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Petition Apple for Linux QuickTime
Evan Vetere writes "Apple is being petitioned to release a QuickTime client for Linux." Apple has been babystepping around Open Source for awhile now, but multimedia is one area where the veil of secrecy is extremely opaque: the codecs that drive video display and streaming are almost always proprietary. It would be great if apple would lead the way towards fair open standards by releasing an Open Source Quicktime client for Linux. It would do a world of good towards getting it accepted as a standard.
Why does it have to be Open Source? Hell, ANY quicktime for linux would be cool with me.
MEEPT!!!!!
MEEPT!!!!! will now instruct the fanatical RMS followers in how to be hypocrites.
First, preach against the evils of non-free software. Preach on how eventually free software alternatives will remove non-free software from the world at large. Then repeat the message several times. Until your audience starts chanting "uggha... uggha... uggha... free software, free software, free software." Then and only then may you stop preaching.
Once preaching is complete, you must petition companies to release non-free software for Linux. This will remove the motivation of many programmers who otherwise would have written a free software alternative. But if the non-free solution is already made, nobody will seek to create the free one (and don't give MEEPT!!!!! any bullshit about projects such as "Harmony". The great and glorious MEEPT!!!!! points out that Harmony is DEAD.).
Now, you will be well set on your course to Master Hypocrite. See, the art of hypocrisy swings on two axises. First, one much preach constantly about the virtues of one thing. Then one must openly support another thing.
Today's lesson was brought to you by the letters A, B and F and the number 9.
MEEPT!!!!!
Many of us who use linux also like Star Wars. As you probably know, the trailers for The Phantom Menace were released in quicktime format.
As you probably also know, there is currently no support for quicktime 4 for linux. This situation forces some linux users to purchase an imac just to view the Star Wars trailers.
I know you are a business man, Steve, but wouldn't it be great if linux users didn't have to think about buying an imac just to keep up-to-date on the hype surrounding a movie? I mean, it would be a different story if there were an ultra cool game... something like quake 5 which included the option for a podrace deathmatch that only ran on a mac, but seriously, what are the odds of that happening?
I think I speak for all of us who read slashdot when I say, "we really want a black and white (tux themed) imac". There. Enough said. Please register my vote immediately.
anonymous coward
Most of the codecs, such as Sorensen, are proprietary and licensed to Apple by 3rd parties. In the case of Sorensen, it costs $10,000 for a license from Sorensen.
I think Apple wants to make QuickTime as pervasive as possible, but they would have to do some heavy arm twisting of companies such as Sorensen in order to distribute the source.
However, if some of these codecs are not patented, an enterprising hacker may be able to reverse engineer the data formats and reimpliment an open source codec that could plug into a QuickTime for Linux implementation.
The proting on Apple's part should be easy. They have already got it working under MacOS X, which is really a PowerPC version of FreeBSD 3.2. So most of the UNIX coding has already been done.
whoever is organizing this should submit the 50,000 names, and a couple dozen of the most intelligently worded comments.
Maybe he _hasn't_ installed the "turbo" button ;)
How about reading something other Slashdot for your industry info?
SGI is on life support. They are grasping at anything to stay alive.
IBM dumps a bunch of code out on one of their web pages? No, IBM doesn't care about opensource, sorry. IBM cares about IBM.
Why would Apple be 'concerned' about open source? Don't tell me you think KDE or Gnome are a threat to Apple? More likely the Apple UI group has a few beers on a Friday and loads up Gnome for some laughs at THE POWER OF OPENSOURCE. Chuckle.
Opensource is a non-entity outside of Slashdot and other Linux web pages. Companies have been releasing source code to their products since there were computer companies. The fact that the Slashdot crowd sees this as trend and vindication is merely an artifact of the limited computer news coverage most Slashdoters read. There ARE other sources computer news than Slashdot.
Enjoy the 'Open Source Revolution' while it lasts.
I hope this isn't a rehash. I really can't read all 600 or so articles. ;. Apple was demonstrating VFW without the QT code at the time and it was hilarious... the VFW would play about 5 frames per second without the benefit of QT.
Many of you probably won't remember this but about 2-3 years ago Apple sued M$ (one of the many suits of course) over the Quicktime Content of Video for Windows. What happened was Apple outsourced some of the origional Quicktime for Windows Code and that _exact_ code ended up in Video For Windows. By "exact", I mean apple showed the judge the code from Quick time and it was _identical_ to the code from VFW, right down to the last
I could easily see how Apple would be skittish about someone (read M$) getting their hands on the Source again.
SteveB.
i think the idea of the petition is great, i support it, i signed it. but i see what i think is a real problem when i was skimming through the signatures. there are a lot of posts that point out reasons that aren't really advantageous to Apple *at all*. this is understandable, but why should Apple care that not having QuickTime is what's keeping you from begin able to ditch Windows? you're not ditching Windows for MacOS, are you? or asking them to support other BSDs (other than MacOS X, that is), or Solaris, or BeOS.. why should they?
.mov media format sucks ass."
:)"
i think they should, but what i'm getting at is that a lot of these comments actually seem to emphasize things that would (IMO) encourage Apple to *not* make QuickTime for Linux..
there also seem a fairly high number of pretty derogatory posts and posts that if were working for Apple, i would read and think "what a bunch of jerks, screw them."
things like..
"Or, you could just exclude millions of users from your worthless, overhyped video system."
or...
"Quicktime on Linux would be nice, even thoug the
uh huh, thanks. or...
"Im going LINUX..........
................follow or perish"
what incentive. how about...
"I'm not too fond of Apple or Mac OS... ugh, user-friendlyness, get it off me!
how does saying, "i don't like you, but do a lot of stuff for me anyway" make sense?
then there's a number of people who pointed out that they switched to PC's from Mac and they miss QuickTime. i'm sorry, but i can't see a lot of sense in supporting the people who ditched you for your competitors..
really people, haven't you ever heard that you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you? same thing goes for the hand that you're asking for food from.
What I want to see from Apple is a QuickTime codec library. Something that we could put into an existing project, whether it be xanim or the new media player from the LiViD project. If I'm using the LiViD player for MPEG and for AVI, I don't want a seperate, Apple-made-and-feature-poor player for quicktime movies.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Tim, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get a decent video client for Linux. If it means that I must grit my teeth and get jeered at by you for dealing with Apple, I'll pay that price, okay?
However, what I would *really* like to see is a good, open source streaming video standard. I've emailed maddog at Linux Internation and asked him if LI would be interested in working on such an effort. If not, next week at LWCE I'll talk to a bunch of people from other Linux companies and see if we can't form some sort of Linux Video Group to fund development of that product.
Ideally, I'd like to see something compatible with QuickTime. Right now, Microsoft is giving free bandwidth to online video and audio producers who their multimedia servers *exclusively*. I would not like to see Microsoft end up in total control of the "next hot net thing."
If making a deal with a small devil to keep a bigger devil at bay is what it takes, so it goes. I am afraid that if we don't act very rapidly to come up with a viable cross-platform alternative to MS video, Linux and *nix will be left out of online media entirely.
- Robin
From what I understand, Apple bought exclusive rights to Sorenson's codec. It doesn't matter if Sorrenson wants to give it away now, for all intents and purposes it belongs to Apple.
~Chris
the software already exists. almost everyone already has it, and AFAIK its still the best compression available.(especially when mpegs start using wavelet compression)
Well, I have too, but not with any modern codecs (esp. like the Sorenson codec and some of the other newer codecs that came along in QT 3 and 4)... I think that's what most of us want.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
From what I understand, Mark Podlipec (developer of Xanim) has talked to Sorenson about doing a codec under NDA for Xanim (as he has done with other codecs), but they've basically told him that Apple has some sort of deal with them where Apple won't allow them to do such a thing. I think it's quite strange, but that's what they told him...
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
All we're doing is showing them that our user base isn't getting any older. It looks like there's a Linux guru in one of the dorms at Georgia Tech and every Spring semester they have a new group of users which wants to do something. Last year they had a shoutcast server. The problem is the users are only around for a couple years. People in that Georgia Tech club move out in June and they get replaced next year. Apple doesn't see the kind of user retention that you get from Windows users.
- Firstly, there are likely some components of QT that aren't Apple's to give away.
- Secondly, one of the points to QT has been to be an Apple technology, a licensable thing that they have collected fees for.
- Thirdly, Apple makes money from selling computers.
- Fourthly, a "free QT" may be usable by evil competitors to injure Apple. Oh, say, Microsoft?
Pushing Apple to pretend to do something nice for Linux whilst providing incentive for them to play licensing games is just not my idea of wisdom.A "free QT" that doesn't help sell Apple computers and doesn't provide licensing fees is a somewhat worse deal for Apple.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Forgive me of my ignorance, but shouldn't such a port be fairly trivial at this point?
:^)
The fact is, QT is already on MacOS X. Hmmmm...Quicktime...on OpenStep (kinda)...on BSD/Mach. GNUstep, anyone?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I've tried it, although I've had to keep XAnim around for some files. The main problem is not the availability of QT players, but, rather, access to codecs that are used in some QT files.
