Monday, July 22, 2002

Real and Open Source -- 5:19 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Real has formed the Helix Community to create an open source media player, server, and encoder. While they are not opening their proprietary Real Audio or Real Video codecs, they are releasing a reverse-engineered version of the Windows Media codec (see this ZDNet story). If this actually works and is really a "clean room" project, it really could be a positive thing. Listen to Windows Media without needing the bloated, buggy, security hole that is Windows Media Player! Unless M$ can find some of its own code in there, I don't think they'd want to risk a lawsuit. For a follow-up, The Register summarizes open-source advocate Bruce Perens feelings on this move. Whatever the case, it will be a very interesting story to follow in the future. Thanks Slashdot for the original story.

News for 07/22/2002

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