It’s been 5 years. I don’t think they’re going to change the license to allow distributions to distribute MongoDB more easily.

We should actively be against corporate leeching.

In a world without free software, Amazon will build their own proprietary software for servers that is better than everyone else’s, and will be in the same position. At least with Redis, multiple employees of AWS were core maintainers for Redis. It isn’t like Amazon didn’t contribute anything back. Now that it’s non-free, they’ll just fork it. Again.

All this really accomplishes is making licensing a headache for everybody, which is the main reason people and organizations use free software.

I think free software developers should be able to make money from their software, and money from working on their software. I also think everyone else should be able to, too.

To put it another way, open source means surrendering your monopoly over commercial exploitation.

Additionally, Elasticsearch does not belong to Elastic. Redis doesn’t belong to Redis, either.

Not only companies: https://lists.archlinux.org/hyperkitty/list/arch-dev-public@lists.archlinux.org/thread/OY2DLNWTZOBPAHFE5FSV4Q6AIWGZO6KV/?noscript

PHP 8.0 is no longer supported so I hope they update the “really, really old technology” to at least PHP 8.1 today.

Most likely. This blog was written in February 2022; support for PHP 8.0 was only dropped in November 2023.

I was half-asleep when I wrote this, lol. Bitbucket dropped Mercurial recently, too. Sourcehut is the only other code forge I know of that supports hg which I really love. Kind of sets a high bar for contributions, but not being vendor locked in is a bonus. And I wish they’d more tightly integrate the subdomains…

I thought Github only supported git, too. Did it support Mercury at some point? I assume this is the last of other VCS support in Github.

It’s worth mentioning that Android Auto doesn’t work on GrapheneOS due to the privileged access it requires, and will not support it unless it is re-architected. Which phones were you thinking of when you said “compatible”?

It doesn’t really mean anything on its own. It’s romanized as “Shi”. If you know your Japanese, you’ll know “Shi” is how you pronounce 死; or “Death”. The word is not usually written in Katakana, though. There’s also ツ, which is romanized as “Tsu”.

Interesting choice to romanize Japanese. Now you have to figure out which romanization system to use (I was surprised を was romanized as o and not wo). But I do get it, I guess, because you have to wonder it would only use Hiragana or mix Kanji in:

• 大文字と小文字を無視する
• だいもんじとこもじをむしする

Well, for the sake of being international, we should just use Katakana everywhere. That’s the sanest suggestion (who’s with me?):

• ダイモンジトコモジヲムシスル

Of course, you’re kind of screwed on a TTY, since they don’t generally render unicode…so let’s go back to figuring out which romanization system to use.

15 years ago, I thought I wanted to make a game. Turns out, I didn’t.

A few years ago, I sought out Linux. Learning to use it has made me so much more confident and excited about technology. I understood so much more. And yet, it feels like I don’t understand nearly enough. So I’m learning programming so I can start looking through codebases for the projects I use, maybe seeing if I can add new features or fix some bugs that are annoying me. I’ve sort of accomplished that goal for one program. There are also some programs that don’t exist, or don’t exist in the way I want them to that I intend on developing.

I’d like to learn reverse engineering too…

Well, I guess I’m a programmer only by technicality. I haven’t done anything serious and I’m certainly not decent at the art. I’m just curious. 🐇

Did your opinion of the teacher change at all after that?

Ah, okay. It sounds like you have a physical server, too…you would need to upgrade it yourself if you wanted to use AV1, right? Sounds expensive and annoying…

My understanding is the client needs to explicitly support hardware decoding with the relevant APIs, and Jellyfin probably accomplishes it with FFmpeg. There is no way Jellyfin would be implementing a software decoder for HEVC, but they should have no problem implementing hardware decoders for every platform.

iOS doesn’t even have a software decoder for AV1 yet, but the iPhone 15 Pro hardware decoder is a start. Likewise, only expensive Android phones have hardware AV1 decoders right now. More desktop GPUs are implementing AV1 decoders. But this transition looks like it’s going to take another 3 years (?) to hit every market segment (cheapest to most expensive)… sigh. I don’t have an AV1 hardware decoder on any of my devices either. It’s insane how long it takes for new hardware decoders to become mainstream. Many HEVC patents might be close to expiring by then, lol.

This was a use case I was introduced to directly before I discovered Firefox was introducing support for HEVC decoding.

I use HEVC because it has significantly better compression than older codecs, and many modern devices have hardware decoding support for HEVC.

