From the ‘proprietary video codecs make me cry‘ files:
Mozilla is throwing down the gauntlet in the battle for open video on the web with a $100,000 grant to the Wikimedia Foundation in support of the development of Ogg Theora. As opposed to Windows Media, QuickTime and other popular video formats, Ogg is based entirely on open standards and isn’t supposed to include any proprietary codecs. This means that video can more easily be distributed and more importantly perhaps more easily be integrated directly into the browsing experience.
“Our commitment to the success of open video on the web requires that we select codecs for Firefox that are usable by everyone, without restriction or licensing fee. To that end, we’ve chosen Theora as the format for Firefox 3.1,” Mozilla’s Mike Shaver blogged. “We believe that Theora is the best path available today for truly open, truly free video on the internet.”
Firefox 3.1 includes support for the HTML 5
<video> tag which allows for video embedding. It’s a big deal from a development point of view that could end up pushing video even further into our regular browsing experience.
As a Linux user, Ogg is something that I use and am familiar with. On the Windows side though, Flash, Windows Media clearly dominate but perhaps with this new Mozilla funded push things will start to change.