No, it's not "doomed to fail" any more than MySQL is "doomed to fail" (which switched from LGPL to GPL, IIRC). Having a means of charging for making proprietary applications means that all people who modify/augment and distribute also contribute one way or another. Either they contribute by making their application open source (adding to the ecosystem), or they contribute financially by licensing the code. In any case, they help perpetuate the platform.
It sucks that we have to compete on so many fronts, but we've been doing it for 9 years in the face of many, many pundits talking about how we're "doomed to fail".
We've gotten tremendous traction in the embedded software space. Many, many, many handset makers have licensed Helix for use in their devices. We have a strong lead in the nascent Linux mobile space with our deal with Motorola. With our announcements today, we're making a great start into the Linux desktop space.
Ogg Theora + SMIL 2.0 support. Sure, there are other players out there that support Ogg Theora, and support SMIL 2.0, but I'm not aware of any that support both.
Highly modular architecture that scales down to fit on cell phones and other portable devices. We post numbers for the Symbian build, but the Linux numbers aren't far off.
Platform support - we support Win32, MacOS, Linux, Symbian very well, and a range of other operating systems to the point that those third parties can make it work on their platforms.
We plan to stick around and be a major force in multimedia for years to come, and have the means and ability to do it. You'll continue to see new developments all of the time as we continue to add features to support our commercial products, as we provide community grants to accelerate adoption of the platform, and as we get contributions from the community.
Rob Lanphier
Development Support Manager
RealNetworks
Sorry. Here's the problem. We pay licensing fees to a lot of third parties, who bind us to using these codecs only for our stuff.
Moreover, we license the codecs for a reason. We do it to make our media framework and products more useful and enticing. So, while I'm sure everyone would love it if we opened these up to everyone else's framework, I would hope that people think it through enough not to expect it.
Speaking as a RealNetworks employee, we do care about desktop users, even if they aren't traditional customers. Our goal for this year is to do our part in making desktop Linux a viable platform for delivering subscription services. Can't do that without a legal player, so we're starting there.
That said, as a publicly traded company, we've gotta make money, so you are essentially correct. Our revenue comes mainly from subscriptions these days, with really great growth around our RealRhapsody service. Last quarter, business products and services was $13.9 million out of $60.4 million in total revenue, so the traditional customers that you are thinking of make up a smaller part of our business than many realize.
This wasn't an architecture change...this was a branding change. That's all. The RealPlayer 10 is nothing more than the Helix Player + binary components + Gtk app theme to add RealPlayer branding.
We appreciate you pointing out the fix to the problem. However, contrary to popular belief, just because we're a "big" company, we don't have infinite army of developers to apply to this, and one of the things that drives us crazy about Linux right now is the practically infinite combination of compilers, libraries, and so on that all tend to break backwards compatibility on a frequent basis. With respect to company size, I say "big" because in the grand scheme of things, IBM, Sun, Microsoft and Cisco are big companies. We, on the other hand, are not (under 1000 employees).
As far as "make install" goes, we're not using automake, so we don't have that system. We've got our own build system that we've been using since 1996 (well before open sourcing). Though it's not what folks are used to, it is open source as well, and it's very powerful in its own right. It's written in Python, and it's religiously cross platform, capable of generating GNU make make files, as well as Visual C++ nmake files, CodeWarrior build files, etc.
Yes, you can do that. It's not through pipelining, but there's many points in the audio/video path where you can insert filters and such. We also have full SMIL 2.0 support, which allows for mixing multiple streams, and with this release, just open sourced our RealText implenentation for subtitling in a SMIL presentation.
Moreover, the Helix DNA Producer (also open source) has the sort of pipelining functionality you are talking about.
The short answer is that it's the only way to ensure password security.
The ideal situation would be that we use http for anonymous access, and https for password authenticated access. We may set things up that way at some point, but given the amount of other features we'd like to implement on the site, it's pretty low on our list.
We're in the process of migrating to some new site software now. After that, things should be a little better in that regard.
Supporting MPlayer is not going to be a viable long-term option. They take the "Catholic only on Sunday" approach with the GPL. They like the fact that the GPL imposes all sorts of terms on anyone who would take their source code. However, they don't respect the license terms of the components they link against. Moreover, it's just a matter of time before Microsoft makes this impossible.
If Linux is to get any mainstream acceptance, the tools on the platform need to be totally above board, legal, and useful out of the box. We're working with the major Linux distributors to provide something that meets that criteria, and we hope that you join us in that.
I'm not sure how investing millions of dollars in our Linux and open source efforts constitutes "dipping our toe in", but whatever. This is much more than that.
