Slashdot Mirror
RealPlayer To Incorporate Mozilla
Will in Seattle writes "cNet has a story on RealNetworks using code from Mozilla.org's open-source browser code in a private-label version of its media player and server for Web broadcaster Global Media. This version lets RealNetworks' system stream and display Web elements including HTML and Macromedia Flash animation files, and you can download their mods here.
"
Uhm... Microsoft has done that.
It's called IWebBrowser and a newer interface called IWebBrowser2.
As M$ describes it here it may sound like it's IE specific, but there's a Mozilla version available here.
This is what Real should have used.
If any program wanted a web widget, it would just call the general API and get back whatever browser was set as the default tool
Of course one of the drawbacks of this is that if you have for example an HTML based help system that uses JavaScript, you don't know that the browser that you load actually supports it.
Breace.
Alright, this is somewhat off-topic, but I was just wondering why the Mozilla team chose to use a red star (a symbol of state communism) as their logo. Wouldn't an anarchist black and red star be more appropriate? That is, if you're into using political iconoclastic images...
Just a thought...
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
Do we really need to get the roles of all our software tangled and confused like this? Wouldn't life be much simpler if everything was logically divided into seperate applications (browser, mail, news, video players, etc.), rather than gargantuan applications that try to do all of the above, to varying extents?
Anyone think that the "minibrowser" or whatever in WinAmp is the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen?
On a somewhat different, some would argue that excessive use of streaming media and abuse of HTML for really complex designs (strung together with Javascript, with all kinds of animated silliness) is really undesirable. Abusing standards just for a little graphical flair is really a bad thing anyway - it makes it both more difficult for users to view your content (by narrowing the range of browsers that can view it correctly), and makes it difficult for future software to evolve when so much effort must be spent on preserving backward compatibility.
Thoughts ?
Mozilla is an opensource project with the specific goal of producing components for third party use (which is probably one of the reasons they don't use GPL). They ultimately aim to be a platform for developing web based applications.
Therefore Real embedding Gecko is a good thing. The more companies that follow Real's example the more mozilla becomes a threat for IE. People have been complaining a lot about Netscape's GUI without realizing they can just take the browser component and wrap it into whatever GUI they like.
I don't particularly like Real's GUI either (though it does improve if you disable all the non essential stuff) but that's not the point. The point is that Gecko is becoming a damn good browser component and that just about anybody can embed it in their product (and that includes MS). More people embedding it means more users, which means more pressure on MS to either comply with standards or even to start using Gecko themselves.
A little sidenote on real embedding Mozzilla: why don't they rewrite the GUI in XUL? That would make it much easier to port the damn thing.
Jilles
May the hair on your toes never fall out...
kwsNI
it's understandable that they would go with Mozilla over IE
Eh? What part of "The system RealNetworks created for Global Media will use Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser if it is installed on a person's computer and will download the Mozilla-based browser otherwise," did you not understand?
Looks like they specifically are going with IE over Mozilla; only in the infrequent case (less than 20%) where a user doesn't have Internet Explorer will the Mozilla-based browser be downloaded.
Besides, didn't you get the memo from Larry Wall that laziness is one of the three chief virtues of a programmer? ;)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com,
They did post the source (well, diffs against the main tree, close enough for me) of their modified mozilla, and placed them under the MPL-1.1. mozilla developers have been looking over them this morning (discussions in #mozilla), and there is some good stuff in there - if they work as claimed, real has fixed some long-standing bugs that nobody else had gotten to yet. Don't knock these guys too hard, it seems at first glance that they did everything right :-).
The only fault? there's no email address with any of it, so it's going to take a little searching for contact information to properly credit them if (or when) their work gets checked in.
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
RealPlayer just doesn't crash enough as it is; this should help.
/me ducks and runs
;)
Does anyone else here use Windows Media Player for the sole reason that it doesn't inundate you with banner ads, SPAM opt-outs, clutter, millions of buttons, and useless flash?
Now they're going for the Macromedia angle too. God.
