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Speex Goes 1.0, Xiph Goes 501(c)3
Emmettfish writes "Hey, folks! We've posted an announcement this morning; Speex (the free and open voice compression codec by Jean-Marc Valin) has gone 1.0, and the Xiph.Org Foundation is now officially recognized as a charitable non-profit organization by the IRS. Donate to help us write more Free Software and get a tax break. Thanks!"
i'd only briefly read about this project before, but just skipping over the links in the article and thinking to myself it would be surprising if these guys could pull a technology like this off without running into a patent problem or two -- anyone know?
:^)
certainly ogg to me is a file format/stream protocol that is treading on corporate egg shells
Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
What's the difference between Speex and OGG?
Any comparison on that?
Will it benefit game developers in delivering voiceover game speeches?
wtf?
On a related note: if there are any other active projects for a netmeeting-type application (I'm aware of Gnomemeeting, but I'd like to avoid the whole directory/ILS business, and just do simple person-to-person calls, with possible encryption if desired), please post a link.
The main problem I see now is getting some media available exclusivley in these formats. I have to confess it's an awfully big incentive to use proprietary format players when the alternative is not to listen/watch at all.
It's right there on the page MGM FAQ.
It would be nice to know how the managed to get registered as a charitable non-profit organization by the IRS.
The article doesn't mention what they claimed in all those million pages of documentation and those billion phonecalls....
of course, i could be completely offbase, because i was a bad slashdotter today and didn't read all of the material, just enough to think about. On a monday morning, thinking is limited... *sigh* right. In the words of they might be giants: "More coffee for me, dear, 'cause i'm not as messes up as i'd like to be...."
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
hey /. readers/experts (i hope)
how does this translate into RL applications? i would *love* to be able to caal a friend over the internet. but:
do you need hardware (other than pc)?
can you connect to windows computers?
this could seriously reduce my phonecosts, i'd be quite pleased to use it and donate some money if i could get this working with my (not able to run linux because of company policy and low geekness factor) friends abroad.
can someone point me to some good links for info?
tnx
We just went through this at the Public Software Fund. Basically, you need a good lawyer and thousands of dollars. You also need to show that nobody will get any private benefit from the publicly-funded works. You also have to show that what you're doing falls into several categories of public benefits, like scientific research, or charitable works.
But if all you want to do is have your public software project receive tax-free donations, just register with Pubsoft and add your project to the list?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I have always wondered if I could write off the time I spend on OSS projects as charitable donations. I'm not getting paid for it and it does contribute to the global society. I wonder if sourceforge could not become a charitable organization? At least the software side, the adverts could be a different company that pays the charitable org.
Must donations be in cash to qualify for tax breaks? What about donations of time, or code?
A low bitrate audio codec is useless if it can't compress in real time. Will my 300MHz Linux box be able to compress my voice in real-ish time?
Keep in mind, currently, charitable donations are only tax deductible if you itemize. I suspect most slashdot readers 1) Aren't in the US or 2)Don't itemize or 3) Are dependents (aka live in parents basement).
Tomorrow, we'll demonstrate in front of the White House to demand Freedom of Speex!!
AVI: Ever needed the right codec, even if the file is still called .avi? Heard of FOURCC? *Most* codecs come with Windows Media Player, but certainly not all.
.tif
.doc file from Office95 is not the same as a .doc file from Office XP. The actual spec keeps changing, just ask the OpenOffice people trying to reverse-engineer it. However, it's not quite in the same class as the other two - this is just one format that is changing (versioning), while files like .avi and .ogg are designed to hold different types of audio streams, for different purposes.
TIFF: Do you know TIFF? Well there's uncompressed TIFF and compressed TIFF (I think 4-5 different compression algorigthms) that are all called
DOC: Yep it's a container format. A
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
see the UNIX SpeakFreely site, someone may have already ...
Yes! and there's even a new version out. Go GPL you good thing.
Wasn't there some talk of porting it to WxWindows
Oh, a trip to the Windows speakfreely site shows what happened to that apparently..... oh well, can't blame the guy for wanting to earn a living.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
char *
compress(char *string_to_compress)
{
return "freedom my ass! stupid warmonger!";
}
Don't forget to try the Tcl/Tk v0.8.1 interface!
The windows version looks like it has been orphaned, so you'll have to patch it yourself if you want NAT on that. And add Speex 1.0 support while you're at it, eh?
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
I have been investigating the feasability of moving my church into digital recording instead of to tape. I thought with ogg vorbis I could archive older sermons in mass quantities without too horrible of sound. But alas ogg vorbis sux with plain voice because it still needs the higher bitrates to sound good like 64 or so. But then I found speex. And I found that a good sounding (not taxing to the ear but noticeable compression) could fit forty 45 minute sermons on one cd (assuming the compression I got on small samples would pan out on 45 minute sermons) Then I could archive a lot of sermons to a 5 cent cd instead of 2 sermons per tape. So now I need to setup my latptop and try it one sunday. If the laptop gets decent sound then I assume that a desktop system with a decent sound card will only do better. Has anyone done things similar to this? What compression settings do you like? what program you using (linux or windows) to record before compression?
