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Petition Apple for Linux QuickTime

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the step-up-and-be-heard dept.

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.

4 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Not a very good approach.. by Falcon · · Score: 5

    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?

    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 .mov media format sucks ass."

    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.

  2. QuickTime for Linux would be a major undertaking by znu · · Score: 5

    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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  3. We need your support ! by FauxPasIII · · Score: 5

    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
  4. Two different issues. by Eythain · · Score: 5
    This issue seems to be a bit muddled the way it's presented, but these really have to be two wholly different issues, don't they?

    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