I suppose one, on the x86 platform, could use Winelib...for LinuxPPC, an extreme hack of GNUstep, perhaps? Other platforms, I dunno...
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Ok, so, assume apple releases a freely redistributable binary only version of a QT player for Linux...
It's going to run on my UltraSparc isn't it?
How about that Corel Netwinder with the StrongArm in it. It'll work there, too, right?
And on the Alpha?
PPC? That's Apple's home turf, where Linux can go head to head with MacOS. Apple will release a Linux PPC version, too?
Companies don't want to support Linux with commercial applications. It's just too expensive to maintain. Sure, some companies will cater to the largest Linux demographic, Linux-i386, but, since when is Linux about only supporting the largest demographic?
>I'm sure someone can purchase those specs to >create their own player if they'd like, but no
>one will.
Considering Sorenson has been contacted and says that Apple will not allow them to license the codec to others, this is extremely debatable. The only way to view these these media files is via Quicktime.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
I just signed and I just want to remind people that Linux is not a x86 only kernel. I personally run it on Alpha. Some people run it on SPARC, PowerPC, etc. While a binary only application for Linux x86 would be helpful to some, but not all. So be sure to specify what platform.
Well, how about a "save" button? Its pretty irritating to download somthing off the 'net for two hours, only to have to download it again if you want to see it again.
Strange... I've always been able to save QuickTime movies to this machine. I paid for my version, true, though I was very pissed off at having to do that. However, even that's irrelevant; there are half a billion QuickTime-supporting plugins out there, and nearly all of them DO have a save feature, you can still circumvent QuickTime's little thing there with no trouble at all.
Also, Apple aperantly decided that it's player was so great, that it should be used for everything else as well! After all, I'm sure apple knows more about the PNG format then IE or netscape, right?
Actually, at the moment it does. Have you seen the state of PNG support in current versions of IE and Netscape? It's not pretty. It's quite a shame, really; neither browser supports it fully (or even close to fully, particularly where transparency is concerned).
Mozilla's another matter entirely. But there's also no QuickTime plugin for Mozilla, on any platform. At least, not yet.
Of course, since qucktime dosn't have a save, now I can't save PNG files without some work.
I dealt with this one above.
I don't have quicktime installed, and I doubt I ever will again. I want to use the programs that I think are good, not the ones apple choses.
Then turn off the plugin for those things you don't want it to see. It's a very simple matter, not unlike the work you do to enable the plugin you do want to use.
All we need are the specs for the codecs so that we can write decent players. After all, what are the odds of Apple picking a toolkit that everyone likes?
Paul.
The number of people that actually pay for QuickTime for Linux will probably be negligible regardless of whats said in the poll. A better approach would be to build a financial case for releasing a LGPL QuickTime Codec library and maybe a player that makes use of it.
Enabling QuickTime in Linux would add a substantial amount to the QuickTime installed userbase which in turn would give Apple favourable credentials in selling QuickTime server solutions... which is where the money really is.
You're on the right track, but the problem is that Apple themselves seem to be impeding any sort of progress on the Sorenson codec for xanim. From the xanim homepage:
I have contacted Sorenson about licensing their codec. They responded that Apple won't allow them to license it to others.
It's known that Mark Podlipec (the xanim guy) is pretty competent and doesn't even require codecs to be released as open source; yet Apple still won't let him write one. I personally could care less about "genuine" quicktime for Linux, but I just want to be able to watch all of the trailers.
I found it on the list of signatures for that petition, doing curious searches to see if anyone "interesting" had signed up so far...
J.
With comments like this popping up, can they be ignored for much longer.....?
"If you'd like porting or development help.
I can arrange it, and I if you make or
allow a Linux Quicktime port, I will
make it the "standard" for all Andover.net
streaming video. We have about 2.4 devout
readers on our various sites (notably
including http://slashdot.org and
http://freshmeat.net), and we're starting
to move into video news production, so
this is a substantial offer.
I would also be willing to explore the
use of Mac OS X as our primary editing
platform and, if it works well for us,
will happily publicize the fact that we
use it.
- Robin "roblimo" Miller
Editor in Chief,
Andover.Net
phone 410-799-5725 "
Linux is good for developers because it is hard to write a program to crash the system (unless run with root privs, of course. and I'm ignoring root exploits _in other programs_ here.) (AFAIK, no programs are known to be able to crash the linux kernel (i.e. make it panic.))
Since you can't even write a program to crash the system if you are trying to, you aren't too likely to break the system with the program you're developing, no matter what you're doing. (unless you're writing a kernel module or a rootly program to tweak kernel parms.)
I haven't said anything about the possibilities of DOS by getting daemons to die, but it is very, very hard to get sshd to die, so at least the admin can fix it
(If any of the above is false, I would like to hear about it. Please back up any assertions with facts/URIs to docs I should have read before spouting off...)
I don't know how WinNT or Win2k is at this, but I know the Mac sux rocks as a development platform.
Macs have two huge problems. Memory allocation (the app needs more memory than it is allocated. "Sorry, we got lazy when we wrote that part of the OS. but hey, the GUI looks nice, doesn't it:)", and cooperative multitasking. I've seen a guy lose work he had started to type in MS Word on a Mac (a ppc with at least MacOS 7.5, IIRC.). He ran NCSA telnet (*puke*, use NiftyTelnet SSH) to check on some facts. It turned out that the network connection didn't work, (cable unplugged, plugging in didn't help), and NCSA telnet hung indefinitely. After a couple hours, he rebooted. While the computer was waiting for the TCP connection, _you couldn't switch to another program_, _you couldn't cancel the connection attempt_, you couldn't do anything. For all intents and purposes, the machine was locked hard. Don't remember whether the Command+power key worked, but nothing would unwedge this dumb OS. Not very impressive, especially compared to the UltraSPARC workstations in the next lab over, with GNU emacs
LaTeX
Anyway, the co-operative multitasking is why it's such a pain in the ass for d.net to write clients for the mac.
This issue bit me a while ago. MacOS can't even multitask an MP3 player, it seems. On an iMac (original model, G3 @ 233, 32MB RAM, crap speakers), running an mp3 player (don't remember which program specifically) in the background while doing a bit of spreadsheet and graphing (really light workload!), there was a noticable pause between typing something and having it appear on the screen. Stopping the MP3 player fixed this. So, you say that MacOS can run 5 programs at once? It can't even run 2! You can have lots of programs open, but not getting the CPU. If you have a few programs which all want the CPU, your Mac won't like it. (I sincerely hope that MacOS X mostly fixes this. There's certainly hope, since somebody here said it's based on FreeBSD 3.2, which multitasks quite nicely (even though it isn't Linux, you
all kick butt. BeOS is pretty sweet too. (I've only seen the x86 version, though. What impresses me most is that they have the sense to include GNU bash 2.0 and GCC, plus posix utils:)
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
I can't see how releasing a Quicktime player for linux will help the
community. The specs are hidden, and so it will be closed-source. It
may not run when libc changes, it won't change with the time, we won't
know what it does when our back it turned, and we won't be able to
adjust it or to write our own player. We don't need a player, we need
the specs.
I think I said this in my original submission, but it got cut: The client for Linux does not need to be Open Source, so long as it's available.
You need to make it clear to Apple exactly what it is that people are petitioning for. There's a huge difference between asking for a client and asking for it to be GPL'd.
Just letting us have it, free or not, open-source or not, would win Apple a lot of longhaired fans.
It's nice to think that, but I suspect that Apple, like Troll Tech, is doomed to abuse from the peanut gallery here regardless of what they do.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If MicroSoft's player played QT movies, that would remove any incentive for sites to use MicroSoft's format (since the QT movies would play anywhere, and even a tiny precentage increase in sites would be worth it if the support required zero effort). I would think this would be an enormous win for Apple, since they could still control the *trademark* of QT and thus a lot of mindshare. MicroSoft would likely compete by either releasing information about their format, or at least making a Macintosh player (maybe even a Linux one) which would be a good thing too.
I second that. A .so is far preferable to a full client.
To give Apple some recognition for their work, all they need to do is add creditsText() and creditsImage() to the API and _recommend_ that client developers invoke these in response to selection of About or Help in their clients.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
If all the qt codecs were open source...
We wouldn't HAVE as many codecs. Think Sorenson would donate their codecs for the good of mankind? They're only bad guys if they *prevent* you - yes YOU - from writing your own implementation of a QT coded. Wasn't it Linus who said people who complain about other's licenses are just whiners. You CAN do something about this if you code yourself.
Microsoft *already* supports QT in Windows Media Player. In fact, it STEALS your file associations and makes itself the default player for MOV's on Windows. That's wrong, but as a registered Apple developer Microsoft has easy access to Quicktime internals. Plus, Microsoft settled out of court for allegedly misusing that access to build a Windows media player that even today is only half as good.
Please, do NOT wish for a Linux version of MS Media Player - they made a version for the Mac, and using a G3/300 it is SOOO slow it actually drops frames and the audio pops. Mind you I've gotten better performance in Quicktime, fullscreen, on a PowerMac 6100/60MHz and only 40 megs RAM.
