Firefox/NPAPI/Flash discussion for UDS

[Bryan Quigley]

Hi,

Well if that's already decided, then there isn't much point for a full
session.

At that point the only remaining questions are
Do we stop pre-installing Flash from the proprietary checkbox in installer?
Do we start click-to-play before Mozilla?

I'm 99% sure that freshplayerplugin isn't a supportable option, we
would need Mozilla's endorsement of it and I don't see why they would
give it.

Kind regards,
Bryan

On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 3:08 PM, Chris Coulson <chrisccoulson at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On 19/10/15 18:31, Bryan Quigley wrote:
>> 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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>>> ubuntu-desktop mailing list
>>> ubuntu-desktop at lists.ubuntu.com
>>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
> Hi,
>
> Just to be clear, we're not going to be making changes to Firefox that
> remove support for plugins ahead of Mozilla doing so. We're going to
> continue distributing Flash via the partner archive until Adobe stop
> supporting it, and this will continue to work in Firefox on Ubuntu until
> Mozilla decides to drop support for it (or blacklists it because it's no
> longer getting updates).
>
> Regards
> - Chris
>
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