"The burden of what? Deciding what video content is acceptable? Like I said before, that should not be Mozilla's role, but it's the one they've taken on."<p>The burden of dealing with patent encumbered formats. Someone would have to pay or it would remain illegal. As Firefox developers develop Firefox, they have their say in what do or don't do Firefox. 
And even if they pay it wouldn't be free since there would be strings attached.<p>"Yes...and? What's your point?"<p>My point is simple and has remained the same from the very beginning: h.264 is not compatible with an open and free (as in freedom) internet. Therefore implementing h.264 is either not compatible with free software, not an issue in countries where software patents don't exists, or done in an illegal manner.
So here we go again: How much would someone value his freedom?<p>This guy explains it in much better terms than I could: <a href="http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codecs/" rel="nofollow">http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codec...</a>