BTW, the downloadable Macintosh version of QuickTime *also* has the annoying register message. If you upgrade your Mac to System 9 you get a registered player.
By complaining that Apple will never open source the QT player you add further to the internal arguement that Apple shouldn't support a bunch of yammering Linux users who believe all software should be free. If that's your opinion - I respect it - but if you ever buy ANY OTHER software you have no right to complain and you cloud the arguement.
Oh, two things:
if you read the Apple developer docs you can "extend" Apple's Quicktime and make any damn player design you want. There are Perl-based MP3 players for the Mac, that just hook into the QT runtime.
I will bet anything that Apple will support QuickTime Player on Linux sometime between the summer release of OS X Consumer, and say 2 years from now. Why do I believe this? Because Apple wants to sell software, and it would be STUPID for them to handout an x86 Linux player when they are going to try selling their OWN verison of UNIX.
Technological reasons aside, I think a big reason Apple is 'going UNIX' is to fuck Microsoft and their crap NT model. Apple is a FAR better friend to the Linux/OSS community than say Sun, yet people always bitch about Apple Quicktime or the inevitable missing floppy drive.
This post made with Mozilla M13. Yum.
I only pay for products that meet these criteria:
- works reasonably well
- reasonable cost
- exists (duh?)
- works in the OS of my choice
Now, this excludes Windows, which is obviously required to use QT4. I could buy a Mac and end that controversy, but that's not a reasonable cost at this time.I'm not demanding Apple release this as Open Source. It'd be real nice if they'd just port the player and a plugin (for all those damn "embedded QT" web pages) to Linux/SunOS/(your favourite Unix here). They don't have to open anything; just port the stuff over. If they charge fees for it, and I can verify that it works, here's my money... I did that with VMware and Xing MP3 encoder, and I'm prepared to pay for the Linux version of Opera (bought the win* version, tho I don't use win* much) when it comes out.
--
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
You Said: Well, how about a "save" button? Its pretty irritating to download somthing off the 'net for two hours, only to have to download it again if you want to see it again. The Facts: The Quicktime plugin is perfectly capable of saving anything that isn't streamed from a QuickTime or Darwin Server. I do it all the time. Of course, I paid for it :) You also said: After all, I'm sure apple knows more about the PNG format then IE or netscape, right? The Actual Fact: Netscape did not support PNG when Apple added this to the QT plugin. It made viewing inling PNG graphics possible. It can also be turned off. Just letting y'all know... -K
One day, you'll learn to watch what you post...
Well, if I remember correctly. QuickTime first came out in the very late 80's or early 90's (probably early 90's - maybe '91 or so).
My guess is that Apple had it first. I don't think they care though, as they usually don't refer to it as 'QT' (people do).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
QuickTime is far more than a movie player. It supports a large number of different file formats, plus different effects (fading, zooming, zooms, cut scenes, etc). It also includes support for 3D models, Apple's VR technology (with hotspots), sprites, streaming, etc.
While most people just use it for movie playback, that's not its only use.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
"I doubt we'll persuade Sorensen to abandon their technology and release it to the world, but I heard that Compaq at one time was going to license Quicktime for $1/cpu shipped. I'd gladly pay $1 (probably even more) for the right to use a good collection of video codecs. "
Quicktime is free to bundle and use with your apps. The only fee is if you choose to bundle Quicktime Pro (costs at bulk $2 per copy included) or refuse to have a Apple Quicktime Pro ad appear the first time the user starts up an app linking to Apple Quicktime (costs at bulk $1 per copy included). So in most cases it's free.
And it's free to write your own app to access the Quicktime Pro features, the pro upgrade only effects the features of the offical Apple Quicktime Player or the offical Apple Quicktime Plugin. Write your own player and you are free to access these features, AFAIK.
I haven't been paying close attention to Quicktime licenseing lately, so things may have changed, but they might not have.
"But the quicktime player is a fairly hardcore macos app, there isn't even a decent player for OSX yet... I'm betting it wouldn't be quite so easy to strip away the gui and port it."
Very True. Quicktime was orginally built and designed to work on Macs, and many of the orginal Quicktime features were hard coded for the M68k processor (which is the reason for the Quicktime PowerPlug, which appears to simply be a big PowerPC-native hack of Quicktime).
Of course this wouldn't be the first platform specfic software to get new life in other platforms, just look at Linux, an OS at one time designed to run exclusively on the x86. Now, after around 5 years of hard hacking it works pretty good on many non-x86 platforms, I am writting this on a PowerPC Linux machine right now.
Apple is already making Quicktime less dependent on the Mac OS/68k, since much of it now works on Windows and the modern mostly-PowerPC Mac OS.
As a hardcore MacOS developer, I am quite willing to admit that Quicktime isn't the greatest of standards, but it makes my job a lot easier. The player and browser plug-ins leave a lot to be desired, but the Quicktime Extension, a library with the Quicktime core, is an invaluable and time-saving tool for any multimedia MacOS developer. I could write an Mp3 player that utilises Quicktime in 20 minutes, and incorporate an groovy GUI if you add another coupl'a hours.
So, all in all, I don't think Quicktime is something that Windows or Linux users could want. Quicktime belongs in MacOS, and I regret that Apple decided to port to the MS whoredom.
Hey, buddy..
I just love seeing people plaster their ignorance in regard to PowerPC/MacOS computers all over Slashdot.
When you buy that 1500 dollar Mac you're getting a a whole lot more than you get with a 900$ PC...you get a high-quality sound card, speakers, a ShadowMask ultra-quality monitor, netcard...and best of all you get MacOS, which to tell you the absolute truth from my own personal experience, is certainly more stable, more convenient and better to develop for than Windows 9x or NT.
Quake 2 wasn't ported to MacOS by John Carmack, by the way.
I frequently waste my time replying to fanatic Mac-haters here on Slashdot. I think that most people who write these kinds of comments have no idea what they're talking about. In all likelihood they've never worked in MacOS or owned a Mac.
The fact remains that Apple has survived through years of bad management and faulty business decisions because they, as a company, have inspired intense customer loyalty that rivals that of Linux. Now, I don't know about you folks, but I KNOW that a company that makes "crappy" products does not inspire "intense customer loyalty"...
I am a developer for the MacOS platform, although I use LinuxPPC and SuSE PPC too. The MacOS computer culture is friendly and rich, especially when you think of the fact that Apple users are a small minority.
Apple Computers are, on the whole, good value for money...but look at it this way: in most cases you are paying for using "NOT-Windows". Linux is a clever operating system, but what many fail to perceive is the fact that it is not appropriate for computer-illiterate people. KDE and Gnome are nice, but they both lack the simplicity of Windows and MacOS.
So please try to muster some respect for a company that has throughout the history of computers usually been at the front of innovation and originality in the business. Think before you write, don't write before you think.
looks like you've made your 5000 names target... I was number 5340! Let's hope this works....
Absolutely a crock.
Open a movie in your browser. Click on the small arrow in the right corner. Plugin settings... Remove/Add extensions as you wish.
I should correct myself. Charles used to say that MPEG-2 was a delivery-only medium. Hence, nobody would ever want to edit in it.
Ofcourse there are countless MPEG-2 editing systems, as well as the professional Beta SX format. Visionary.
There was a pretty nasty discussion on the Apple QuickTime-talk mailing list last autumn about this exact point, and I can give you quotes from Charles Wiltgen, who used to be the main QT evangelist for Apple over many years, but who left quite recently to go elsewhere. In fact, the thread we were writing was forced shut by Charles, and deemed as off-topic. The discussion can be read here, here and here. These are Apple's daily digests of the list. The primary reasons for Apple not having made a cross-platform (why limit it to Linux?) are as follows:
Vendor licencing
Apple wants the vendors to sponsor development of the player to their platform. In the Linux case, this was quite clear. "Red hat is one Linux vendors who just had a very successfull IPO, and there are a few other Linux vendors with plans to do the same." (sic)
I asked for cost estimates. No response.
When mentioning that Apple indeed ported the QT client to the MS Windows platform, the obvious response is that they went from a 7% or so market share to a 95% market share.
Market Share
Apple are not interested in spending millions of dollars (their estimate) on porting the QT Client to Linux because of market share. How many percent more users would they receive by doing this? The amount is negligable. However, I think they shouldn't concentrate on a Linux port alone, but rather a true Cross-platform port. If complex systems like Oracle can be ported to Linux (closed source, even! No need to open that up!) then why not the QT client?
I tried to make it clear to them that their precious market share is exactly why they should invest in spreading the client to as many platforms as possible. He who owns the player, owns the market, right? To this, the general response is that "the future of QT is MacOS X and Altivec".
Ofcourse, if they have the QT client natively on MacOS X, then obviously they should be able to port it to whatever, right?
I tried pointing to SGI's at the time interest in Linux over NT. I tried pointing to various other clients which are available cross platform (Acrobat, Flash, etc) and that have become de-facto standards as a result of increasing accesibility of their clients.
No luck. Linux, and most other Unix flavours are used as servers 99% of the time. For them, the streaming server is perfect. "QuickTime is on every mainstream OS right now, which is what our customers (consumers, content developers, software developers) want."