If it weren’t for iOS, VP9 could take its place, or so the Mozilla developers thought. HEVC and newer codecs like VP9, AV1, VVC, EVC, etc. offer better compression but often at the cost of compute. I imagine hardware decoding evens the scales a lot; I haven’t done any benchmarking myself. I don’t know how much impact the complexity of H.265 vs H.264 has on battery life, if any. Of course, hardware encoding on VP9 is not really a thing (AV1 is ahead of it, even), so HEVC has the edge there.

In a few years, AV1 hardware implementations will hopefully be ubiquitous; that would solve the efficiency and software patent problems at the same time. It’ll probably coincide with the last of H.264’s patents expiring. So on the one hand, I can understand why Mozilla is in no rush to support HEVC.

So I imagine you use a Chromium-based browser for Jellyfin?

I’m on GNU/Linux myself, and personally, I don’t use HEVC at all. I don’t even decode video in my browser most of the time. I’m usually using mpv with yt-dlp. Streaming services like YouTube, Facebook and Netflix don’t use HEVC to my knowledge (being AOM members and all), but I don’t use services that require me to enable DRM in my browser. I don’t know of a service that requires HEVC decoding support.

It’s possible Mozilla will support HEVC decoding on other operating systems in the future. Windows is just the easiest one to start with. It’s worth noting that Chrome’s HEVC hardware decoding support does not support Widevine, the DRM Netflix and other streaming services use. So you won’t see them adopting HEVC in browsers, at least.

The fact that this bug for macOS is a part of the hevc meta-bug indicates that Mozilla also wants to support HEVC decoding on macOS: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1839107

Chrome supports HEVC decoding on GNU/Linux, so I don’t see any reason why Firefox wouldn’t too, eventually.

In about 5 years, the last patents for the baseline H.264 (AVC) video codec will expire. This means Firefox will finally be able to support decoding for H.264 (the codec most commonly used with the MP4 container) without Cisco needing to cover the licensing fees for them. DaVinci Resolve will also be able to support decoding/encoding on GNU/Linux. Basically, anyone will be able to implement a H.264 decoder/encoder without needing to pay royalties, which means free software programs like Firefox which don’t charge their users will be able to implement it. The codec will no longer be patent-encumbered. See Wikipedia’s debate on whether to support H.264 in 2014 for lots of opinions on this: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/MP4_Video

However, H.265 (also called HEVC) is the “next-generation” video codec after H.264. The patent pool situation is so confusing and expensive compared to H.264 that Mozilla, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, and dozens of other companies using video compression technology formed the Alliance for Open Media to develop a royalty-free codec they could use instead of HEVC. As a result, HEVC has seen very little adoption, particularly on the web. Most companies continue to use H.264. Windows 10 asks you to pay $0.99 for HEVC decoding support in the default video player. In fact, Google even announced they were dropping support for H.264 in 2011 because of their “focus on open web principles”: https://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html

They never went through with it, of course.

AV1 is finally at a point where there are production-ready encoders and decoders. The iPhone 15 Pro is shipping with AV1 hardware decoding support, so even Apple is on board (though only for the most expensive phone so far). So, we’ll see hardware decoding support in more phones in a few years, and hopefully AV1 will see a lot of adoption.

Adding support for HEVC in browsers feels like a step back because it legitimizes the codec and works against AV1 adoption. Many of these companies have resisted implementing HEVC support (aside from Apple) because it positions AV1 as the only realistic option to shift to from H.264. With HEVC in the picture now, it might be a realistic option in the future. Well, there’s VP9 too, but there are some patent disputes over that codec that might make companies sheepish about adopting it. Not that AV1 is free from those disputes either, but they are far more confident about it and Unified Patents is doing great work invalidating Sisvel’s AV1 patent claims (and even some HEVC patents here and there).

My opinion is that the ship has already sailed. Chrome caving in and adding HEVC support last year, albeit only with hardware decoders, was all it took with their 90%+ market share. Firefox’s 3% market share isn’t going to make a dent, and not doing it risks keeping users who need HEVC support on Chrome. I also don’t think hardware decoding support is a big deal right now due to all the older devices without HEVC hardware decoders, but it opens the door to ask for more support down the line. I very much doubt Google is going to do that, though.

Windows users have been asking for HEVC support for years: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332136

7 years ago, this was the answer:

Mozilla currently has no plans to support H.265. Our focus will be on AV1.

The reason we won’t support H265 has nothing to do with the difficulty in finding a decoder, or that a decoder source code is released under GPL. Those are trivial matters.

We will not support h265 video while its patent encumbered.

BTW, even today vp9 provides better results than H265.

The conversation changed to, “Firefox could at least do hardware decode support without worrying about patents, right?”

My guess is they’re doing this because Chrome added HEVC hardware decoding support last year.

As the OSI says in the post linked above:

This is not to say that Elastic, or any company, shouldn’t adopt whatever license is appropriate for its own business needs. That may be a proprietary license, whether closed source or with source available. […] What a company may not do is claim or imply that software under a license that has not been approved by the Open Source Initiative, much less a license that does not meet the Open Source Definition, is open source software. It’s deception, plain and simple, to claim that the software has all the benefits and promises of open source when it does not.

A lot of companies are trying to redefine what “open source” means. And regrettably, this is probably something that was inevitable with a name as open to interpretation as “open source”, but it’s unfortunate that the OSI was denied the trademark for the term. If they owned the trademark, nobody would believe projects like ElasticSearch and MongoDB are open source when they do not meet the Open Source Definition (OSD), because those companies wouldn’t be able to claim they are.

Open source was never about preventing people from making a profit. That sounds more like the original Linux license, where Linus Torvalds didn’t want money to change any hands in the process of conveying the software. I can’t imagine how much worse things would be if Linus never transitioned to a license that met the OSD. My belief is that there is nothing wrong with making money so long as the software meets the OSD. I know at least the GNU Project actively encourages people to sell free software.

The GNU kernel was not originally supposed to be called the Hurd. Its original name was Alix—named after the woman who was my sweetheart at the time. She, a Unix system administrator, had pointed out how her name would fit a common naming pattern for Unix system versions; as a joke, she told her friends, “Someone should name a kernel after me.” I said nothing, but decided to surprise her with a kernel named Alix.

Source: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.en.html

Ah, I can see how that might be useful. I first learned about the command pallette when I needed to instruct everyday users on taking a full-page screenshot on Chrome…it’s far more complicated than Firefox’s method of Right-Click > Take Screenshot. Just another odd thing, lol. Interestingly, Firefox is considering implementing this feature: https://github.com/firefox-devtools/ux/issues/101

I don’t think it would make much sense in my workflow right now but I can see how it would benefit others. Quickly turning on accessibility constraints I’m sure would be very useful. One thing Firefox’s dev tools is desperately missing is search. I get along fine without it, but it would be nice to have.

Photoshop Web (Beta) only supports Chromium-based browsers, Descript only supports Chromium-based browsers (well, Firefox still seems to work but you’re on your own), and many new webapps are only supporting Chromium-based browsers. Now, these are beta products, so that might change, but it seems unlikely. So I’ve been switching to Chromium-based browsers to use some of these apps, but I’d really rather not. It’s the way everything is going, unfortunately.

A lot of developers target the web because it means they can have one codebase that is supported on multiple operating systems. Imagine how much harder it would be to develop a macOS, ChromeOS and GNU/Linux version in concert with the Windows version. In reality, some browser engines support more web features than others, and Google has by far the most resources to keep up with those standards. So Firefox is an afterthought. Google Chrome is on every operating system worth supporting anyway, so why bother supporting another browser? It’s a lot less work and testing.

MDN is the best place to read about those standards, though.

I like Firefox:

• userChrome.css lets me make Firefox look like a GNOME program
• I much prefer the developer tools. Everything is a lot easier. I always use Firefox when doing web development.
• I can easily customize the browser. For me, this means having a separate dedicated URL bar and search engine bar.
  • The search engine bar lets me swap between search engines very quickly and keep my previous search terms for new tabs. Switching search engines is really annoying in Chromium-based browsers because you need to use shortcuts, and there’s no autocomplete for shortcuts. It also doesn’t tell you whether you typed the shortcut correctly, so you’re guessing every time! It’s really under-developed. The Android Chromium-based browsers are even worse. You can’t change search engines at all when searching; you need to change your default engine. Firefox lets you search any search engine easily on iOS, and slightly less easily on Android.
• I can…turn off history? Apparently this is an amazingly complex feature that Chromium-based browsers just can’t handle. The best you can do is clear it when exiting, but you can’t just turn history off.

Okay, it’s mostly the search engine thing, to be honest.

But Firefox still doesn’t use the new GNOME thumbnail view when you’re uploading files, for example…

I also prefer chromium dev tools, though it isn’t that bad to switch to Firefox’s dev tools.

I actually vastly prefer Firefox’s dev tools to Chromium’s. There are keyboard shortcuts to open every tab, it has a color picker, it has a multi-line Javascript console, and in general I find it more intuitive. Chromium developer tools seem to be less complete than Firefox and harder to use.

I just learned Chromium technically has a color picker tool, but you need to scroll through CSS propetries to find a color selector, click the color, then click the color picker. With Firefox, I tap CTRL+SHIFT+I to open dev tools, click the color picker which is front-and-center, and it copies the hex code to my clipboard. This is a microcosm of my overall experience with Chromium’s developer tools. Everything is slower or further out of reach.

I don’t know how it ended up this way.