RealNetworks has a gigantic slice of the market pie in streaming media. Yet more evidence that the average consumer does not share the tastes of the average geek.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
The answers to your questions can be found here. It is a chapter written by Bruce Perens from the book "Open Sources".
e rens.html
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/p
Specifically, scroll down to "Analysis of Licenses and Their Open Source Compliance". There is also a nice grid comparing the licenses.
Oh man, this really bums my day. Your posts rock.
At least put up a web site somewhere of "The Best of Trollmastah" so that future generations can experience the trolling magic.
--
a browser plug-in for my media player!
At least now I can get streaming audio with all the porn I look at with Mozilla.
------------
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this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
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with just remnants in my brain,
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upon the threads... of Slashdot.
In flick'ring lights I type along.
Submit my troll, before to long,
Letters haloed by my squinting,
at the rant that I was typing.
For my eyes were blurred
by the flash of the cathode beam,
term'nal screen,
and all the trolls... on Slashdot.
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Honest opinion makes the karma grow.
They post the rules so that we might read them.
Meta mod 'cause we don't heed them."
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like trolling karma fell,
(Oh well...)
An echo,
On the threads... of Slashdot.
Thanks folks, it's been a blast. After a long time under the TM account, I feel it's time I call it quits. The TM account was created and used on a bet that a spamming troll could not survive moderation and last more that a few week, made even harder by having to do it with an account name as silly as Trollmastah.
I'm ending my trollish run with:
* +33 Karma (lowest level I hit was around -20)
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Even though trolls are generally discouraged, I did find that trolling is a valuable addition to the /. culture and when done without being offensive, vulgar or mean, even trolls can keep positive karma and add not only to the culture of Slashdot, but also to the content.
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Hope you enjoyed the posts,
Regards,
TM
.
Take all good things in moderation, including moderation.
Forget the good emulation layering contests.
Now I can open my browser, load a plugin that includes a browser that has a plugin that... Talk about "thinking outside the box"! Now Real wants Netscape as a plug-in.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
person1: Hey! You got media player in my browser!
person2: Hey! You got browser in my media player!
"If the GPL was in effect, this would require Real to publish the entire source, not just diffs, for the Real product. "
And if Mozilla was GPL Real would never have used it in their player. This is why we need alternatives to the GPL, I, and many others I'm sure, are quite happy if someone else uses/modifies our code, as long as changes made to the part we write are made public. Real's code is up to them to release if they wish to.
I think the NPSL is more like the LGPL, as I understand the LGPL, anyway. You can embed it with commercial apps, but you have to open source any and all changes made to the open sourced components. The Gecko engine was written with the intention that other companies could embed it in their software. The ability to get people to adopt the Gecko engine (and thus, the Gecko engine's style of web design) would be diminished if the license was viral like the GPL.
Plus, Real wouldn't be stupid enough to accidentally build a large new feature of their product around a piece of code that could potentially make them have to open up all their source without checking the license in detail first. Of course, if they wanted to open source their code...
...they would've made a press release about it and lapped up the OSS PR goodness that other companies seem to be riding right now. However, I don't see them open sourcing their streaming video format's codecs, as that would destroy their authoring software business.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Afterall, if they're so close, why didn't Netscape just go with the GPL?
--Cycon
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
correction, MPL did not in any way force them to release anything (it's more BSD-like). But they released their changes. Nice of 'em.
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
Once upon a time it was...
Any program will grow until it can read mail.
But now it seems...
Any program will expand until it can browse the web.
How about one job per program?
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
I seem to think that WinAmp has some kind of built in browser also. (I could never get it to work). I never really understood it their either. I guess that this is kind of a me-too thing.
I don't see the point of this really. I want my plug-in-add-ons to be lean & mean.
Its kind of like having to run windows just to get access to that IE plug-in.
Word game?
Of course, they could have borrowed a lesson from Winamp, who's had a little browser in their MP3 player for a while. But then, maybe the guys at Winamp (Nullsoft, whatever) should learn from this and incorporate Mozilla into their player.
They are seeking to turn the tables on the browser with this move. I'm sure if this is greeted warmly by the general public, you can bet they will position it more agressively as a "stream" browser/player, unlike what they said about their intentions were not to create a "browser".