I never said it invalidates any criticism of our organization. I'm asking for you (and others) to cut us a little slack. As I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread, we're admittedly an imperfect company, but one that can really help out the community if you give us a chance.
I guess I've got to assume you aren't a Linux user or a fan of open source software. Because, if you are, you should be very, very careful what you wish for.
Even if you think RealNetworks is evil, you are doing the free software and open source movements a terrible disservice. There are many companies and individuals who are watching what happens with RealNetworks (including the board of RealNetworks itself). When you sneer at Real's move in a more open direction, you are causing others to question the value of working with a seemingly fickle and ungrateful community.
Your best bet for a command line player is "splay", which is available as part of the Helix DNA Client. Now that we have the Helix Player, we're not doing QA'd releases of splay, but there are nightly builds of it available. Information on building it from source is available here. I'm hoping that that player doesn't have any unnecessary dependencies on X. If it does, you may have to compile from source to get a player without that (we've got tons of build options to turn features off). Also, IIRC, we've even got a framebuffer implementation for video checked in somewhere, so video sans X may be possible.
Actually, what occurs to me is that we should probably be including it as part of the Helix Player.
splay is admittedly pretty rudimentary player. There are better options if you don't mind doing a little work. A long time ago, trplayer, which is a more advanced commandline player for use by blind users and others with no need for graphical user interface. It's a little rusty, though, as it needs to be updated to use the latest interfaces. The author, Matthew Campbell, is no longer interested in developing it, and would happily turn it over to a new maintainer if someone emerged.
Being one of Real's employees that Monty has heard from, I can say "hear hear". Even with my Real hat on, I say Icecast would be far superior than what has transpired
One defense I will offer for our hardline business folks is that they've figured out how to keep the lights on. The fact of the matter is, we just announced that consumer revenue was 76% of our 2003q4 revenue, up from 70% the previous quarter. "Consumer revenue" is made up of subscriptions to our premium business, as opposed to systems revenue selling media servers. People assume that our business is still about media servers. So, they do get a little zealous about keeping the subscription business growing.
The thing that can't be repeated enough is that RealAudio is a supported format on Linux. Now, Linux users are forced to use jury-rigged solutions to listen to Car Talk. Very sad.
I'm not going to be an apologist for RealNetworks past actions. RealNetworks is a big enough company, that Jamie Zawinski's quote "[G]reat things are accomplished by small groups of people who are driven, who have unity of purpose. The more people involved, the slower and stupider their union is." I'll admit we've done slow and stupid things. However, there are certain things that can only be done by big companies, no matter how slow and stupid, which is why I haven't written a similar rant.
However, I'd like to point out that, in the "slow and stupid" vein, we're slowly getting better. The RealPlayer 10 beta isn't perfect, but it's better, and I imagine that things will be better in the final release.
Moreover, we've got a lot of really great things going on in the Helix Community. We've got the Helix Player for Linux, which just the won Best Open Source Project award at LinuxWorld. That means that if there's something that annoys you about it, you can fix it. It's based on Gtk, and the engine code is all cross-platform, so someone could theoretically port it to Windows even.
So, we're trying. I'm hoping that folks could cut us a little slack. I'm hoping that the Linux folks out there could help us change Car Talk's mind, since Windows Media is a pretty Linux-hostile format.
Copying unlicensed DLLs as a Linux multimedia "solution" is shortsighted, and quite frankly, stupid. What happens when Microsoft chooses to DRM protect the DLLs? What happens when they start lacing them with NGSCB (nee Palladium)? If you keep shrugging off content providers switching to Linux-hostile formats, you're going to find yourself locked out of content.
Rather than celebrate another format win by Microsoft, complain! Put up a stink.
In the meantime, if you don't like the way the RealPlayer currently works, help us with the Helix Player, which is an open source player that commercial Linux desktop providers don't have to worry about getting sued for distributing.
If you don't like the fact that RealAudio and RealVideo are still proprietary formats, then help us support Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora, as well as any other free codecs that are applicable. But whatever you do, don't just let Microsoft win these battles.
Thanks for letting us know we're appreciated for putting in the effort on Linux. The Helix Player team has been working really hard on our latest generation player, and took a really sensible direction (straight-up Gtk, no bells and whistles), and their hard work is really starting to pay off. It's clean and simple and gets the job done.
As a Linux desktop user myself, I'm really keen on making the Linux desktop commercially viable; something that our primary commercial competitors don't have a lot of motivation to do. Hopefully, we can complement the existing enthusiast-driven open source efforts with commercially-attractive (supported, OEMed, blah blah) software, making the platform as a whole far more attractive.
