Helix DNA Client Source On Oct 29

nexex writes "Real's Helix DNA Client's source will be released on October 29. The Helix DNA client is available through both the RCSL and the RPSL licenses. More information on these licenses at their licensing page. Intial platform support is planned for Win32, OSX, and Linux. More technical details available here."

Comments

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I need a new DNA client, my DNA server is getting withered through under-use.

Protected Content - Make the Switch

[davidstrauss]

Switch a Success - Convert Thrilled

[Insert stock photo here]

I used to use those "open" media players. Now I only use ones that protect my content. That's why I use Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Media(R) Player(R) 9(R) Beta(R). Without good Digital(R) Rights(R) Management(R), there just aren't any digital rights.*

Now that we've talked about the why, here's the skinny on the how.

[Pasted instructions from help]

Now that we've gotten [fake name] to try Windows Media Player, we'll get her to try [other Microsoft product].

*for the recoding industry.

Good Client Name

[Anonymous Coward]

I think if you're going to have a DNA client, you should call it "Sperm 1.0".

Helix DNA sounds great but is the code healthy?

[Subcarrier]

This DNA comes from a heavily inbred population and may contain high concentrations of recessive traits. You might to take note of this fact if you intend to splice and combine this DNA with some of our own.

OT: What is so "DNA" about this?

[Fastolfe]

At first I thought this was some sort of "client" for munging DNA data. Then I went to their site, saw the "Helix" name and the double-stranded DNA logo, and thought for sure this was some sort of DNA data client of some kind, maybe for keeping track of genes and identifying mutations and disease-causing traits or something. That'd be cool, if only I could get data into it. Then I read a bit further and see that it's a media player of some kind?

Am I the only one that thinks they've taken the whole "DNA" bit a little too far? That's like me going out, plastering up billboards with pictures of a computer, circuit boards, naming my company "SensorTronic" and my product "128-bit Heuristic Data Sampler 1.0", which is actually ketchup.

This is Real

[mcc]

Why did you not mention that this is RealMedia/RealNetworks? (Whatever their name is this month.) That's a pretty big deal. This little paragraph here seems like an even bigger deal, if they actually mean it and aren't just engaging in demagogery to win our hearts over or something-- that seems like a complete 180 from RealNetworks' previous violently-propeitary stance :)

I was about to post a comment saying "Okay, this is interesting, there's some project that is going to try to make a cross-platform media player, that's a nice goal, and great for linux users, but Quicktime already does anything i want it to. What can this do Quicktime can't?" ... and then I read the FAQ and realized, wait, this actually has an existing codebase that RealNetworks is going to put in. Hm. Wait, that potentially means that i could embed RealOne's decoder/display component into a Quicktime plugin, and never have to use that horrifically ugly RealOne program again :)

Anyway, i'm really curious how much they'll commit themselves to this. I can at least tell they are still going to keep their crown jewels-- the RealAudio/Realvideo codecs-- to themselves-- from the faq:

What parts of your platform are not being licensed?

Almost every part of our system is available for licensing. Some parts of the system, such as the RealAudio and RealVideo codecs, require commercial licenses that are different than community licensing. We are streamlining the licensing of our codecs to spread their ubiquity. Also, the Media Commerce Suite, the Broadcast Management System (BMS) and the subscription system leveraged by RealOne SuperPass are not part of our community source or open source initiatives at this time.

Meh. Still, though, even if the codecs are going to be black boxes in this Helix system, how close to them can you get? In the past, as far as i can tell, Real has always licensed its realmedia-embedding APIs such that anyone who gets to use them has to agree they will never use those APIs to create a program that will convert from Real into some other format. But if they're open-sourcing a media system that plugs into the realmedia codecs, then that would imply that it would be relatively easy to create something like a RealVideo streamripper, or a RealAudio-to-mp3 converter. Are they going to try to prevent this? How? Does the license give them the ability to do this? (I'm really sorry, but i haven't even attempted to read those licenses yet. As you can tell from my frightful spelling, i just woke up, and there's no way i will be able to parse legalese right now.) The FAQ says their license is "like" the GPL, but says it has different patent language (unsurprisingly) and says something confusing about "folding back" code that sounds vaguely NPLish.. I will be VERY interested to see what RMS' comments on it are.

