This is a complaint that I often hear about Real, and this is what I have to say: if you don't like all the advertisement, why don't you focus your ire in a more productive manner. The real problem is Microsoft. As long as they are allowed to bundle their software with the OS companies like Real have no chance of competing without resorting to massive advertising tactics.
I don't know how most open source companies make a profit (do any?) But in the real (lowercase 'r') world companies depend on revenue, and if a monopoly can freely distribute their products and undercut the competition (regardless of the relative merits of either product) then the other guy is going to be forced to practically beg every user for money. If the playing field were level I think you would see much better quality software and fewer ads all around. (This goes the same for Netscape. As they began losing market share to MS I felt that the quality of their software went downhill and that is was likely a result of their revenue stream getting choked by Microsoft.)
All annoying advertisements aside, when you look at Real compared to Microsoft, I don't see how people can lump the two into the same evil camp. Real tries to promote open standards (rtsp, MPEG4) and Microsoft tries to stiffle competition. Real produces software for all major platforms and Microsoft tries to eternally wed you to Windoze. Real even produces a unix version of their player, despite the fact that there is almost no market for such a thing.
Now Real is trying to embrace the open source spirit (maybe not as openly as everyone would like, but they are still a publicly traded company that needs to protect their intellectual property and make money) and tons of people on SlashDot are lambasting them. Sure, this maneuver may help them strategically, but it is also going to help the open source movement, so where is the harm in that?
If everyone in the industry gave away their source code then no one would be making money on the creation of software. That would sound the death knell of our industry. There has to be a sane middle ground where companies are encouraged to release important source code but still allowed to keep their key intellectual property secret.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a complaint that I often hear about Real, and this is what I have to say: if you don't like all the advertisement, why don't you focus your ire in a more productive manner. The real problem is Microsoft. As long as they are allowed to bundle their software with the OS companies like Real have no chance of competing without resorting to massive advertising tactics.
I don't know how most open source companies make a profit (do any?) But in the real (lowercase 'r') world companies depend on revenue, and if a monopoly can freely distribute their products and undercut the competition (regardless of the relative merits of either product) then the other guy is going to be forced to practically beg every user for money. If the playing field were level I think you would see much better quality software and fewer ads all around. (This goes the same for Netscape. As they began losing market share to MS I felt that the quality of their software went downhill and that is was likely a result of their revenue stream getting choked by Microsoft.)
All annoying advertisements aside, when you look at Real compared to Microsoft, I don't see how people can lump the two into the same evil camp. Real tries to promote open standards (rtsp, MPEG4) and Microsoft tries to stiffle competition. Real produces software for all major platforms and Microsoft tries to eternally wed you to Windoze. Real even produces a unix version of their player, despite the fact that there is almost no market for such a thing.
Now Real is trying to embrace the open source spirit (maybe not as openly as everyone would like, but they are still a publicly traded company that needs to protect their intellectual property and make money) and tons of people on SlashDot are lambasting them. Sure, this maneuver may help them strategically, but it is also going to help the open source movement, so where is the harm in that?
If everyone in the industry gave away their source code then no one would be making money on the creation of software. That would sound the death knell of our industry. There has to be a sane middle ground where companies are encouraged to release important source code but still allowed to keep their key intellectual property secret.