this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Are there other browsers? Most of them use Google's engine so presumably they'll have to bow down to this decision. Firefox and Safari are the only independent engines but Safari can't be used on non-Apple devices and Mozilla is funded by Google.
Now, granted, the whole reason Google funds Mozilla is to be able to show they have competition, so forcing WebDRM on Firefox would play against that. But it's their move to make if they feel like weathering an EU investigation is worth it.
Yeah the whole situation is a little bit fucked, Google has too much power (over Mozilla) and browser engines in general. But I'm optimistic about the open source community, e.g. brave integrates their own ublock compatible rewrite (in Rust ^^) into chromium. So I think sooner or later there are patched/forked chromiums and if Mozilla indeed makes the move towards WebDRM then also Firefox forks.
I really hope servo under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation proves to be a viable alternative in the future, that's a little bit more independent than Firefox.