Petteri Pyyny
24 Jul 2002 14:13
RealNetworks continues its honeymoon with open source community and announced today that it has signed an agreement with Xiph.Org Foundation to integrate Ogg Vorbis audio format with recently announced Helix DNA client to give tools for developers to build media players that support Ogg Vorbis format and use the same player technology as Real's commercial RealONE Player uses.
Additionally, both parties agreed to develop Ogg Vorbis plugins for Helix DNA media delivery server platform as well as for Real's RealONE Player.
It seems that Ogg / Xiph.org Foundation have managed to make all the right moves in last few months -- they got the VP3 video codec, media delivery platform, Helix client and delivery platform. Now, only thing what audience wants to see is how the guys who work with these projects, can make them work together. An open source competitor to Microsoft that would deliver patent/royalty -free audio and video formats using open source technology from the encoder through DRM to delivery to client software.
Obviously there are nags; Real's own video and audio formats remain proprietary and some of the license terms of the software Real hands out are more restrictive than in GPL.
Source: RealNetworks' Press release