MacOS X and Altivec
After a while, the list got blocked from Linux/cross-platform discussions, and there was a private mail-discussion about the topic. Charles wrote "It's actually getting really boring, not to mention off-topic. Apple's future is Mac OS X and Altivec, period. Naturally this is Quicktime's future as well."
Charles was notoriously narrow-minded. He truly despised MPEG2-support (that's why there isn't any in the QT client) and in general was quite disliked as such.
Hopefully this time such a petition can get through. But don't count on it.
I think I said this in my original submission, but it got cut: The client for Linux does not need to be Open Source, so long as it's available. I know I for one would pay upwards of 30$ for it - though it probably wouldn't cost that much. Just letting us have it, free or not, open-source or not, would win Apple a lot of longhaired fans. And it needs them...
How many total sigs are there so far?
Major troll on your part...
BTW, Quicktime runs great on my old Mac and that was a first generation PowerPC!
I've also spent a lot of time with QuickTime on Windoze and it works great there too.
--hunter
RateVegas.com - Vegas Reviews
Well, they didn't have any trouble porting to windows
QuickTime for Windows contains a good chunk of the MacOS API. So, they pretty much had to create an entire Macintosh-compatiblity library to get QuickTime to run. It was a big job.
(Some non-media MacOS programs have been ported to Windows using Quicktime.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
The only thing "Pro" about QT Pro is the player. The functionality's in the libs.
Never refuse a breath mint.
I also wonder why people want this. I have seen very little video in QT format on the web that isn't just product promotion. If people want to sell me something, I think they should put the video into a format I can read. Most content that could be considered informational at all (and I'm using the term "informational" lightly) is in Real format or Windows Media Player format. And much scientific and public video content is in MPEG format.
I think Linux (and the world) needs free, open-source streaming and archival audio and video formats. MPEG and the H.xxx standards are probably the best bets right now, despite some patent issues; both have open source implementations. On the other hand, I think an influx of proprietary media architectures and clients simply takes away the incentive to do things right for Linux, and I don't understand why people who want that kind of software don't just buy a Windows or Mac OS machine (OS X, if you want a UNIX-like kernel).
Be happy that there is an ASPL to complain about. You don't see a MSSPL (Guess what that could be?) among others (Intuit, Adobe, Corel (so far as wordperfect goes)) haven't even taken the first step of allowing the viewing of the code to their core products so that people can work to extend or fix them, "for free" as you put it.
It is their code, and i'd reckon that you should be thankful that they have decided to start opensourcing their products (even if you don't like their particular license).
And you know what? Owning the Windows and Mac multimedia markets is just about owning the the digital video market. What are they combined? 99% of the desktops out there? If Linux would hurry up and get some market share, then there'd be an argument that they're not covering all the platforms with their cross platform strategy, but Linux is just a little blip on the radar, so far as their potential market goes.
Register it so you can get the pro version and you can save anything you want. They just give the bare minimum of features away for free... If you want to do more than watch movies, then you need to buy it. It gets you more than the ability to save files, though. You can also recompress them with different codecs and add video effects.
Maybe it's your system that's a piece of shit. What else do you have installed on there? Surely there's something your'e overlooking.
For one, Sorenson's a LOT more resource hungry, simply because it compresses the data much more effectively than otehr codecs, such as Cinepak... It also needs a lot of muscle behind it to decompress all those frames.
Bash it all you want. Just don't bash it until you know all the facts.
Your x86 box is probably covered with by more patents (hardware-wise) than anything that Apple's made in the past few years. Or, at least all their patented stuff is licensed from Intel, these days.
MacOS X is on it's way to becoming an opensourcish product. Alreay you've got the kernel, QuickTime server, and who knows what else?
Apples a different company than they were 10 years ago.
I still have to disagree... At work I run a beige Mac G3... Granted, it's got 136 Megs of RAM (and "oh... the 21-inch monitor!" :)
But day in and day out, I run QuarkXPress, SoundJam MP, Netscape 4.7, MS Internet Explorer 4.5, Outlook Express 5, Lotus Notes (I forgot what version), Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Word, Filemaker, and Anarchie, concurrently, with no difficulties. I don't even shut down my machine at night, just leave it where it was and come back and sit down and do it.
I can't even remembre the last time I had a major issue that wasn't network wide, including the PC's (it would seem that Lotus Notes is one of the flakiest products I've ever seen).
All the IT people generally avoid my desk because I can counter every thing that they suggest, citing the fact that I have less problems than anyone else in the department, and I'm the only person responsible for touching my machine.
That's strictly my experience. Apparently, yours has varied.
Sorry, no. It's almost impossible to explain, but if you take a Mac user and a PC user next to each other, and make them switch seats, the Mac person will have next to no difficulty adapting to the new system, where as the PC person will gripe immensly about the smallest discrepency. And they get frustrated much more quickly, PC users. Not because the OS is at fault, but because they're so closed minded that they can't possibly envision that there may be another way to do things....
:)
This is not a bash at all PC users. Just the ones i've witenessed in my lifetime
Get over it. Aside from the current lack of protected memory, the MacOS is generally far superior to NT in terms of usability and multimedia support. Yes, the machine may crash a little bit more (NT's far from perfect in that regard), but for the most part, crashing Mac's are generally a sign that people simply are operating them under different groups of assumptions.
And why not go check out the prices of NT capable systems from major vendors, prior to getting angry at apple? First off, you're comparing the price of a LOW END wintel machine (i doubt you can buy a machine preloaded with NT from a major manufacturer for $800) to the highend of the iMac line. The middle range of the iMac's is $1300, gives you 64 megs of memory, 8 megs of VRAM, a DVD player, USB and FireWire, awesome speakers, and it just looks cooler and runs quieter than anything else.
Wait til Windows 2000 is available. You'll see the average price of machines float upwards again, as it's way too resource hungry for the current crop of $500 PC's.
I'd say you pretty much get what you pay for with your hardware. Mac's cost more, but in general, i feel their archeticture is far superior to that of the lowend crop of windows machines.
Everything that QuickTime downloads is somewhere on your hard drive, usually in your browsers cache. Just go in there, and poke around and pull out most recent quicktime movie, and 9 times out of 10, that's the one you were looking for. If you want a more elegant solution, pay apple for the pro version that does more than simply play movies.
If they're going to make an OSS media program, thats cool, but its not even needed. Whats needed is a library that will allow people to make OSS software. Even if its a binary version of the library, I think thats fine. Source is always preferred.
Unless you were at Berkeley way back when programming the original kernel you probably haven't helped Apple much with their system. BSD != open source.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Instead of begging Apple to spend their money giving out source code for the Quicktime binaries, why not offer to BUY it from them. See companies who fail to see the glory of Stallman work in an economy called capitalism. You PAY for things and receive them. I paid 30$ for the pro version of Quicktime and I didn't end up in the poor house. If you want a Linux port (for the various ISAs) ask Apple if you can pay them to make it for you. Corporations work on the concept called profit, it is not very profitable to spend millions of dollars over ten years developing a multimedia suite only to give out the source code to it because people signed a petition. It would be more profitable if a company like Red Hat or SuSE asked Apple nicely if they could develop a Quicktime 4 compatible player under an NDA. That would be profitable for Apple and for Linux users.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
QuickTime is already available for linux. You can play *.mov files. There is just one little problem, and that is that the sorensen(sp?) codec is unavailable, which is what most *mov files on the internet use. And, it seems it will cost money to make it available. Apple payed for it with Mac and Windows versions, so thats why they have no problem. right?
So the real problem is that somebody needs to pay for a licence of the sorenson codec, right? If thats the case, and if you don't have to pay a per copy fee (which i guess is the case, or the QT player wouldn't be freely distributed), couldn't redhat, corel, va, or some other company pay for it, so it could be distributed with Xanim, or some better media player?
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
Looks like our voices have been heard in Cupertino by the people at apple.
a ming/
Quick time is available for linux now..
check it out and have fun
http://www.publicsource.apple.com/projects/stre
He that hath a trade, has an estate. (Ben Franklin)
>Given Quicktime's bent to associate itself with every known media type upon installation,
start -> settings -> control panel -> quicktime -> file type associations -> uncheck to your hearts desire. there, that wasn't so hard now was it?
all easily modifiable with regedit too.
this proves that all you want is a "free ride"...
It proves nothing of the sort. What I meant by that is that something is better than nothing. At any rate, Windows users get a 'free ride' don't they?
If all you wanted was a client for linux, you would be satisfied with closed source
Frankly, I don't really use streaming video that much. I really want it to be available for Linux as more of a checklist item, and for other people. Just because I think that having something is better than nothing doesn't mean I am completely 'satisfied'.
At any rate, RealPlayer is already available for Linux. I think Microsoft even did a port of their media player for Linux at one point. Personally I'd rather see QuickTime become the de-facto industry standard than Microsoft's format. I can't say I have that much of a preference between QuickTime and RealPlayer, but both is better than only one.
maybe apple wants quicktime to be closed source!
