share even more.
I really don't know how much good that does to Netflix. If you take a popular show from Netflix and google "show name free online" you will find ton of sites streaming it the second day it was streamed on Netflix. HD quality nonetheless.
> The alternative is that Netflix et. al can't be played
But that's Netflix's decision to enforce, not a foregone technical requirement. Not to mention that widevine has been cracked as far as I understand it and doesn't stop people from pirating it.
And until today, it would've meant having to boot macOS or Windows to watch Netflix on an aarch64 device, regardless of browser choice. (In practice it has been possible for longer, due to workarounds that were largely only possible due to the standardised EME interface)
I still think that EME were a mistake for web standards to implement. I disable them by default and yet see widevine requests as part of analytics, the occasional bot captcha, and other inappropriate locations all the time. I really just wish the whole thing would bog off - its anti consumer and approving the standard was I think a really foolish mistake. At least Firefox has an "off" button. Would that it was off by default.
>its anti consumer and approving the standard was I think a really foolish mistake.
The alternative is that Netflix et. al can't be played on firefox and you need to install chrome just to watch it, which weakens firefox's market share even more.
Mozilla making choices specifically to try to "keep up" with Chrome has objectively failed: Firefox's marketshare has plunged so far that it's getting harder to keep using it on the web, as developers simply stop testing or caring much if it works with their site.
I think this is because simply chasing Chrome didn't have the desired effect anyway. By doing so, Mozilla hurt Firefox by gradually reducing what differentiated it from Chrome in the first place, relegating it to be kind of just a worse Chrome that looks even weirder.
A similar statement would be something like, "Firefox may as well pledge to support Web Environment Integrity; otherwise, people will just use Chrome."
In a totally different vertical, Valve has made interesting choices. To my knowledge, they do not provide a way to do attestation on Steam hardware devices, so games that want to support Steam hardware simply have to get rid of their intrusive DRM and anti-cheat, or at least significantly loosen it. Depending on how you look at it, this has either been a massive success or a massive failure. After all, a lot of big games don't run; Fortnite, Valorant, etc. But on the other hand, it remains a very powerful incentive for publishers and developers to reconsider their choices, as these devices still do have a non-trivial marketshare. (And for smaller games this obviously is hard to ignore, probably often moreso than intrusive DRM.)
Mozilla may have been ultimately correct that the choices they made helped them stay relevant; it's hard to know for sure how much their marketshare would be different today if they made bolder choices, but in the long run I think it has doomed them, as it is now unclear what even really differentiates Firefox. The last remaining thing seems to just be that you can run the full version of uBlock Origin, which is pretty valuable and all, but I'm not sure it makes up for the deficiencies. (I also like Container Tabs, but I think that feature is pretty niche, possibly somewhat by virtue of the fact that Firefox is now pretty niche.)
I'm currently using Librewolf. My long term hope was that Ladybird would become the browser that does what Firefox should have, but when I asked Andreas Kling whether or not Ladybird would try to support EME/Widevine in an HN thread, there was no reply, which is pretty close to "probably".
Firefox should've gone the same route as Internet Explorer and forked Chromium. Firefox could focus its energies on creating features that are different instead of recreating the same ones.
We already have "no compromises" forks / side-versions of Firefox. FF cannot pull a Steam because they don't have a big enough userbase, and the userbase won't grow if they are too purists, sadly. Firefox lost the battle to Chrome over 10 years ago, partly due to its faults (it was heavy and slower to load that back in the day Chrome) and also because Google shoved Chrome down its users' throat (I perfectly remember the Chrome banner in Google's home page, not even SERP).
They can't pull it now because they don't have big enough marketshare.
Gee I wonder why that didn't work out.
>Firefox's marketshare has plunged so far that it's getting harder to keep using it on the web
any examples? i only use firefox, including for work, as well as encourage all of my students to use it, and i cant think of any sites that dont work.
if anything, i would say its sort of the opposite (getting easier to use). some microsoft websites were wonky ~5 years ago, but now all seem to work perfectly in firefox.
I fairly regularly come across websites that are broken even in normal Firefox, like, even on Hacker News. I've had to use Chrome for some local government stuff but I reckon they broke Firefox on accident rather than on purpose and hopefully it is fixed now. Google's own Cloud Console was unusable in Firefox for a couple weeks a few years ago :) This is very different from sites not explicitly supporting Firefox, but it does happen. If I think of/find an explicit example of something broken right now I will link it here.
To be completely fair, some of it isn't really by choice. Like, the qmk configurator doesn't support Firefox, but that's because it needs APIs Firefox intentionally doesn't have. Should Firefox have these APIs? The WebUSB thing doesn't personally bug me the way Chrome implements it so I'd say sure. I'd certainly prefer having that over EME.
Government websites tend to be an issue.
Had to spend an hour on the phone trying to figure out why my dad couldn't access a government portal. Only supported on Chrome.
>I think this is because simply chasing Chrome didn't have the desired effect anyway. By doing so, Mozilla hurt Firefox by gradually reducing what differentiated it from Chrome in the first place, relegating it to be kind of just a worse Chrome that looks even weirder.
That logic might work for firefox's product direction as a whole, but narrowly looking at the EME issue, what should have they done? If they didn't implement EME, then people will have to install chrome to watch netfilx. The users who are there as a matter of principle (eg. HN readers) might still use firefox as their daily driver, but they'd almost certainly lose some normies who were using firefox on inertia. Meanwhile because they refused to negotiate, they won't be able to influence the direction of the standard, which means no sandboxing of DRM modules and other privacy features. Both firefox and their users lose out in this scenario.
Simple: allow those users to be lost to preserve the product. The entire Internet is not Netflix. Most Netflix users today don't even use their laptops or desktops for Netflix: they use it on their TVs, phones, video game consoles.
Firefox is a bad way to use Netflix anyways. It doesn't support high resolutions because it has limited Widevine support anyways. It doesn't support Widevine l1 and never has. So... It is a worse way to watch Netflix.
I'm sorry but this "we can't possibly take a risk like this" mentality is cancerous. It is comfortable to "play it safe" and all, but nobody takes any risks for anything anymore. It's not calculated when the calculation is "avoid risk at all costs".
> Simple: allow those users to be lost to preserve the product.
Lose the users lose the funding. Firefox can't live out of HN as its sole userbase. Have you checked how much it costs to build and maintain a modern browser?
Plenty of users who have no money for TV or consoles, watch it on their laptop on low quality. I am one of those who watches Netflix on Linux Firefox :)
This isn't just any risk. It's an existential one for Firefox. You are asking them to make something that would be unpopular to the majority of its userbase at a point when they are borderline extinct. You are asking Mozilla to jeopardise Firefox for the same of a feature that YOU dislike enough to want to burn Firefox to the ground to get rid of it.
Yes I am asking them to have principles. I'm sorry this is such an insane concept to understand or appreciate. Maybe the next Mozilla will understand that having principles is not optional.
> It doesn't support Widevine l1 and never has.
Firefox supports Widevine Level 1 on Windows 11 devices with the requisite hardware and has for a year or so.
Not many providers other than Netflix support it still, but it does.
Sorry for any misinformation; I did try to quickly verify that this was still true, and I made the silly mistake of just assuming the Google AI Overview was good enough confirmation:
> Firefox does not support Widevine L1 (hardware-based DRM) on any operating system, and is restricted strictly to Widevine L3 (software-based DRM).
Tsk tsk, that one's on me.
> it's getting harder to keep using [Firefox] on the web
I've heard this said for the past ten years or so and so far haven't found it to be true.
> But on the other hand, it remains a very powerful incentive for publishers and developers to reconsider their choices, as these devices still do have a non-trivial marketshare.
There's really nothing to suggest this has been the case.
I very much expect Valve to implement a hardware backed attestation and signed driver model for future hardware.
> The alternative is that Netflix et. al can't be played on firefox and you need to install chrome just to watch it, which weakens firefox's market share even more.
I really don't know how much good that does to Netflix. If you take a popular show from Netflix and google "show name free online" you will find ton of sites streaming it the second day it was streamed on Netflix. HD quality nonetheless.
> The alternative is that Netflix et. al can't be played
But that's Netflix's decision to enforce, not a foregone technical requirement. Not to mention that widevine has been cracked as far as I understand it and doesn't stop people from pirating it.
And until today, it would've meant having to boot macOS or Windows to watch Netflix on an aarch64 device, regardless of browser choice. (In practice it has been possible for longer, due to workarounds that were largely only possible due to the standardised EME interface)
> The alternative is that Netflix et. al can't be played on firefox
why pay for something you cant use
You can use it. Just use any other browser. Chrome is free, Brave is free, Vivaldi is free.
Yeah, obviously
"Oh but firefox share is diminishing" yes, but it still exists. Or could be another browser
what a terrible loss.
Using Chrome on Linux is a big mistake because your session is much more likely to get flagged as a bot.
Use a self-hosted Nextcloud server to sync your bookmarks across multiple devices and browsers - it eliminates the need for a Google account.
Cool, gotta try this out under Termux-X11