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Real adds GPL to Helix Player, RedHat/Novell Join In
kforeman writes "Today, Linux desktop industry leaders, Red Hat and Novell announced with Real a deep product development and distribution agreement that will enhance the rapidly maturing Linux desktop experience. Specifically, Red Hat and Novell will standardize on the 100% open source Helix Player as the leading multimedia framework for their Linux desktops, and will help qualify and distribute the superset RealPlayer 10 with their upcoming Linux desktop offerings. As part of the announcement, within 30 days, Real will add the GPL as a licensing option the underlying Helix Player. For all of you free software developers who have been waiting for a true GPLed industry standard AV framework, we look forward to working with you."
the real point of this is that you can get real(helix) WITHOUT those things after it's gpl'd...
hopefully windows versions as well.
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Well, the code is open, so you it can be checked (and changed) to see what it's doing. That's just one of the many benefits of open source.
What does this mean for GStreamer, which, as I understand it, has similar goals and is being used by quite some OS software already.
Particularly in GNOME software... Which is the desktop used by RedHat and Ximian (Novell).
Not a nice move if you ask me, it has probably to do with the mp3 licence.
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I see this as a great thing simply because the code will be made available to people like the developers of mplayer, who can integrate it into a command-line, accessible, ad-free no-nonsense program that I can enjoy using.
It makes no sense to say "now we'll have a crappy player just like Windows has!"
With the code, anyone can pull out the important decoding bits and integrate them into a non-crappy program.
Some of you seem to have missed this, they are only GPLing the Helix player. Realplayer10 is not being GPL'd, so they are not making any of their codecs available. It is therefore of very little extra value, as it is the codecs that we need to have. There are already a number of perfectly good free frameworks for multimedia. Nothing to see here folks, move on........
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You know, every time Real is mentioned on /. somebody will parrot this. It's such a cheap shot: you haven't said anything that hasn't been said a hundred times before, and in particular, it's hard to imagine how a GPL'd player could possibly install anything that you didn't want it to.
Nor can I imagine Red Hat suddenly changing into the kind of company that distributes malware.
Perhaps you could post a comment that actually relates to the story at hand, rather than recycling the same old junk from a hundred other comments.
(PS: ok, I can imagine how a GPL'd product could install bad stuff, but I can't imagine that it (the malware) would be around long enough to make it worth anybody's time to put in there)
(I'm also aware of Ken Thompsons ACM Award speech, which doesn't apply in the slightest)
What I don't understand is why the companies didn't simply formalize and commit to enhancing the current packages that are out there. Xine, Totem, and others already play MPG, AVI, and even WMV formats--
This seems more like a marketshare play for Real (who is scared of getting streamlined into oblivion by the Evil Empire), especially now that technically Linux has more desktops than Mac. I would guess that Real will take the opportunity to cram all sorts of its bloat and content tie-ins with this, but that the Linux community will tell them to get bent. Another possible play here is that Real hopes to "get in early" for this developing desktop market, and make thier future totally on the content-providing end. I can see them packaging up some sort of MediaServer software to run on company's Linux networks...
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come on... we have 2 very polished, mature players out there -- why put time and energy into this "proprietary" project when vlc is probably the best player out there (and already open source)?
-eric
that will play all the normal formats out there, and not be a piece of spyware and crapware, I'll try it. I notice at the site referenced there are zero comments in the forum so far. If anyone feels like registering (I don't, not a developer so it's a waste of time) ask them that question-all the formats, or what? I know that the alternatives like mplayer exist, but frankly, I just can't make mplayer (nor xine nor rhythm box) to actually play any alternative streams. I USED to be able to use mplayer, but I admit defeat, I've spent enough hours on it now, I giveth up. I use xmms that works easily for mp3 streaming and the real player from the bbc to listen to either mp3 or real streams. I haven't been able to listen to a single windows stream on mplayer (or anything else) yet, it attemtps to play it then crashes. Back when I was running RH 7x series, I got it to work quite easily, now, nope, and I downloaded all the dang codecs I could find. I'm a binary guy mostly, I just decided I wasn't going to fool with compiling and flags and suchlike anymore, it shouldn't be needed for normal computer useage unless you are running a source based distro, and I ain't. This is 2004, not 1994.
