Firefox/NPAPI/Flash discussion for UDS

Mon Oct 19 20:34:31 UTC 2015

I think this guy [1] can help us and create packages for hal (all hal
or just the library) so Flash could depend on it.
I think there is no harm if we keep a package just for Flash DRM. But
we just need to maintain that until Flash is discontinued.

[1] https://launchpad.net/~mjblenner

2015-10-19 15:31 GMT-02:00 Bryan Quigley <gquigs+u at gmail.com>:
> Hi Chris,
>
> The "do nothing" plan in this case would result in features being
> taken away during the primetime* life of the 16.04 LTS.  If we
> knowingly can't support them for even 2 years (likely more like 1
> year), should the LTS include them at all?
>
> 1- Minimal option:
> Just mention that the support will drop in the release notes, follow
> Firefox's lead for alerting users.
> Stop installing Flash in the Ubuntu installer
>
> 2 - Slightly more aggressive than Mozilla:
> Turn on click-to-play ahead of Mozilla
>
> 3- Aggressive option:
> Disable NPAPI for 16.04.
>
> Obviously, we can separate NPAPI vs Flash-NPAPI if we want in the above.
>
> I would rather users realize they also need Chromium/Chrome in their
> environments when they first install 16.04 rather than a random number
> of months later.  If we don't at least do 1 we're just asking for
> trouble,   I think doing number 3 for general NPAPI isn't that out of
> the question.
>
>>most sites that use Flash continue to work fine with the exception of things like Amazon Video
> I'm guessing most users have switched to Google Chrome for them.  Many
> sites that don't need DRM don't use Flash anymore anyway.
>
> I'll see if I can get a better answer for Adobe. Obviously EOY 2017 is
> very different than February 2017.
>
> Kind regards,
> Bryan
>
> *First two years, until the next LTS is released.
>
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 12:18 PM, Chris Coulson
> <chrisccoulson at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>> On 12/10/15 20:39, Bryan Quigley wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Mozilla has announced their plan to drop NPAPI support for everything
>>> but Flash at the end of 2016[1].  That got me thinking that we might
>>> have to drop it sooner than that for 16.04 LTS [2] - which is what
>>> happened fro Chromium for 14.04 LTS.   Flash (NPAPI Linux) is also
>>> possibly going EOL for Firefox in February 2017 which might be good to
>>> talk about again as well.
>>>
>>> We previously talked about Flash and NPAPI last November [3][4].  We
>>> didn't believe at the time that Ubuntu alone had the pull to greatly
>>> change Flash use, and I don't think that's changed.
>>>
>>> If we do nothing for 16.04 LTS, then for Firefox:
>>> 8 months after released all plugins (aside from flash) stop working
>>> 10 months after release Flash is no longer maintained
>>>
>>> Flash 11.2 has also become less useful thanks to dependencies on hal
>>> [5] which is longer in Ubuntu, so many sites just don't work.  Also
>>> getting them to drop gtk2 should make it easier to maintain Firefox.
>>> These are really only relevant if we can get Adobe to commit to
>>> support Flash 11.2 for longer.
>>>
>>> I'm happy to ask upstream if we can have some people from Mozilla join
>>> us in a UDS session too, but it makes sense to hash this out a bit
>>> here first.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>> Bryan
>>>
>>> [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plugins-in-firefox/
>>> [2] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.tech.plugins/sdLQgvG84uM
>>> [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZCVuy4ugDc
>>> [4] http://pad.ubuntu.com/ep/pad/view/uos-1411-adobe-flash-on-firefoxlinux-eol/4MgjOcm3Oc
>>> [5] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/10/fixing-amazon-prime-streaming-drm-protected-flash-13-10?utm_source=feedly
>>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I didn't feel that the session last time was all that useful - it
>> basically acknowledged that Flash on Linux is going EOL and that there
>> isn't much we can do about it. What has changed since then and what sort
>> of outcome are you looking for that would make an UOS session worthwhile
>> for this?
>>
>> AFAICT, the outcome at the end of any session will be the same: Mozilla
>> will still be planning to drop support for non-Flash NPAPI plugins
>> sometime next year, they still won't have any plans to support PPAPI
>> plugins, they'll still be investing in Shumway, Adobe will still be
>> planning to stop providing updates to Flash 11.2 based on some
>> non-public timetable (but we expect it to be sometime in 2017), and we
>> will keep distributing Flash 11.2 via the partner archive to all Ubuntu
>> releases for as long as it's supported.
>>
>> I wouldn't expect Adobe to spend time porting a piece of software that
>> they've deprecated and are only providing security fixes for to newer
>> technologies (eg, gtk3, away from HAL). Speaking as the Firefox
>> maintainer, the current plugin really doesn't cause any problems for
>> Firefox maintenance at the distro level (there might be some burden
>> upstream, but Flash already works fine in gtk3 Firefox). And I think
>> you're over-exaggerating the impact of not having DRM support (because
>> of the HAL dependency) - most sites that use Flash continue to work fine
>> with the exception of things like Amazon Video, which haven't worked out
>> of the box on Ubuntu since we dropped HAL from the default install
>> (IIRC, sometime around 2010). If there really was a big demand for this,
>> we'd have fixed it 5 years ago. I even wrote a wrapper to make it work,
>> but there wasn't much interest in it
>> (https://code.launchpad.net/~chrisccoulson/+junk/flash-hal-helper).
>>
>> Regards
>> - Chris
>>
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>
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