"We can no longer live as rats... we know too much." -Secret of NIMH
Bingo! No points today ...
One simple rule for its versus it's
People have been working on speech coding since before computers were even around, and there was a lot of work in this area in the 1960's and 1970's. Patents only last around 20 years, so a lot of that stuff is in the public domain now.
Don't get me wrong, I am an Open Source advocate, but is this really a charity worthy of tax deductions?
Charity for me is something that you don't expect anything in return from, but this is certainly not the case with OSS-charities.
With these OSS-charities you get a product in return, and it might even be something you base your business on.
If you are a consultancy-agency developing systems using Xing-codecs for profit, it would seem strange if giving money to Xing is counted as a charity. Can you actually do this?
Take a look at OpenH323.org, they've got a netmeeting compatible application, that also supports the speex codec (so this comment is even on topic! ;-).
It works pretty good (I've tried the windows version), but be aware that H323 needs open UDP ports.
a bad slashdotter today....
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Been looking for a while at how to get tax writeoffs on free software expenses. Spending $150,000 on a free software project using after-tax income is a rediculous burden when you consider if you just charged $1 for the software you could make $75,000 with the tax writeoff.
We're at a serious disadvantage in that commercial software developers make the same product as free software developers but free software developers have to pay income tax on everything they use in developing that product while commercial developers don't.
Free software can never have the same tax advantage of commercial software because everyone would be claiming free software expenses on their school assignments. This is the main reason Linux supports virtually no current hardware without serious Windows emulation.
Going through these free software funding groups is a real pain. Once you take their money, they obligate you to demonstrate significant progress on the project for the rest of your life, which over years and decades can become more of a financial burden than not taking the money in the first place.
Secondly, the fact that you need these organizations like pubsoft.org and thousands of dollars in lawyers to get tax deductions shows just how much the tax structure slams free software while promoting commercial software. Commercial software developers get virtually free equipment.
If you don't give us money, we'll still give you a free codec.
Discussion closed.
IANALTP, either, but there are points in the tax code that allow deductions for hardware/software bought for use on work. It doesn't even need to have a charitable nature. Ditto mileage, travel costs for conferences, etc. etc. etc.
As an avid (amateur) hacker of the tax code, let me just say right here that schedule C is your friend. If what you're doing is a separate business from your work, declare it as such and treat it as such. The tax benefits are sizeable and it is nice to have that added rationale: "I want X, and it is a valid expense for my Schedule C business".
That said, there are plenty of restrictions and there are requirements for proving what you're doing is a business, not a hobby (the simplest is profitability in 3 out of 5 years). But the tax cases won arguing that it can take YEARS gaining profitability in some art/writing professions are close enough to these that I'd say most Free Software developers are acting as professionals, not hobbyists.
A last note: there are similar allowances for deduction charitable stuff in your standard personal deductions, but they aren't as effective as using schedule C, in my experience. Say it with me: Schedule C is your friend. Schedule C is your friend. Schedule C is your friend.
Hack the law, hack congress, hack the tax code, hack your county property taxes, etc... hackers will conquer the world if/when they realize that all that it takes to get an advantage in regular life is:
- social engineering and
- reading legalese as if they're technical specs is.
Come to think of it, this would make a good ask-slashdot question: With the phrase 'hack the law' in mind, what's your favorite money making/saving methodology?
--posted anon because I fear the IRS and I disclaim any responsibility for inciting tax cheats. An accountant that taught me a lot used to say: You should pay EVERYTHING you owe in taxes, but NOT ONE PENNY MORE.
You can't write off the time you spend on OSS projects. However, you can assign the copyright to a non-profit, and get a valuation from someone who is experienced in assessing the value of copyrighted code. You can then reasonably deduct that amount from your before-tax income. I can help you find someone to do that valuation.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
You could donate the hardware to a 501(c)(3) charity like Xiph, the FSF, or pubsoft, but then you'd be obliged to only develop freely copyable software on it, and you'd also have to keep a logbook showing that that's what you in fact did. Yes, commercial developers have a presumption that their hardware is being used for commercial purposes, but that's because the company has to show a profit three years out of five.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Do you get taxed for writing code?
Yes. Writing code requires a computer, which is subject to a sales tax.
Yes. Code is typically stored on magnetic media. Some governments tax the sale of blank magnetic media, purportedly to compensate campaign contributors for violations of their copyrights.
Will I retire or break 10K?
while decoding requires 1 mflops.
I want to use Speex to provide narration of a program on a handheld device whose CPU can't do Mflops but can do Mfixops. Should I give money to Xiph.org, earmarking it for development of a Speex decoder that uses fixed-point arithmetic?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Like, if I'm not for me, then fer shure, like who will be? And if, y'know,
if I'm not like fer anyone else, then hey, I mean, what am I? And if not
now, like I dunno, maybe like when? And if not Who, then I dunno, maybe
like the Rolling Stones?
-- Rich Rosen (Rabbi Valiel's paraphrase of famous quote
attributed to Rabbi Hillel.)
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