Anyway, good luck to helix in general, glad to see they keep getting hipper. It's taken a while for real to "get real" I hope the trends continue, and with redhat and novell support, maybe it will. It would be *real dang nice* to have one easily installed player with simple or no config tweaking or putzing with the kernel and modules, etc required that actually *played* everything outta the box.
Gstreamer's framework is LGPL'd, so it allows proprietary implementations on top of it - unlike of course Real's Helixplayer. IMHO this is doommed to fail unless they change their licensing plan.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. But hey guess what; With the new Open Source GPL version everyone who thinks that Real is crap can now take the source code and improve it; making it so its not crap anymore. If you think that real is crap and can suggest ways that it might be better you have an opportunity to go over to the helix developer site and make suggestions that if they are constructive and not overzealous (like your comment) could actually go into making real a better product.
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Ok, first of all, it's open source player, so it's really not a problem any more about prioritary codecs, about that it is coming from Real (king of bloated player), etc. Yes, Real codecs still will be closed and let them stay in that way if they want to be - it's not a main point this time. I hope at least they will ease distribution of their codecs so they could be included in distros and every distro won't require additional hacking for including them - as it is now. Yes, there are still their official player, but it is very outdated with it's Motif GUI.
Second, there's no worry about it because Helix support Ogg Vorbis/Thedora codecs from the very begining. So, they are open source formats and will play in the Gstreamer enabled apps (Totem) as in Helix.
If there are competition - that's good. Main goal for me in media players is support for patent-free and royality-free codecs. Helix support that. So I don't think that there is something to worry about.
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VLC and MPlayer are perfectly free if you don't distribute proprietary codecs. And guess what, Helix will have proprietary codecs, too, which will not be freed. So, as far as this goes, there's absolutely no difference
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Troll. Give them a chance. When you start getting Real spam on your phone, then complain.
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Second, the RealPlayer 10 for Linux adds to the Helix Player the non-open source components
Will the proprietary legacy codec binaries provided by RealNetworks run on Linux on any CPU architecture other than x86? If not, how much Intel stock does your company own? I'm guessing that because RealNetworks maintains the Intel codecs for free while the "50 semiconductor companies" have to pay both RealNetworks for the source code and their own engineers for the porting effort, non-x86 platforms have a huge barrier to entry.
Yeah, and not only that, but you get [BUFFERING] when you play something for the 2nd or Nth time. Most other players work by downloading the file to disk and playing from that asynchronously. That way, if the download is too slow to watch, you can background the thing, and when it finishes, you can start it from the beginning and it'll be fast. But Real Player downloads it again every time, giving you those slowdowns over and over.
They probably do this to prevent you from finding the disk copy and saving it somewhere. And so they can take it away from you when they want by just removing it from their server. It's a good example of how paranoia over "IP rights" can lead to a crummy product.
I wonder if the "open" version will improve the product by running off a disk copy?
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Spoken like a true salesman. Buzzwords and well practised lines.
"We hope to catalyze the linux desktop industry..."
Rubbish, you're looking to manoeveure Helix into a blossoming linux desktop industry. The linux desktop industry was fine before Helix, will be fine with Helix, and fine after Helix. You're just another company catching the ride on the increasingly popular linux train. (That's not a bad thing or a criticism.)
"...to bring our better and faster time to market AV-based applications."
How are your codecs any "better" and "faster time to market" than Theora or Vorbis? Yes, you support those, but so does many other media players. In real (sic) terms, how is Helix any better than the GStreamer framework or mature apps like MPlayer?
We want to avoid a KDE/GNOME fracturing of the industry.
You mean, you want to dominate the linux AV industry? Or you want to provide a desktop neutral solution? MPlayer and Totem work fine in both KDE and GNOME for me. I'm quite unsure as to what fracturing you refer to.
Throwing salespeak at the crowd is all well and good, but could you at least make it meaningful and specific rather than a few buzzwords / hot topics thrown together?
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