Maybe they do, but why does that mean that people can't petition them to change their mind?
it's quite possible that they want to keep the secrets of quicktime to themselves,because they don't want assholes to steal it and make money off of it.
Frankly, if people really want to find the 'secrets' of QuickTime, what they have to do is look up Apple's patents and/or reverse engineer Apple's code. How is an open source player going to be stolen and made money on anyway? Apple's code will still be protected by patents and their algorithms will still be protected by patents (which of course is another topic altogether). There are lots of ways for them to protect QuickTime and still do an open sourced version. Your argument just doesn't make much sense.
we linux users can't play the videos that windows/mac users view with the latest quicktime product. i'm sure apple knows this already, and i guess it's ok to remind them, but i think there's a better idea.
how about the next time you run across a web site that is using a media architecture that _you_ can't view (because you are using something other than windows or macos) *tell the webmaster*!
next time you head over to broadcast.com, and you can't play the "windows media" streams, let them know. email starwars.com and tell them you can't view the trailer that's in quicktime. and so on...
perhaps if the _content providers_ realize that there is a large market that is entirely overlooked, they will pressure the people who provide them technology into doing something smart -- making it accessible to everyone. of course, apple will listen to people (ie, lucasarts) that license ($$) their technology. if not, too bad for them. maybe the content providers will switch to a more widely accepted format.
either way, we win.
- pal
The RealPlayer on Linux is a piece of crap. It's an alpha of G2. Sound skips and does other odd things, it can't embed as a NS plugin like the Windows version can, and it crashes a lot. It's nice to have it, but it is not that great. Furthermore, there's now the RealPlayer 7, and I'm looking for any evidence at all that Real is going to even try to do Linux for this one.
For reasons of keeping secrets, this is true. However, it is inevitable that users of non-x86 systems will feel left out. This would probably be best as an Apple-operated project with select users running it. I'd like to see it for Linux/PMac, Linux/Alpha, and why not Solaris and a few BSDs. Binaries could serve to alienate more than no support at all IMO.
Lycestra
Only 5000 sigs... I think that they should sent to Apple something like 1M or 5M signatures. And send an update every week. It should be funny to see more sigs than Apple based customers :)
Oh, two things:
/scripts/mp3player.plx
if you read the Apple developer docs you can "extend" Apple's Quicktime and make any damn player design you want. There are Perl-based MP3 players for the Mac, that just hook into the QT runtime.
Uh, huh. This is ture! I have Pudge's source for one of these. It's done in about 270 lines of Perl (including the POD). Quicktime does all the heavy lifting.
Rather than post the code, I'll just link to it.
http://pudge.net/files/macperl
What many people fail to notice, is that Quicktime is more than just a streaming media format. Quicktime in fact, handles all sorts of still image formats, does a variety of image processing/effects, and also CONVERTS between the various supported formats. This is independant of the plethora of compression codecs (which seems to be the major bone of IP contention).
On the Mac, Quicktime is installed as a "System Extension", and is available for use by all applications. One doesn't need Apple's player to play Quicktime movies on the Mac, or even to make use of Quicktime's full feature set.
Forget the player and codecs. What we need for Linux is a complete Quicktime library, a set of APIs and a Quicktime SDK. OpenGL and Quicktime in combination ROCK!
<rant>
As a 16-year Mac veteran with a foot in both camps, I understand Apple's motivation. They make money by selling hardware. The Linux community hasn't shown consistently that they'll BUY Apple hardware. If anything, there's a manifestly anti-Apple sentiment from a community of Intel die-hards. Why should Apple support you?
Dump a few of those Pentium III's, recycle them, ship them to a needy third-world country, and replace them with PowerMacs (preferably new, but buy used if you must (if you do this, be sure to upgrade the OS)). Run a dual-boot system. Being a CUSTOMER of Apple will give you more weight with them.
</rant>
BTW, us Mac folks do a lot of these petitions. It was the only way we got games ported to the Mac during the days when everyone thought the Mac was dead. We're still fighting Corel over WordPerfect.
Apple will listen. They will listen better if you wave money at them. It's the nature of the beast.
We don't have to like it, but we do have to live with it, alas.
--B
Here's how you get rid of that QuickTime ad. Change the date on your machine to some time in the future, like 2010. Launch quicktime. Close QuickTime. reset the date to the present. that should get rid of that ad. QuickTime was set as the default, I don't see that it would be hard to cahnge it to something different.
They have some good music on QuickTime. I am listening to GoGaGa radio at this time. I think the sound quality is fine.
photosMy Photostream
If Apple open-sourced QT, then MS would be able to make its Windows Media player play QT movies. QT is Apple's ace in the hole, it's more popular than MacOS (even with the stupidly designed qt4 player). They're not going to give that away.
I don't see anything wrong with a *nix QT client though. I remember reading that Apple usually has to hold back the release date for each version of QT because the Windows version takes so long. Other platforms would probably only add to that delay, and with streaming taking off the way it is, any kind of delay can be lethal. Just look at the delay between QT4 and 4.1. 4.1 isn't a huge upgrade (afaik, it adds support for vbr mp3s and ads in video streams) but it took a long time; I'm sure much of that delay was syncing the Mac and Windows versions.
handy quicktime link
PS - I love the name "Windows Media Player for Mac." They couldn't just call it the MS Media Player?
___________________
rooooar
I would hope Apple sees that. After all, i was pretty impressed by how short a time it took for people to port Darwin Streaming Server to Linux, and apple incorperated those changes and made it available pretty quick.
But quicktime is a bit trickier. The streaming server was built upon an OSX base, so it was largely UNIX compatible anyway, minus some threading issues. But the quicktime player is a fairly hardcore macos app, there isn't even a decent player for OSX yet... I'm betting it wouldn't be quite so easy to strip away the gui and port it.
I'm rambling now... Anyway, I'd like to see it too, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to follow their current strategy of releasing the core of the apps.
How about the same way they do now? The vast majority of people download the free version of qt4. Then you can buy the deluxe version (which has some really cool features for $30). Why not the same on linux? I doubt apple makes much money off qt player now anyway, the real interest is in getting their player to be the most widely used. That helps to sell their creation tools (like iMovie and Final Cut Pro) and I'm sure in the future they will have a more advances pro version of their streaming server.
I can go sign as many times as I want as Robin Miller...
What's wrong with the Darwin Streaming Server? I've been running it on linux for about 3 months, and the latest release even has binaries available for linux and solaris. It's open source, and works on a well documented protocal (RTSP), as well as now being able to stream over HTTP. The only downside now is that you have to "touch" movies to stream them, which means you have to buy quicktime pro or another product that can hint movies (an open source project to be?).
I'm also pretty sure it is independant of quicktime and media format since it's just a streaming protocol, but don't hold me to it.
It would seem to me that this all boils down to the bottom line.. how can Apple make money from releasing a linux-compatible quicktime player.
There are an estimated 10 million linux users out there. I'll bet if this market is opened to playing quicktime movies there would also be a large group of linux users who will then want to make quicktime movies.
Release a quicktime player for linux and sell a quicktime development environment for linux.
Speak truth to power.
Wrong. SGI and IBM care a lot about open source. So does AOL/Netscape; it appears as if Apple is at least concerned (OS-X).
They just need some handholding; rude Linux users don't function for that at all.
Looking through this thread is really sick. Here is a legitamte attempt to get Apple to support QT4 on Linux (presumably with Sorensen, so we can watch all the cool trailers and stuff.)
What is the response of some (lots) of Linux user? We don't want an Apple player. We want specs and source!
Get a grip. Don't you realize that big business doesn't get wise to open source over night? And that there are some people who spent lots of time and money developing Sorensen? Why should we get their work for free?
I just have a problem with the ever growing population of Linux users who can't leave well enough alone.
From the horse's mouth, in response to an email I sent:
Thank you for your question about Sorenson Video on unsupported OS platforms. Sorenson Vision has chosen to team up with Apple and their QuickTime
product. Because of this, Sorenson Video is only available on supported QuickTime OS platforms.
If you're interested in QuickTime for platforms other than Mac or Windows, please contact your
platform vendor and let them know that you would like them to license QuickTime from Apple.
Once QuickTime 3 or4 is available on a platform, Sorenson Video will be there as well.
Sorenson Vision Technical Support
I think petitions are needed right now. It's the only way we can really make a "show of force" in asking for software/hardware. The more software we get ported in the present, the less need we'll have for petitions in the future. As petitions succeed, more people will see software for Linux, thus driving the market for more apps toward Linux.
Now, this excludes Windows, which is obviously required to use QT4. I could buy a Mac and end that controversy, but that's not a reasonable cost at this time.
Windows NT dosn't work well enough for you but MacOS does? what the hell crack are you smoking? NT is a hell of a lot cheaper the the overprice iMAC (yeh, $1,500 for somthing a $900 PC could do).
I rebooted my mac system more times the first weekend than I have rebooted all the WinNT systems I have ever owned
That's what John Carmak said when he started working on the Quake 2 port of quake 3. Repeat after me: mac OS is not better then Windows NT.
