Comment by scubbo
8 months ago
Absolutism like this hurts adoption of otherwise-useful tools. Given the choice between a tool which simply cannot play DRM-protected content, and a tool which can, _ceteris paribus_ most consumers will prefer the former. If you believe there are other properties of a proposed tool that mean it is a public good for it to be adopted, it behooves you to make it attractive to adopt.
Most consumers will prefer the browser that comes with their OS or is advertised on google.com no matter what you do. Compromising your priciples to chase after the mass market is exactly the reason for the decline of Firefox.
DRM'd content on the web is also not nearly as common as you are implying it to be. Outside of specific streaming sites that many use through dedicated apps on their TV or phone anyway it is almost nonexistent so this crap doesn't need to be in your desktop or mobile browser. Not to mention that even with DRM support you are not guaranteed to get decent content if you are on the wrong OS or don't give up ownership of your entire display pipeline or just have slightly older hardware or live in the wrong country. It's also not hard to avoid these streaming services entirely.
If you are writing an open source web browser, I guess you only care about the preference that programmers who are likely to become contributors have. I’m not sure if that would be a big change really, though.
I don't care if it's for most people. There needs to be at least one good option.