Kevin Foreman (the original poster), myself, probably at least 20 or 30 others on a regular basis, not to mention the many people who read when we point something out to them. At least a couple of the 20 or 30 regulars are in non-tech positions, even marketing. That's at least what I know about.
Sorry about the browser cert thing...it's a little weird right now due to some funky wildcard cert stuff (for *.helixcommunity.org). Some browsers are just fine with it (my Mozilla on Linux never prompts me...YMMV); others aren't (newer versions of IE, from what I understand). We're doing a major site overhaul this month, so we're hoping we can get that fixed up in the process.
I run Linux on all my desktops, so I haven't had much of a chance to play with RealPlayer 10 to answer your questions vis a vis opt out vs opt in. My understanding is that one of the big perks is being able to kill all background processes dead, and only having to answer the MIME-type question once.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator
RealNetworks
I work at RealNetworks, but I'm running Linux on all of my desktops, so I'm not speaking from a lot of personal experience of running RealPlayer 10. What I can say is been a ton of bug fixing and performance optimizations that have gone on. The same client core used by RealPlayer 10 is also used by our Helix Client for Symbian, for example, and a large team of engineers has spent a lot of time tuning the performance.
But I shouldn't assume too much. What problems are you having?
If you find that RealPlayer 10 still isn't solving your problems, you've got two options for a fully legal way of giving your end users what they need beside using our consumer edition of RealPlayer:
RealPlayer Enterprise - This is a paid product which lets you control what features you deploy to your end users. It's not a free product, but you can download a free trial
Work with us on developing a Win32 version of the Helix Player (currently only for Linux, soon for Solaris). Given that the Helix Player uses Gtk, and there's a Gtk for Win32, it may not be that tough to port. Not an instant gratification solution, but one which gives you maximum control.
It sounds like you're using a free consumer product in an enterprise setting. It should work (which is why I want to know what problems you're having), but it may be that mismatch is where your problems lie.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator
RealNetworks
The need for using.rpm with modern browsers is way less than it was. However, there's enough legacy content out there that we can't just stop using it.
However, we're in the process of working on the Helix Player installer right now, so if you've got some ideas for how the two can peacefully co-exist, we'd love to hear it.
If you're after the metals, it's far more effective to granulate the cable, and then screen the output. No burning involved, and in many cases, the plastic coating can also be recycled. This is reasonably common practice, and it works pretty well.
I can't speak to Motorola's specific productization plans, or to what sort of mechanism that will be available for updating software. However, Ogg Vorbis support isn't much of a leap for the following reasons:
At the time that I submitted this to Slashdot (approx 1am PDT on Wednesday), the only stories were our press releases. If you were so concerned about other sources, why didn't you post them:
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.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's not "doomed to fail" any more than MySQL is "doomed to fail" (which switched from LGPL to GPL, IIRC). Having a means of charging for making proprietary applications means that all people who modify/augment and distribute also contribute one way or another. Either they contribute by making their application open source (adding to the ecosystem), or they contribute financially by licensing the code. In any case, they help perpetuate the platform.
It sucks that we have to compete on so many fronts, but we've been doing it for 9 years in the face of many, many pundits talking about how we're "doomed to fail".
We've gotten tremendous traction in the embedded software space. Many, many, many handset makers have licensed Helix for use in their devices. We have a strong lead in the nascent Linux mobile space with our deal with Motorola. With our announcements today, we're making a great start into the Linux desktop space.
Rob Lanphier
Development Support Manager
RealNetworks
- Ogg Theora + SMIL 2.0 support. Sure, there are other players out there that support Ogg Theora, and support SMIL 2.0, but I'm not aware of any that support both.
- Highly modular architecture that scales down to fit on cell phones and other portable devices. We post numbers for the Symbian build, but the Linux numbers aren't far off.
- Array of industry partnerships. Why does this matter? Because we're getting more commerical licensees all of the time, and even for commercial licensees, we're making sure that the work that they do gets contributed back into the codebase, even if they are a commercial licensee (see section 2.2) and are otherwise terrified of this whole open source thang.
- Platform support - we support Win32, MacOS, Linux, Symbian very well, and a range of other operating systems to the point that those third parties can make it work on their platforms.
- A stable company with lots of money in the bank and growing revenues. Our last earnings announcement has more on this.
