Re: Helix Player virtual team meeting

[Leon Shiman <leon magic shiman com>]

Hi Rob!

Those not yet convinced might look again at MAS(R).

http://www.MediaApplicationServer.net.

Leon


On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 12:13:19 -0800 Rob Lanphier wrote:
>To: Ronald Bultje <rbultje ronald bitfreak net>
>Cc: Ryan Gammon <rgammon real com>, gnome-multimedia gnome org, 
>Subject: Re: Helix Player virtual team meeting
>Delivered-To: gnome-multimedia gnome org
>
>Hi all,
>
>I've added licensing open helixcommunity org to this distribution, so 
>that the right folks at RealNetworks are aware of this discussion and 
>can more easily participate.  Normally, that list requires subscription 
>to send mail to it, but I've taken that restriction off for the time being.
>
>More inline:
>
>Ronald Bultje wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> [added CC to gstreamer-devel]
>> 
>> On Tue, 2003-12-09 at 19:28, Lee Braiden wrote:
>> 
>>>This might be a bit provocational (sorry), but I'm wondering why you 
don't 
>>>work with the gstreamer folks, and just make codecs or bugfix the ui?  
That 
>>>would make helix a MUCH better opensource project, imho.
>> 
>> 
>> Being one of the GStreamer developers, I'd like to advocate this point
>> too. Given the current license of the (closed-source) Real codecs
>> included in Helix, it's hard for us to add proper Real support to the
>> default Gnome media framework. If you guys are looking for true
>> integration in the Gnome desktop, GStreamer is the way to go. We already
>> provide Gtk+/Gnome video widgets, integration in the file manager, etc.
>
>We're looking for integration into GNOME, but we're also looking at 
>producing a world-class, *cross-platform* multimedia system, and we've 
>got to focus on the one we've got (Helix).  While it's theoretically 
>possible to port GStreamer to Windows, Mac OS, and Symbian (for 
>example), it's *done* for Helix.
>
>If we allow our codecs to be used by other multimedia frameworks, we're 
>just encouraging more splintering -- for Linux developers would work on 
>improving GStreamer (improving the experience only for Linux users) 
>rather than work on Helix (improving the experience for everyone). 
>Besides that, we would have to convince Intel, Sony, VoiceAge and many 
>others that this is a great idea, since much of what is in RealAudio and 
>RealVideo is licensed from them.  While it would be extremely generous 
>for us to do this, there's not much of a business case for RealNetworks 
>to institute such a giveaway.
>
>We may just be at an impasse here, because years of work have gone into 
>GStreamer and Helix, and neither group is going to drop years of work to 
>move to another platform.  However, I find it very difficult to believe 
>that any commercial Linux distributor in the United States is going to 
>be able to ship anything that is simultaneously legal and useful based 
>on what is in GStreamer today.
>
>Rob
>
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