H.264 in Fedora 17!

[Fedora Video]

As everyone probably knows, Mozilla has chosen to adopt H.264. They will be
doing this by finally utilizing OS codecs instead of embedding their own.
They have been quite clear that Linux would be supported too, so obviously
this means H.264 in Fedora. With Firefox's adoption there will be no web
browser supported on Fedora which doesn't support H.264 (Firefox, Chrome,
and Konqueror), and not a moment too soon since flash support on Linux is
going away.

Why is Mozilla doing this?  It is clear enough: Non-support of H.264 is
making them irrelevant. They've gone from the #1 browser to the #4 directly
as a result of not adopting H.264.   H.264 is the only video that is good
enough for the web and the alternatives are just as patented which is why
Google did not make good on their commitments to deploy them. Even Youtube
only offers WebM on a small number of unpopular videos: The bandwidth
demands of a full WebM deployment would put them out of business and would
break their site on apple devices which don't work if WebM is offered.

Likewise, we see Fedora's market share dwindle as it is supplanted by
Ubuntu and Debian both, not coincidentally, ship H.264 while Fedora has
not.  There can be no question of freedom here since no one doubts that
Debian places freedom as the highest priority. It is fedora's continued
lack of H.264 which is actually the violation of freedom. Who wants a
desktop with zero video support?   Ffmpeg, VLC, Mplayer, gstreamer, Blender
and almost all free software video programs are based on H.264 and Mpeg. Go
look on pirate bay: No one distributes in anything but mpeg formats.

H.264 is now free for the web and has been free for a long time. It is only
foolish religion which has kept H.264 out of Fedora.

Mozilla and Fedora will not be alone in making this move. Today Wikipedia
announced they would be abandoning Theora and switching to H.264 (they
never adopted WebM).

It is time for Fedora to stop promoting low quality, proprietary, and
unlicensed video like WebM and Theora and adopt the industry standard
x264.  Our political preferences are worthless if Fedora is irrelevant.  It
is time to regain relevance!
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