We plan to stick around and be a major force in multimedia for years to come, and have the means and ability to do it. You'll continue to see new developments all of the time as we continue to add features to support our commercial products, as we provide community grants to accelerate adoption of the platform, and as we get contributions from the community.Rob Lanphier
Development Support Manager
RealNetworks
Moreover, we license the codecs for a reason. We do it to make our media framework and products more useful and enticing. So, while I'm sure everyone would love it if we opened these up to everyone else's framework, I would hope that people think it through enough not to expect it.
As far as answering what else is enticing about our framework, I'll address that in another post.
Rob Lanphier
Development Support Manager
RealNetworks
That said, as a publicly traded company, we've gotta make money, so you are essentially correct. Our revenue comes mainly from subscriptions these days, with really great growth around our RealRhapsody service. Last quarter, business products and services was $13.9 million out of $60.4 million in total revenue, so the traditional customers that you are thinking of make up a smaller part of our business than many realize.
That said, we've done our part to listen to those customers, and we think our product is much better today.
Rob Lanphier
Development Support Manager
RealNetworks
The source code + binary add-ons for the RealPlayer 10 alpha for Linux are available from our CVS repository, and will be available soon as a tarball.
Rob Lanphier
Development Support Manager
RealNetworks
We appreciate you pointing out the fix to the problem. However, contrary to popular belief, just because we're a "big" company, we don't have infinite army of developers to apply to this, and one of the things that drives us crazy about Linux right now is the practically infinite combination of compilers, libraries, and so on that all tend to break backwards compatibility on a frequent basis. With respect to company size, I say "big" because in the grand scheme of things, IBM, Sun, Microsoft and Cisco are big companies. We, on the other hand, are not (under 1000 employees).
As far as "make install" goes, we're not using automake, so we don't have that system. We've got our own build system that we've been using since 1996 (well before open sourcing). Though it's not what folks are used to, it is open source as well, and it's very powerful in its own right. It's written in Python, and it's religiously cross platform, capable of generating GNU make make files, as well as Visual C++ nmake files, CodeWarrior build files, etc.
Rob Lanphier
Development Support Manager
RealNetworks
Moreover, the Helix DNA Producer (also open source) has the sort of pipelining functionality you are talking about.
Rob Lanphier
Developer Support Manager
RealNetworks
The short answer is that it's the only way to ensure password security.
The ideal situation would be that we use http for anonymous access, and https for password authenticated access. We may set things up that way at some point, but given the amount of other features we'd like to implement on the site, it's pretty low on our list.
Rob
Rob Lanphier
Developer Support Manager
RealNetworks
We're in the process of migrating to some new site software now. After that, things should be a little better in that regard.
Supporting MPlayer is not going to be a viable long-term option. They take the "Catholic only on Sunday" approach with the GPL. They like the fact that the GPL imposes all sorts of terms on anyone who would take their source code. However, they don't respect the license terms of the components they link against. Moreover, it's just a matter of time before Microsoft makes this impossible.
If Linux is to get any mainstream acceptance, the tools on the platform need to be totally above board, legal, and useful out of the box. We're working with the major Linux distributors to provide something that meets that criteria, and we hope that you join us in that.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks
I'm not sure how investing millions of dollars in our Linux and open source efforts constitutes "dipping our toe in", but whatever. This is much more than that.
I never said it invalidates any criticism of our organization. I'm asking for you (and others) to cut us a little slack. As I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread, we're admittedly an imperfect company, but one that can really help out the community if you give us a chance.
I guess I've got to assume you aren't a Linux user or a fan of open source software. Because, if you are, you should be very, very careful what you wish for.
Even if you think RealNetworks is evil, you are doing the free software and open source movements a terrible disservice. There are many companies and individuals who are watching what happens with RealNetworks (including the board of RealNetworks itself). When you sneer at Real's move in a more open direction, you are causing others to question the value of working with a seemingly fickle and ungrateful community.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks
Actually, what occurs to me is that we should probably be including it as part of the Helix Player.
splay is admittedly pretty rudimentary player. There are better options if you don't mind doing a little work. A long time ago, trplayer, which is a more advanced commandline player for use by blind users and others with no need for graphical user interface. It's a little rusty, though, as it needs to be updated to use the latest interfaces. The author, Matthew Campbell, is no longer interested in developing it, and would happily turn it over to a new maintainer if someone emerged.
Hope this helps,
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks
One defense I will offer for our hardline business folks is that they've figured out how to keep the lights on. The fact of the matter is, we just announced that consumer revenue was 76% of our 2003q4 revenue, up from 70% the previous quarter. "Consumer revenue" is made up of subscriptions to our premium business, as opposed to systems revenue selling media servers. People assume that our business is still about media servers. So, they do get a little zealous about keeping the subscription business growing.
