from Hacker News

Mozilla's Original Sin

by MzHN on 6/23/24, 7:31 AM with 25 comments

  • by asmor on 6/23/24, 7:45 AM

    Normal people use Netflix (especially when DRM was first introduced) and watch YouTube.

    The reason Mozilla can even still hold 10% market share in places like Germany is that they're much more compatible with the monopolist than you'd assume, given the circumstances.

    Principled stances land you where the GNU operating system is. In obscurity, where people reference you as ethical, but with few actual users outside of versions that are ideologically watered down (but without your control).

  • by r721 on 6/23/24, 8:13 AM

    Previous discussion (flagged): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40763757

  • by KwanEsq on 6/23/24, 7:58 AM

    Ah, I assume this is linking to the Mastodon post advertising the article instead of the actual article due to jwz.org's response to requests with HN in the Referer header?

  • by johnea on 6/23/24, 9:34 PM

    No reason to mastedon this, it's available directly on jwz's website:

    https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozillas-original-sin/

    Not sure if everyone is aware, but jwz was an original Netscape developer, and an advocate for creating the free software licensing that created mozilla when netscape went bankrupt.

    So he really is an authoritative source on the mozilla story...

  • by thriftwy on 6/23/24, 8:12 AM

    Out of curiosity, are there any good introspectors/sidesteppers for browser DRM?

    The platform is not locked down (in ten years it might as well be), so the only question is which pipeline step the heist will happen at.

  • by wodenokoto on 6/24/24, 7:10 AM

    Why did this get flagged?

  • by LeoPanthera on 6/23/24, 7:55 AM

    Quick reminder, in case anyone is tempted, jwz.org detects referers from HN and redirects to an “unpleasant” image.

  • by htthbjk on 6/23/24, 8:04 AM

    Freedom also means being free to use DRM if you want to.

    Nobody is holding a gun to your head to open a Netflix account.

  • by unwind on 6/23/24, 7:55 AM

    Meta: I would have appreciated a "jwz:" source in the title. I didn't know he was on there, nor that he still posts about tech.

  • by karma_pharmer on 6/23/24, 7:46 AM

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