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"

Comments

Open Source DRM:

[Ieshan]

options.c /*Please comment out this option if you want to disable DRM. Doing so *may* make you liable for copyright infringement!*/
bool DRM_Enabled = True; /*Please comment out this option if you want to disable the automatic sending of personal information (shopping habits, social security number, recently visited pr0n sites) to RealNetworks. Doing so *may* disable use of this player!*/
bool player_works = True

etc.. etc..

could be cool

[didjit]

sounds like this could be a good thing. the older versions of real player for linux worked with moderate success. but they were shoved far out of reach on the real site like that guy in office space who likes his stapler so much. the versions weren't quite current and the players were sub-standard compared to the windows version. it'd be nice if they released a decent media player for linux and even better if it were open sourced.

Ooooh...

[sbszine]

Can I port the bit of Realplayer that takes over your browser and can only be removed with holy water and a complete reinstall?

I've got something important to say about Real.

[Chess_the_cat]

Real >>>buffering 34%>>> Player is some >>>buffering 46%>>> of the >>>buffering 54%>>> finest >>>buffering 60%>>> software I've ever >>>buffering 70%>>> come across.

Re:It's still a good thing

[GigsVT]

No, it's not a good thing, and you are completely wrong about Adobe.

Adobe has supported open source more than most people know (or care to believe).

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.

This has been an incredible boon for open source and Free Software. If you think printing in Linux sucks now, just imagine how bad it would have been had Adobe been dicks about PS and PDF standards. Adobe is way ahead of the game...

They realized they can make more money by getting a fully open standard adopted, rather than trying to force a closed standard down everyone's throats, and face competing standards that do basically the same time.

We would be downloading 3rd party open source postscript and PDF interperters from overseas to avoid patents, like we have to do now with mplayer codecs.

What Real is doing is a sham. They don't give a fuck about Free Software, this is just their way of trying to get in on that "Linux thing" without actually giving a little.

I know that Elcomsoft ordeal has left a bad taste in people's mouths, but we can't forget that Adobe isn't an unconditional enemy, they have been a strong ally in the past, and hopefully they saw the error in their ways regarding the DMCA.