The thing that can't be repeated enough is that RealAudio is a supported format on Linux. Now, Linux users are forced to use jury-rigged solutions to listen to Car Talk. Very sad.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks
I'm not going to be an apologist for RealNetworks past actions. RealNetworks is a big enough company, that Jamie Zawinski's quote "[G]reat things are accomplished by small groups of people who are driven, who have unity of purpose. The more people involved, the slower and stupider their union is." I'll admit we've done slow and stupid things. However, there are certain things that can only be done by big companies, no matter how slow and stupid, which is why I haven't written a similar rant.
However, I'd like to point out that, in the "slow and stupid" vein, we're slowly getting better. The RealPlayer 10 beta isn't perfect, but it's better, and I imagine that things will be better in the final release.
Moreover, we've got a lot of really great things going on in the Helix Community. We've got the Helix Player for Linux, which just the won Best Open Source Project award at LinuxWorld. That means that if there's something that annoys you about it, you can fix it. It's based on Gtk, and the engine code is all cross-platform, so someone could theoretically port it to Windows even.
So, we're trying. I'm hoping that folks could cut us a little slack. I'm hoping that the Linux folks out there could help us change Car Talk's mind, since Windows Media is a pretty Linux-hostile format.
Thanks
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks
Rather than celebrate another format win by Microsoft, complain! Put up a stink.
In the meantime, if you don't like the way the RealPlayer currently works, help us with the Helix Player, which is an open source player that commercial Linux desktop providers don't have to worry about getting sued for distributing.
If you don't like the fact that RealAudio and RealVideo are still proprietary formats, then help us support Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora, as well as any other free codecs that are applicable. But whatever you do, don't just let Microsoft win these battles.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
RealNetworks
As a Linux desktop user myself, I'm really keen on making the Linux desktop commercially viable; something that our primary commercial competitors don't have a lot of motivation to do. Hopefully, we can complement the existing enthusiast-driven open source efforts with commercially-attractive (supported, OEMed, blah blah) software, making the platform as a whole far more attractive.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
Sorry about the browser cert thing...it's a little weird right now due to some funky wildcard cert stuff (for *.helixcommunity.org). Some browsers are just fine with it (my Mozilla on Linux never prompts me...YMMV); others aren't (newer versions of IE, from what I understand). We're doing a major site overhaul this month, so we're hoping we can get that fixed up in the process.
I run Linux on all my desktops, so I haven't had much of a chance to play with RealPlayer 10 to answer your questions vis a vis opt out vs opt in. My understanding is that one of the big perks is being able to kill all background processes dead, and only having to answer the MIME-type question once.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator
RealNetworks
But I shouldn't assume too much. What problems are you having?
If you find that RealPlayer 10 still isn't solving your problems, you've got two options for a fully legal way of giving your end users what they need beside using our consumer edition of RealPlayer:
- RealPlayer Enterprise - This is a paid product which lets you control what features you deploy to your end users. It's not a free product, but you can download a free trial
- Work with us on developing a Win32 version of the Helix Player (currently only for Linux, soon for Solaris). Given that the Helix Player uses Gtk, and there's a Gtk for Win32, it may not be that tough to port. Not an instant gratification solution, but one which gives you maximum control.
It sounds like you're using a free consumer product in an enterprise setting. It should work (which is why I want to know what problems you're having), but it may be that mismatch is where your problems lie.Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator
RealNetworks
RealNetworks' first public use of the .rpm file extension is practically simultaneous with Red Hat use: (see RealAudio 2.0 release and Red Hat 2.0 release).
.rpm with modern browsers is way less than it was. However, there's enough legacy content out there that we can't just stop using it.
The need for using
However, we're in the process of working on the Helix Player installer right now, so if you've got some ideas for how the two can peacefully co-exist, we'd love to hear it.
Rob
If you're after the metals, it's far more effective to granulate the cable, and then screen the output. No burning involved, and in many cases, the plastic coating can also be recycled. This is reasonably common practice, and it works pretty well.
The webpage is severely out of date, but there's a lot of work going on with linuxarm/qtopia right now (because of Motorola, among others).
Rob
- Motorola is working with RealNetworks on RealOne for Motorola phones
- Motorola and RealNetworks' work is based on Helix
- There's support in Helix for Ogg Vorbis
Any help we get with the Xiph project on Helix helps us toward making this happen.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
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
You don't need to sign an NDA to get the source code. You are either mistaken or lying. Which is it?