Ok, now sit back and watch some MacHead moderate me down as 'Troll'
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
That's what John Carmak said when he started working on the Quake 2 port of quake 3. Repeat after me: mac OS is not better then Windows NT.
Change Quake2 in that sentance to MacOS, so that it makes sense...
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ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
How 'bout I just don't use quicktime, that seems to be working pretty well now...
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ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
We wouldn't HAVE as many codecs. Think Sorenson would donate their codecs for the good of mankind?
You mean like the Motion Picture Exsperts Group?
Microsoft *already* supports QT in Windows Media Player. In fact, it STEALS your file associations and makes itself the default player for MOV's on Windows. That's wrong,
So? QuickTime steals them in the first place; the difference is, with QuickTime, you can't get your associations back, as there buried inside of IE. I can't right click and save a PNG file on my own computer! And at least media player doesn't flash me with an advertisement every time I use it.
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Dump a few of those Pentium III's, recycle them, ship them to a needy third-world country, and replace them with PowerMacs (preferably new, but buy used if you must (if you do this, be sure to upgrade the OS)). Run a dual-boot system. Being a CUSTOMER of Apple will give you more weight with them.
Yes, that's a good idea! Destroy thousands of dollars of computer equipment, from a hardware company that actively makes it difficult for alternative OS's, and is more expensive! So, that way we might get to watch their proprietary video format in a few years. Of course, by then we would all be Apple whores, so there would be no Risk in it for Apple
PPC may be 'faster', but x86 is cheaper both absolutely and in price/performance, x86 is more open, the architecture is controlled by more then one company. Intel does support Linux, investing in VA Linux, and Red Hat, and helping to port Linux to the new ia64 architecture.
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Hrm, A bit after the starwars trailer came out, I remember reading that sorensen wanted to have a Linux player or somthing, but that there licens with apple prevented that. So, at least acording to them, it was apple not sorensen who was keeping quicktime from Linux.
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Lets not be confusing. The Quicktime specification is already open and available. I've obtained it and used it.
Many of the codecs are proprietary, mostly owned by entities other than Apple. It would be nice to be able to license these and Apple is the natural conduit for this.
I doubt we'll persuade Sorensen to abandon their technology and release it to the world, but I heard that Compaq at one time was going to license Quicktime for $1/cpu shipped. I'd gladly pay $1 (probably even more) for the right to use a good collection of video codecs.
That is, until someone develops a good free video codec that meets my need. Then I'll keep my dollar, but thats the market working.
QuickTime is not a codec. QuickTime is not even a movie player. QuickTime is an entire media architecture, and there isn't really anything else like it out there. It supports every type of media you can imagine (images, movies, audio, MIDI, 3D, panoramas, vector-based animations). It supports dozens of of formats. It has its own built-in little language, so you can make interactive stuff in it (it has built-in Flash support too). It has its own complex file format that allows you to combine any supported formats in one file (so, for example, you could have a Sorenson encoded movie with a music track in MIDI, the lyrics for that track in MP3, and in-movie controls in Flash). It probably contains more code than the Linux kernel.
And it was never written with portability in mind. QuickTime was only ported to Windows by implementing a nice chunk of the Mac OS API on it. Porting QuickTime to Linux would be a very, very big undertaking.
However, QuickTime will run on Mac OS X, which is less similar (from a technical perspective) to current Mac OS versions that Linux is. It's possible that porting QT from Mac OS X to Linux wouldn't be such a problem.
Alternatively, it might be possible to write something that just played QT- encapsulated Sorenson video streams with QDesign audio tracks (which is what virtually all streaming QT content is compressed with) and didn't do everything else QT does. The QuickTime file format and streaming protocol are both open, so this would be possible with no help from Apple if someone wants to license the relevant codecs from Sorenson and QDesign.
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This space unintentionally left unblank.
If you want to petition for freely licensed specs for decoding then that is what the petition should be. If you want reference code for these codecs that should be in the petition. Sorenson should be the one to recieve the petition for their codec info or code. I just think we need to ask the right people for the right info, and realize what we already have available. The file formating info for Quicktime is already here, and we have free libraries and programs that can read it.
Try this link.
Am I the only one on the planet who has watched Quicktime movie in linux before?
Go get your client here...
http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html
If you want to use a streaming video standard that is supported on Linux, then consider using RealNetwork's RealProducer - the RealPlayer client is available for Linux.
.avi or .mpg videos.
For a Linux video editor you should try Broadcast2000. I'd imagine that RealProducer can import
The only way I could see Linux being a viable desktop solution for the masses is if we didn't have to petition companies to make Linux versions of their programs. When I can get anything for linux that I can get on my Windows Box I will be set. Until then Linux will stay being my primary server OS, and Win2k will be my client OS.
ps. the reason I use windows as my client is because I do a lot of graphic design with 3dStuido Max, and Lightwave.
Apple doesn't give a fuck if you 'approve' of thier licence. Neither do I.
:)
You forgot Linux Rulez!!!!! dumbass.
Heh, and nobody gives a fuck about AC's, so I guess we're (kindof?) even.
-- iCEBaLM
From what I'm reading here, it seems that the Sorenson codec is the only one which matters anymore.
And you'd be right, all the new quicktime movies use the sorenson codec, every single one of them, even that TIE-tanic spoof did. You cant watch quicktime movies anymore without sorenson, its impossible.
Come on. QuickTime works fine, even if you believe Apple touts it as the end all be all cross platform media streaming format (wow, that's a lot of qualifiers). You're forgeting operating systems when you say 2. I'll leave you to figure out your mistakes...
Make no mistake about it, the player is useless without the right codecs, There's a real player 5 for linux, and it works (almost) fine, I challenge you to play any G2 stream with it, you wont be able to, not the right codec. The G2 Linux player has been Alpha since MAY, and it too is getting venerable (cant use it with icravetv anymore I've noticed).
Streaming media, and really any media for that matter, is all about codecs, you can release a quicktime player for any OS, but if it doesnt support all the codecs, you're toast.
I stand by my original claim, Quicktime is only released and supported on 2 operating systems, I made no mistake.
-- iCEBaLM
Apple owns the specs to those CODECs and has absolutely no obligation, reason, or interest in releasing them to 'the community'. I'm sure someone can purchase those specs to create their own player if they'd like, but no one will. They won't because then they would have to charge money for their application.
Apple seems to have and exclusive license on the Sorensen codec, so even if someone wanted to, I dont think they could license it.
The real problem I have with Apple is they bring out their over-restrictive ASPL, and "open source" parts of what they call "darwin" (OS X) and expect people to code for them for free, they also tout QuickTime as the end all be all cross platform internet media streaming format, and its supported on what, 2 operating systems? Give me a break.
Their "open source" strategy seems to be to use as many buzzwords as possible to create mind-share, and maybe they'll sell a couple more G4s.
-- iCEBaLM
Where is the problem? Mozilla also is a great undertaking.
Let them release the original code and the community
will take care of the implementation.
I would bet the result would be better than the
original implementation.
As long as I can view it, it's good. Open Source is just icing on the cake... (a very unlikely icing at that)...
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
hmm..i thought shoutcast or icecast or whatever that thing is, did streaming video. Anyway, the one and only problem i can see with video being streamed is compatibility with QT/MS video. Its fairly straightforward to write a protocol to stream, the MPEG and MJPEG video stuff is already there..its just the compatibility problem.
Windows Quicktime + 32 bit colors = dog slow
That was probably your problem. Your conclusion is correct however.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
The current Quicktime contains a really annoying 'register me' message. If it was open sourced, that would be the first thing to disappear.
Gradually the features that Apple tries to flog in the full version would be implemented into Quicktime 'clones', to the point that one day in the future they wouldn't even be compatible.
If all the qt codecs were public knowledge, a certain other company beginning with 'M' would suddenly support it in their Windows Media Player, once again eliminating competition that didn't come ready-installed.
Still, a Linux version of Quicktime is perfectly feasible. Only Apple will never open source it.
insignificant sig
I think that this petition is a good idea and if apple releases a player (esp. if it is open source) It will be good for the linux community.
However, in order to convince Apple that they should develop and release such a player we need to let them know why releaasing a player or libraries for Linux will be good for THEM.
So, if your going to sign the petition, dont just say how nice it would be to play quicktime movies on your linux box. Try to outline what the benifit to apple is from a Linux Quicktime player
I have no qualms about paying for software. I'll gladly pay for software that I really like and use a lot; be it on Linux or Windows. It's just that you can get a lot of quality software on Linux for free, whereas most good software for Windows costs money. But of course, there are the people who use Linux only because it is free, and those are the kind of people who wouldn't use Quicktime no matter what, unless it was open-source. But most people are not like that.
Just one more thing that linux could really use (and help me delete that damn windows partition). I will sign!
~Jester
"I have great faith in fools: Self confidence my friends call it." ~Edgar Allan Poe
Sorensen is the name of that codec, which Apple doesn't own but does have an exclusive license for. This is a problem because of course Apple cannot release the source to that. Now QuickTime can use a variety of codecs and read a variety of formats. However the difference bettween Quicktime 4 and Quicktime 3 is primarly the Sorensen codec which qives QuickTime the compression and streaming capabilities which make it interesting.
And FYI there is a QuickTime libary for Linux at http://heroine.linuxbox.com/quicktime.ht ml but it just doesn't use Sorensen so it can't do all the cool stuff QuickTime 4 can.
>Might be better than nothing, but on the other hand proprietary standards isn't something very desirable in and of itself.
I don't think Quicktime is not a proprietary standard, the file format and the API are documented. (the file format is even the one used for MPEG-4 specs.)
It's a proprietary implementation.
Apple can keep it's QT technology, i'd rather wait until someone comes up with a truly open video codec.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Rather than trying to get Apple to open up their proprietary video format, why not spend your time encouraging the producers of quicktime videos to also/instead create their movies in the standard mpeg format? QuickTime is a non-standard, and mpeg is quite good enough that we don't need another video format.
Do you have ESP?
Maybe you should have read the petition first... it's not just for Linux. The third text box says: "Open source OS of choice:" or something like that. Plus, there is a comments section. Have fun.
Justin
I was wrong, it just says "OS of Choice:". Regardless, it isn't just aimed at Linux. Have fun.
Justin
If we choose a proprietary streaming solution now... well, just look how difficult it is migrating from .gif's to .png's.
:-)
With MS and Apple controlling the distribution via Windows and Mac hardware/software in a comfortable duopolistic symbiosis (let's forget the "knifing the baby" episode - it was a "pre-duopolistic error") even potentially platform-neutral Real doesn't stand a chance.
Unless Real implodes and an Open Source-friendly body takes over and does The Right Thing, our options are either to 1) launch a world-wide effort to develop best-of-breed codecs under GPL (or similar licence) or 2) to get (licenced) codecs from an OS-friendly organisation with enough resources.
If Real can't commit themselves to supporting Linux, do we really want Apple or MS "supporting" Linux (or anything outside their duopoly) in eternal alpha, always two versions behind? No we don't - no matter how desperate we are right now. Even if a big bucks geek site needs quick solutions to remain "competitive".
The codecs we need are not really different from all the other open protocols that made the internet - and Linux - possible. Would you trust MS or Apple to control HTML for the common benefit? Of course not.
Now, you are top-ranking staff of a leading geek "news publication". You should be "on the ball" on what's going to "matter" next. Well, you know that Linux is getting interest from the so-called internet appliance makers. You know that the killer app for the internet (and by extention to the masses) is quite simply communications. First email, then the web (publishing), then crappy streaming audio followed by jerky stamp-sized streaming video... okay, fast-forward to acceptably performing IP-based _video-telephony_ and mass-media broadcasting. Not only there is end-user demand for this, but broadcasters (and advertisers) would love to know who is receiving and what. Why do you think MS and Apple had such a catfight over some obscure codecs in the first place?
Back to appliances and Linux... how attractive do you think these - or Transmeta's Debian-based webpads - will be to consumers (and hardware manufacturers) without support for advanced streaming media when iBooks and winCE systems have it? Not very attractive, eh? Why are MS and Apple suddenly in love with bandwidth providers on one hand and makind deals with mainstream media companies on the other?
In essence, I want _you_ to tell me what will be available for Linux (without strings attached) instead of having you here drumming up support for a proprietary quick fix from a duopoly. You're the premium(-priced) Open Source news site, give us the scoop! Please.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
for us multimedia types. I'd love to do quicktime audio and video, and quicktimeVR in my comic. Presently it really sucks that Linux AY2Kers wouldn't be able to view it.
I signed the petition, and I hope that they, at the very least make Quicktime available to Linux users, but it would be even better if they released an Open Source QuickTime client for Linux, IMHO.
Nitrozac
Actually, the windows media player _does_ right now play .qt movies! It just does not support all the codecs that the apple quicktime player supports. So I guess if they open source the player, not the codecs, this wont be a problem.
nc.
I will not buy this software, it is scratched
That may be true for Quicktime running in the classic environment but is it true for Cocoa or even Carbon? What is Cocoa if not a Unix API?
DB
When everyday users get broad band connections to the internet at home, they *need* the security and stability that a Unix box brings. And they aren't going to be educated into being traditional Unix admins either. They're too busy being doctors, plumbers, and carpenters to add another profession.
But the technical community needs for them to be secure as well. The nightmare scenario with regard to hack attacks is to have a lot of powerful insecure boxes on the net with a broadband always on connection that are compromised and used as launch points. Intel's going to provide the power and even Microsoft can't hold down the hardware forever. Do we really want our net infrastructure to remain vulnerable or do we push Unix, whether Linux or Mac OS X or some other variants down the learning curve so that secure computing is available to the masses?
DB
The fact that Quicktime 4.1 is written as a Carbon app has nothing to do with the future of Mac OS development. As time goes on, more and more apps will be written in Carbon and then in Cocoa. This is the exact same progression that happened with 68k -> PPC.
It is this Cocoa future (2-3 years) that will lead to the best benefit for the other BSD variants. I don't think that BSD will have any problems hanging on until then and it will provide a long term boost because I predict that Cocoa BSD conversions will be trivial.
DB
I suspect that Quicktime for BSD is just around the corner. Since the next MacOS is going to be based on BSD, BSD apps are likely to explode in quantity during the next 2-3 years. Will this tip the rivalry of BSD v. Linux in BSD's favor?
DB
This is a really minor question, but why is it that I'm only asked for my free OS of choice on the petition? I'm a satisfied Windows NT user who would support (albeit not commercially -- no need for it, after all) a port of Quicktime to Linux. I do realize that I'm free to leave that part of the petition blank, but I also think that that particular question should not be restricted in such a manner.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure I even have a "free" operating system of choice. And would free-as-in-beer BeOS and Solaris count?
Damn, this sounds like flamebait. It really isn't. It's just something I was wondering about.
-jay
There's not Sorensen codec support, which is what stuff like movie trailers are encoded in 9 times out of 10
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
We're already over 2200 =)
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Yes, it is, and yes, it's making unhappy noises right now, but we like it. =)
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
We're just rounding the corner of 2400 posts now... great googily moogily =)
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Well, for the most part, Quicktime is already supported on your main 2 rampantly-proprietary operating systems of choice, and we're pushing for a change... it just seemed to make sense. Hey, there's always the comment field. ;-)
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Myself and Jon Reeves Hall of the Linux Users Group at Georgia Tech are organizing this petetion, and so far response has been great. Let Apple know that the Linux community will support them by BUYING the commercial version of the player if it's available, as that is their main benefit in doing the port (and so few Windows users buy it, perhaps we'll become a tier-one development platform =)
--Josh Litherland, LUG@GT
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
About a week ago I was looking at the Xircom web site. There was a streaming Quicktime presentation on one of the products (The Portstation. It's real nice! I'm all ready for 2.4 with my USB stuff!)
Anyway, I wrote a very professional note to Xircom about how disappointed I am that they choose to limit their market to Windows and MacOS users.
I CCed apple in this message, but it bounced. So I pasted the message into their comments page, making sure that I put To: whoever@xircom.com; CC:whoever@Apple.com at the top.
The idea here is to make Apple realize that they are pushing away potential corporate customers (i.e. the ones who pay the bills) by excluding other major OSes.
I think that we need to make Apple's PAYING customers realize that they should demand the release of a client.
I think that this is much more valuable that a bunch of people who are notorious for not wanting to pay for anything (software) clamoring for a free client.
-Peter
It's funny that you say that. I've been working for a company for a few months, converting their Mac network to an NT network (so they could use the right software - yeah yeah i know, leave me alone). All i have heard is a shitstorm of complaints about the user interface of the NT system. They want their macs back. In spite of the fact that the folks here are rather intelligent, they bitch about the smallest perceived inconveniences of the NT GUI.
But this is just an anecdote. Maybe you're right in general.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
We all know what you think, Mr. Gates.
Why should you get any support?
Why is your petition not supportive of OpenSource Operating Systems? Or asking Apple to OpenSource as much of the player as they can?
Why does it only support Linux?
Consider, Mac OS X is based on BSD.
Asking them to support BSD *AND* Linux makes sense, because the porting work to BSD has been done. Linux would be an afterthought, as most of the code for BSD is done.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Is it me, or is it a little strange that Slashdot is willing to use (and endorse!) by far the most proprietary computer product in the industry?
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I remember reading a while back, when Apple released the source to their QT Server software, they said that they wouldn't be able to release a full open source client because QT uses some codecs that Apple is licensing from other companies. They might release a freeware client, but I doubt they can release the code for the client. But c'mon fellas, QT Server is open source, and the protocols and codecs are open standards. I'm sure someone could whip up a client for QT media . . .
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Given Quicktime's bent to associate itself with every known media type upon installation, and pervasion throughout the system after installation in windows, are we not asking for trouble? I'm pretty sure there's a better product to ask to go OSS with, maybe shockwave?
Is there "the newest QT" codec library for xanim, i.e. in binary form? I think, that given that codecs are usually patented etc. that's probably the best thing we can get -- now. Yes, source or specs would be better, but I doubt they will ever release them..
I see a handfull of comments along the lines of, "Apple will never Open Source QuickTime" or "We don't need QuickTime, we need an Open Sourced QuickTime."
Okay, I'll agree that an open sourced version would be ideal but anything we can redistribute would be fine with me.
That would allow organizatios like Debian and RedHat to pass out CDs that you can use on many different machines (and your friend's machines, etc).
Can't we allow companies to keep their code private if their products are free (as in beer)?
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
I enjoy a bit of CPU load :) It's doing fine (though I did have to change the signature list from a Tcl script to a static page - it was a big hog). For reference, a dual PII with a lot of memory and a bit of carefully written CGI can take the /. effect :)
Hrmmm... By that logic, I wouldn't be a CS student at a rather difficult university...
We will run the data through a script to remove duplicate IP's and blank signatures, but thankfully there weren't many of those. Most people took this petition seriously, and I hope Apple recognizes this.
Thanks for the support and the suggestions. We'll keep you informed.
-J. Reeves Hall
Linux Users Group @ Georgia Tech
I guess I must be missing something, but Linux compatibility to me seems like a stupid thing to waste computer industry time by petitioning for. I mean, Linux is fine as an opensource pioneer and a free alternative to Solaris or similar Unix derivative, but one must question the wisdom in porting everything in sight to run under it. The reason that things like Quicktime don't already exist under Unix is, after all, that it's primarily a network operating system and not a home system. So when people start using it as a home system, it just creates another competing standard and slows down the whole industry.
znu is right. QuickTime is a full-blown media architecture (API, file format, codecs, plug-in interfaces for effects and hardware, and the list goes on and on) and porting it to Linux would require dealing with a lot of MacOS legacy issues. Blech.
A much better idea is to ask yourself, in the year 2000, what is it that you really want? Remember, QuickTime has evolved over the last 10 years and many of its original assumptions are not as important today. So, do you want an MPEG stack? Do you want streaming? Do you want to develop video post-production apps? Do you want video conferencing?
QuickTime is a huge system that Apple has to work hard at maintaining on their own OS. You're much better off looking at it as a menu and picking the top 3 or 4 features and working on (or asking for) those.
They don't have to release the source. (They don't *have* to do anything, but sales determine *have* and *want*)
But it would be nice to have a decent player or library to play these files on non windows/macOs machines.
Stupid is as stupid dies.
Excuse me, but wasn't this about Apple _porting_ QT to Linux,not about making it Open Source? Of course, Open Source would be nice, but the MacOS and Windows versions aren't OPen Source either, are they??
Only dead fish follow the stream
So, I wrote Sorenson, and their response to me was that they couldn't do anything because of their agreement with Apple, and suggested that I talk to Apple about it. I tried to do that and the only response I received back from Apple was that it was a Sorenson issue and that I should take it up with Sorenson.
Ah yes, the 1990's - the time when corporations believed that "customer service" meant just passing the concern onto someone else.
I for one will be very happy to see something positive from this petition. However I am disheartened that another petition to encourage greater support for hardware drivers (esp. printers) under Linux seems to be short of its goal!
I believe Soerensen is a patented codec, in which case, no. The information would actually be available (no reverse engineering necessary), but any implementation would infringe on the patent.
-- Eythain
A Quicktime client for Linux
A Open Source version without proprietary codecs.
The first of these would be within Apple's abilities, but the second isn't really. They can't give away proprietary codecs they don't themselves own, and the only alternative then is to not use those codecs which ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
And the actual petition just mentions a port, not an open source version.
Might be better than nothing, but on the other hand proprietary standards isn't something very desirable in and of itself.
-- Eythain
Hey, there's a beginning QT player/library at
QT stuff. Has it's own
codecs though (motion-JPEG and others). It might be a start
for others. I've written a player that uses it,
but my player is evil and doesn't work well.
Dunno if this helps.
Also FWIW, a system to handle binary codecs would
be a goodness. I'm working on one now. There's one in
xanim but IMHO it's too xanim-specific.... Ciao!
Let's face it, Apple doesn't like Open Source because it's caused more people to "think different" than Apple ever has...
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
AOL IM: jeanlucpikachu
[o]_O
I thought there was a quicktime-linux for quite a long time already. Look
here to download it. Has anybody tried it yet?
I am in full support of this petition. I have requested that all our clients join the petition as well since numbers are what is going to sway apple to do anything. I will be asking our clients (who use linux) to forward an email to apple suggesting the port to Linux. Every bit counts.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
As I mentioned in a earlier post QuickTime has been ported to UNIX (SGI IRIX) in the past, so the port would probably not be a difficult as you expect.
The blurb and petition used phrases such as Quicktime client, Quicktime player, Quicktime software etc. This is clear and refers not to the quicktime format, but to software that plays both the quicktime format and codecs associated with the format.
What would you like the blurb or comments to say - "We want a linux player for Sorenson"? How many people would understand that?
<hint> The human language game is about communication.
When you say "QuickTime for Linux" everyone knows what you mean. Calling it Quicktime is communication, calling it Sorenson is not.
There is no difference between QuickTime and Sorenson if QuickTime players are the only thing that can play Sorenson. The Slashdot crowd has no reason to distinguish QuickTime from Sorenson when they talk about sorenson, or cinecrap, or any other Quicktime codec.
Once the codecs become open (hah!) then they might deserve to be regarded seperately.
Saying "QuickTime is an open format" might be true from a pedantic-video-compression-geek point of view, but it's blatently misleading to the rest of the world, a really dumb way to communicate. Sorry if I've read more into your post than you intented.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but bitching about bitching is bitching, so we have to ask ourselves at exactly what level of communication do we wish to convey our arguments? And, yes, there are a lot of people in the Linux world that seem to think that they're Green Berets now, but I feel that it's not really all that fair to lump us all together. Hey, life goes on, though. Take this or leave it, and I'll keep using Linux and taking a shallow approach to all this crap. Ciao.
I just wanted to mention that in the first 10 - 20 min this link was on /., the petition increased its # of sigs by roughly 20%. Thats 350 sigs. Good job guys.
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"What is that sound its making?"
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"What is that sound its making?"
"It thinks it has a virus, but its actually just linux."
Just grab the file from the cache and rename it!
It's as easy as that huh??
Woah there, missed that one by a mile, didn't we.
verify(Qt != QT);
It would appear that you've mistaken the Qt widget set for Apple's QuickTime (often abbreviated "QT") multimedia architecture.
One camp should change it's name... wonder who has prior use on the "QT" abbreviation...
When System 7.0 was the bomb.
My god. :)
I bet that if Qt ever *REALLY* takes off, they'll be an issue. Mark my works... :)
But, asking for an open source player is pushing much too far. Even the windows version includes an extremely annoying nag screen which they would not be willing to let people get around by releasing open source, I'm sure.
secondly, I have the windows player, and I must say, it is by far THE most annoying piece of software I've ever used. I'm not certain on the latest version, but in the past that software has messed up just about everything, from display of PNG images in netscape, to playing wav files, to other multimedia files. Terrible software.
Any software being ported is good. But I think it's important to separate the porting of software to linux from the releasing of software into open source. If companies are given the impression that they must release the source to their software to port it to linux, it will have a severely limiting effect on the amount of software which is available.
If someone has a plate of cookies, and you tell them you want 2 cookies, you will probably get none. But if you ask for one, you will probably get it, and you'll most likely get the second one too, just not all at once.
Is there a central site where all of our Linux (or any!) concerns and petitions can be centralized and addressed? Or, do we have to depend on /. to post every little thing that we feel needs to be done?
I'm not advocating we use petitions like they (meaning THEY) use patents (that is, abuse them), but I think a site that adresses such concerns could be a Good Thing.
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
is the bottom line. you think etoys would have capitulated if the only price they had to pay was a few petitions? they took a look at their stock price and did not like what they saw. whether their stock performance and the lawsuit were related we'll never know, but I suspect they thought there was a link.
Apparently this individual has never worked on a 500 dollar PC. I personally own both mac's and pc's, which each one has their own strengths and weaknesses. But claiming a 500 pos e-machine is like an iMac? I have tech supported both. Every, I mean every, 500 dollar pc that I have tech supported has already been replaced or in the shop. I once tech supported someone who was still waiting on a replacement cd-rom drive for their wonderful "computer for 4 months, but considering the pc was 4 months old, that says a lot about 500 dollars pc's. I have never never had a problem with an iMac. They may not be the fastest computer out, but they are much more stable than any of these cheap pc's.
Apple owns the specs to those CODECs and has absolutely no obligation, reason, or interest in releasing them to 'the community'. I'm sure someone can purchase those specs to create their own player if they'd like, but no one will. They won't because then they would have to charge money for their application. They can't charge money, because as soon as a skilled Linux developer charges for something, the community doesn't like them and will start a "free the ____" campaign. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and pay for a product. This is a lesson that most of the Linux community needs to learn - just because Linux is getting popular doesn't mean that developers must climb aboard the open source bandwagon in order to create a good product.
You should be ashamed, Rob! And you pretend to support Open Source... sheesh!
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Go sign now!
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