Mozilla changed the config options for the openh264 codec. The option
listed in /etc/firefox/firefox.fs (media.gmp-gmpopenh264.enabled) seems
to be no longer in use, instead about:config now lists the options

media.gmp-provider.enabled
media.gmp.decoder.enabled
media.gmp-widevinecdm.enabled
media.gmp.trial-create.enabled

And in addition to libgmpopenh264.so it also downloads and installs into
~/.mozilla a libwidevinecdm.so binary. Its license (contained in the
zip-archive from which it gets installed) reads

Cf. bug #769716 i believe these automated downloads should be disabled by
default in debian packages.

Thx

After setting the options in my previous mail to false i found
firefox still was downloading binaries of libgmpopenh264.so and
libwidevinecdm.so.

I looked into the firefox sources (64.0~b12-2), and the installation
seems to be done by
toolkit/mozapps/extensions/internal/ProductAddonChecker.jsm by
ProductAddonChecker.getProductAddonList(). There is a config option
GMPPrefs.KEY_UPDATE_ENABLED to disable this, which is defined in
toolkit/modules/GMPUtils.jsm line 118. Setting this to false seems to
disable the binary blob downloads.

So in /etc/firefox/firefox.js (debian/browser.js.in in the source), the
option

    pref("media.gmp-gmpopenh264.enabled", false);

should be changed to

    pref("media.gmp-manager.updateEnabled", false);

Users needing to enable the EME and OpenH264 binaries can still change
this option in about:config.

    Ingo

Hi,

An openh264 package has just arrived in Debian.
Firefox could be built with it to get rid of the downloader.

Cheers,
Bastian