Anyway, this should go somewhere interesting. It would be nice if MPEG4 over RTSP could become the worldwide streaming media standard, but RealVideo with an open-source media platform wrapped around it wouldn't be *too* bad. At the least y'all linux people might finally get a *REAL* generic media layer API :) And apple is probably going to just go frantic over this, which is always fun to watch. This will all be neat to watch unfold, really. Let's see what happens.

Re:This is Real

[robla]

Many great observations by mcc. A few notes here:

• Be careful what you wish for with MPEG-4, however...
• I share your desire for RTSP world domination :)
• We will be announcing new terms for RealAudio and RealVideo in our October 29 webcast. However, I wouldn't get too excited about some of the possible applications you mention (sorry, I can't be any more specific than that for now). The bottom line is that RealAudio and RealVideo will not be available under the RPSL. I know from talking to Richard Stallman about that that he's not pleased with that. However, he was pleased to hear about our support for Ogg Vorbis (which is progressing nicely).
• There are benefits to us not giving away everything. The biggest benefit is that RealNetworks stays motivated to invest heavily in this technology. Because we've got a clear commercial motivation to stay ahead on the technology curve, we're not going to merely lob this over to the open source community and say "here, you deal with it". We absolutely intend to ensure the Helix media engine remains state-of-the-art. (Of course, don't take this to mean that we don't need the community; we do.)

In short, I think there's a lot to be excited about. This is our first big overture to the open source community, but it's not our intention for it to be the last.

Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator

Why this is significant

[robla]

Hi all,

I'm the Helix Community Coordinator (though I'm getting many complaints for my self-chosen wimpy title...suggestions appreciated).

Basically, what's interesting about this is that it's a generalized architecture for any datatype. So, while it's true that there are many MP3 players out there, there's few which are able to handle multiple streams, mixing them with other audio sources, adding in multiple video sources, and hey, throw in some JPEGs, GIFs and Flash while you're at it.

What we're releasing on October 29th won't look very sexy from an end-user perspective. We're basically putting out an engine that'll do all of that stuff with the right plugins. However, it's a down payment on much more. We hope to soon ship support for SMIL, JPEG, GIF, etc.

In the meantime, the technology we're releasing is nothing to sneeze at. I think a lot of the stereotypes about the RealOne Player will be dispelled with the code that we ship. Please take a look, we think you'll like what you see!

Rob
(who's now realizing that he's declared open season on himself for soliciting title suggestions)

Re:Why this is significant

[robla]

So you can handle multiple codecs. So can a dozen other players. Move along people, nothing to see here

It can handle multiple codecs simultaneously, doing real-time mixing of sources and maintaining synchronization defined at the application layer (thus making it capable of supporting SMIL). That narrows the field significantly.

Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator

Re:Why this is significant

[robla]

Great question. I can't give you a great answer just yet, but I think we've got a pretty good answer.

We continue to work on the RealOne Player for Linux and for other platforms. However, as you can tell, progress on this hasn't been as fast as we would like.

The great news here, though, is that there is this media engine that we're putting out. We're hoping that GNOME, KDE, Motif/Lesstif and other toolkit-specific GUIs emerge for these (similarly to what has happened with Galeon and Netscape's Gecko engine). We'd love to help facilitate that type of an effort.

Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator

Re:Why this is significant

[robla]

This question has a couple of dimensions to it: "why should I trust RealNetworks when there are alternatives I trust?", and "how does this relate to GStreamer?". As it turns out, these are very different questions, and I'll answer them both

So, "why should I trust RealNetworks when there are alternatives I trust?" The answer is manyfold. RealNetworks is going to spend a lot of effort building trust in the community. That said, we hope the license is structured such that you don't have to trust us; we intend to have an OSI-certified Open Source license, and go through all of the scrutiny required in getting that mark.

The big benefits for taking a look at RealNetworks is that we are a significant force in the digital media delivery space, and so we offer development resources and investment capability that the open source community can leverage to get a great media player faster than otherwise possible.

Now, "how does this relate to GStreamer?". Well, GStreamer is actually LGPL. As such, I think they are very complementary. GStreamer is working on a different architecture that supports different types of applications than our architecture supports. There's a lot of overlap, but there's also a lot of differing functionality. Over time, with the right effort, I could see there being a nice relationship between the two projects (similar to the relationship between Galeon and Mozilla).

Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator