Video, Freedom And Mozilla
So why doesn't Mozilla just license H.264 (like everybody else)? One big reason is that that would violate principles of free software that we strongly believe in. In particular, we believe that downstream recipients of our code should be able to modify and redistribute it without losing any functionality. This is freedom that copyleft licenses such as the GPL and LGPL (which we use for our code) are intended to ensure. It is possible to obtain patent licenses in a way which works around the letter of the GPLv2 and LGPLv2, but honoring the letter while violating the spirit is not a game we are interested in playing.
more on weblogs.mozillazine.org
An explanation why new HTML5-based YouTube and Vimeo don't work in Firefox.
