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Real Announce Helix Grant Program, Player
Rob Lanphier writes "RealNetworks made two announcements at LinuxWorld this week: we will be giving out up to $75,000 by the end of the year for development of open source projects based on the Helix multimedia platform. Also, we just formally launched the Helix Player project, which is a project to build a GTK+ based user interface for Linux, Solaris, and other UNIXy operating systems. Press releases for the grant program here and player project here"
The Helix program is nothing but a set of "standardized" shells. The media player is simply the player sans any codecs and the server is simply and encoder/server again sans the codecs. Apparently, you're supposed to buy the codecs from Real. Even more annoying is the fact that you can't even download the blasted beta software without becoming an active developer and signing and faxing 5 different NDAs! What the hell kind of "open source" is this anyway?!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
mpeg4ip for encoding, Darwin Streaming Server for serving, VLC/MPlayer/Helix/mpeg4ip for playing.
https://xiph.helixcommunity.org/
Adobe helped to develop WINE to run their Photoshop. The graphic editor is still closed-source and commercial, WINE is still open-source. Seems to me like a reasonable win-win situation for all of us.
Less is more !
The press release listed these codecs for this player:
SMIL 2.0
RealVideo (RV9, RV8, RV7, RVG2)
RealAudio (RA8, G2 audio)
MP3
Ogg Vorbis
MPEG4 (patent license for MPEG4 must be obtained separately)
H.263
My video compression blog
I've been there and done this stuff. It is not that difficult. Granted, I tend to use Java for developing networking apps which simplifies the memory management immensely. None the less, with a little bit of development into a good C/C++ library, you can make networking just about as easy. The networking problem domain is very well understood and any programmer worth his salt should have little difficulty in developing a good server.
As for MPlayer, I would like to point you to the DivX player and the ton of other "media players" on the market that are simple GUIs for codecs. Many of them are quite good. MPlayer's is poor because the focus is on just playing the videos, not making a good UI.
I guess I'm particularily annoyed about the whole thing because I almost *like* Real. Their software is cross platform (sort of), the codecs are quite good, and the player is generally pretty slick. When they announced Helix, I just wanted to try it out, maybe help a little, etc. But as I attempted to follow development, I found that the whole process was so closed that any attempt to have a casual interest was frustrating. Even worse is that Real had no intention of releasing their codecs. While this is somewhat understandable, none of their announcements made this clear. In fact, it seems that they went out of their way to make people *believe* that the codecs were part of the project. Their entire position amounted to "it'll be great, feel good about it, now go away". Had they simply been up front about their intentions and their goals, I think they would have received a much better response. Not to mention that the community would probably have made the effort to add the missing codecs.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I do have to agree with this. I've written quite a few PDF generation, document field prepopultors, and document merging programs. A great API for dealing with the PDF format is PDFBox. Now if we could only get PDF creation programs not to insert invalid garbage into the files...
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
There are already MPlayer, the ffmpeg library, mjpegtools, bbmpeg, Ogg Vorbis and Theora, Cinelerra... I for one don't feel that I need a bone thrown to me by Real, much less a proprietary, binary-only, NDA-encumbered (no, more like encrusted) one.
Others' mileage, of course, may vary. I admit, I may be just preaching to the choir here-- but I hope that what I just named off the top of my head can show potential moviemakers some of the options that are available.
"I don't particularly like Adobe either, but as a company, they aren't half bad. They have released the postscript and PDF specs, in full, for free, and the license allows anyone to write an implementation of them, without royalty or encumberment." PDF is a nice format, but let's be clear. PDF is not as open as you might think. I found this out first hand when I was trying to write a PDF viewer in Java last year. Basically, type 1 fonts are to blame. Java does not support embeddable type 1 fonts and Adobe still owns patents for some of the algorithms that render the fonts. Adobe's licenses specifically claim that you cannot use those algorithms for rendering so most of the fonts will end up looking like crap unless you have other ways of rendering them. Ever notice that many applications will generate pdf files, but not let you view them? Before you mention Ghostscript, keep in mind that it uses the operating system apis for handling fonts. For example, Adobe Type Manager is embedded in Windows. Now, I would probably agree with you that it's just an inherent weakness in java since it tries to be cross platform, but that doesn't change the fact that Type 1 fonts are not a completely open format. Anyway, I'm just bitter. I'll shut up now.
The kind it was designed to be--that movement doesn't consider the freedom to share and modify the program to be as important as the practical development advantages to a business. Sometimes this means approving licenses that are also considered free software licenses, sometimes it will not. The FSF has an informative article on the philosophical differences between the two movements.
Digital Citizen
Helix's licenses have been cleared by the people that help protect the open-source definition http://opensource.org/
By the way they're not giving a client. They're giving us the framework to build the client, and the server, and the encoders. There's no "nagware" unless open source developers choose to put it there.
The problem I suspect is that the helix project is geared to to people that can do something with the source, not end users. Hence most of slashdotters have no idea how this project can help them.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Getting the code is admittedly more complicated than it needs to be (and we're working on that), but hyperbole like the parent post should not be modded up as "Informative". The steps are:
1. Sign up for the site, filling in a form with proposed user name, real name, company name, and email.
2. Receive confirmation URL, and visit included URL
3. Agree to site terms of use
4. Agree to RPSL (an OSI certified license)
5. Get source code via CVS/SSH
Why are we being hardasses about making sure that people agree to licenses? It's a combination of the way the legal system works, and our general conservativeness that stems from being a publicly traded company.
There are good reasons to ensure that "manifestation of assent" occurs, even for open source. I'll defer to Larry Rosen's excellent paper on the topic. Larry, as you may know, is the General Counsel for the Open Source Initiative, and while his opinion is only an opinion, it's a very well informed one.
As for the functionality, it's more than just "shells". There's complete software there, and it's the foundation of our commercial products. Additionally, the combination of Ogg Vorbis, SMIL 2.0, JPEG, GIF, and PNG is very powerful, and *all open source*. No RealAudio/RealVideo necessary, and the app is pretty unique. For an example which plays in the Helix Player (and versions of RealPlayer/RealOne Player with the Ogg Vorbis codec installed), check out the following link:
http://rtsp.org/2003/demos/oggsmil/oggdemo.smil
Once one starts looking at SMIL (especially SMIL 2.0), you begin to realize that a system that can support it does a lot.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator
This is a great set of observations. We've learned a lot in the past year, and we realized that with this initiative, we can't be as hyperfocused on developers as we have been in the past. Hence why we're working on the building a great piece of *open source* end user software for Linux/Solaris/etc.
So in short, you're correct, the initiative is focused on developers, and I'm glad you're recognizing the value of the system.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator
Seems more constructive to contribute to the conversation than complain about why the Slashdot editors didn't spoon feed this to you.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator