From the ‘Google Standards Aren’t Real Standards‘ files:
A couple week ago, Adobe announced that is was abandoning Flash on Linux to Google. The idea being that Chrome integrates Flash and Google can be the place where Linux users go for Flash.
But what about Firefox? Why can’t Firefox on Linux also get the same benefit?
As it turns out, that’s a bug that Mozilla WONTFIX.
“Pepper is a non-standard API *and codebase* implemented by open source at chromium.org,” Mozilla CTO, Brendan Eich wrote in a mailing list posting. “It’s not a specified API other browsers can implement, and I know of no plans by any other browser (even Safari) to attempt to support it.”
Eich added that, Mozilla’s position is to avoid proprietary large APIs and instead improve the standardized Web APIs. Going a step further, in Eich’s view, the Linux Pepper-integrated Flash for Chrome is from Google and for Chrome only.
Yup, that means that Google has implemented it’s own features – even though they’re open source – that no other browser will use. That’s right, open source isn’ always as ‘open’ as the name might imply and there is more to being open than just having open source code.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.