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Analysts said the strategy shift by RealNetworks was likely to shake up
the industry. "The moment you've open-sourced something you've cornered
your competitor," said Matthew Berk, an analyst a Jupiter Research. "To
date this stuff has been very proprietary. Opening it up makes it
accessible to creative and gifted programmers who will come up with wild
stuff that the companies have never considered."

Mr. Glaser said he expected other companies to produce technology that
would rival RealNetworks' commercially as a result of the
community-source strategy.

One possibility is that companies such as Sun or I.B.M. could decide to
add the Helix technology of RealNetworks as a standard component of
their operating systems. Although RealNetworks might not get a
significant financial benefit from such an arrangement it could
contribute to making its Helix software a de facto industry standard.

Mr. Glaser said he had struck upon the idea of making his media server
software open source while visiting with an executive from Nokia, the
world's largest cellphone maker.

"Taking all of this stuff beyond the PC has been a huge motivation for
us," he said. When he realized that Nokia was interested in deploying
the software technology on as many as 30 to 40 different types of
phones, he realized that RealNetworks did not have enough programming
talent to support the effort.

"I told him, `I don't think we have enough engineers even if you guys
were willing to pay us,' " he said.

That touched off a search for an alternative way of having the two
companies cooperate.



http://quicken.com.com/2100-1023-945406.html

Real takes the open-source route 
By Jim Hu 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
July 22, 2002, 1:55 PM PT

RealNetworks on Monday unveiled a new open-source version of its
streaming media technology that supports multiple file formats for audio
and video, including those that use Microsoft's Windows Media technology. 

The new campaign, dubbed "Helix," and first reported by The New York
Times, marks one of the most ambitious moves in the company's
history. RealNetworks is simultaneously releasing technology without
permission that plugs in to Microsoft's competing software and is
raising the hood on much of its own software technology to "open source"
developers or anyone else who wants to look. 

The twin moves raise the risk of lawsuits and renewed competition --
potentially even from Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft itself, once it
gets a look under the hood at RealNetworks' technology. But it marks a
dramatic, potential way for a company watching its market share diminish
to regain momentum and support across an industry where many other
players remain skeptical of Microsoft's power.

"It's a very bold move on the part of Real," said Michael Gartenberg, a
research director for analyst firm Jupiter Research. "This was a shot
fired by Real and fired directly at Redmond." 

The move is the latest in a series of strategic twists and turns that
has made RealNetworks one of the only companies to survive direct
Microsoft competition for years. While the company has expanded into
paid subscription content business, its software and streaming media
infrastructures have been under increasing pressure from Microsoft,
which has deemed multimedia to be one of the major drives under the
latest versions of its Windows operating system. 

Real's Helix announcement mainly involves the technology that allows
media files to move from place to place over the Internet. RealNetworks
and Microsoft both produce servers that allow video and audio to be
streamed from a content company such as CNN or NBC to a personal
computer. Real has charged for this software, while Microsoft has given
it away for free. 

In April, RealMedia reached 17 million at-home viewers, compared with
Windows Media at 15.1 million and Apple Computer's QuickTime at 7.3
million, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. At work, Windows Media drew
about 12.2 million unique viewers, compared with RealMedia's 11.6
million and QuickTime's 5 million. 

Real's own new product, called the Universal Server, will allow one
server to stream Real's technology, Microsoft files, Apple Computer's
QuickTime, and others. Most other competing products do not support
competitors' technology. 

"When you have all these different platforms, and all these different
protocols, it gets unmanageable," RealNetworks' Rob Glaser said at a
high-glitz press conference in San Francisco announcing the product. "A
lot of what (this technology) is about is breaking those bottlenecks and
making convergence really converge." 

To make the new product compatible with Microsoft files, however, the
company pursued a risky strategy known as "reverse engineering," in
which developers examine a competitor's product to see how it works and
try to create something that works just like it. 

Glaser said that engineers worked entirely in a "clean room"
environment, meaning that they had no access to actual Microsoft
code. Had they simply copied code, they could be liable for patent
infringement. The resulting product simply mimics the way that
Microsoft's files are sent across networks and allows a Windows Media
player to receive the file. 

Other companies have been sued for simply copying a competitor's code
and putting it in their own products. But RealNetworks says it's not
worried about Microsoft lawsuits, because it took precautions to do all
development in the "clean room" environment. Microsoft itself has
engaged in this kind of legal reverse engineering. 

Analysts say Microsoft, which still faces antitrust lawsuits, is in no
position to sue in any case. 

"This is a very tenuous time for Microsoft," Gartenberg said. "This is
not a time in Microsoft's history when it can be seen as trying to do to
Real what it did to Netscape." 

The influential giant?

Certainly, Monday's announcement acknowledges Microsoft's influence in
media technology, something Glaser and Real have often been loathe to do. 

Microsoft was quick to spin Monday's announcement as further validation
of its strength in the marketplace. 

"It's an admission of RealNetworks that it's important for them to
support Windows Media and that we're now the leading player among home
and work users," said Michael Aldridge, lead product manager for
Microsoft's Windows Digital Media division. 

Aldridge added that RealNetworks currently has a licensing agreement for
its media player to support Windows audio and video formats. However,
RealNetworks and Microsoft do not have an agreement to allow the server
to deliver Windows Media formats to end users, which is what
RealNetworks trying to do. 

Aldridge declined to comment on RealNetworks' replication of Microsoft's
technology. 

In addition to its own new product, Real has promised to give away
source code to much of the underlying technology for streaming
media. That stops short of the actual file format, or "codec" itself,
but will provide the open-source community and other companies with
powerful new tools to build their own streaming media players or
software. 

Glaser said he wouldn't initially make the software code that mimics
Microsoft's streaming available but that he was considering the idea. A
first chunk of code underlying the RealNetworks multimedia player
software will be released in 90 days. Other code, including the basic
functions of its streaming media server and encoder, will be released by
the end of the year, the company said. 

The company's plan to reveal its source code--the basic instructions
underlying the software--echoes similar moves made by Netscape
Communications to defend against Microsoft. In March 1998, Netscape took
the bold step of opening its source code to allow software developers to
help create the next generation of its popular browser. 

James Barksdale, then CEO of Netscape, said the move would allow the
company to "tap into a virtually unlimited developer talent pool."
Instead, the effort, which has evolved into the Mozilla.org project, hit
considerable roadblocks, and Microsoft overtook Netscape in market
share. 



----
aDaM@XeNT.CoM -- .sig double play!


We have done a great job of having teams work around the clock to
deliver security fixes for any problems that arise. Our responsiveness
has been unmatched - but as an industry leader we can and must do
better... Going forward, we must develop technologies and policies that
help businesses better manage ever larger networks of PCs, servers and
other intelligent devices, knowing that their critical business systems
are safe from harm. Systems will have to become self-managing and
inherently resilient. We need to prepare now for the kind of software
that will make this happen, and we must be the kind of company that
people can rely on to deliver it. 
  -- Bill Gates, http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-817343.html


The problem with SOAP is that it tries to escape from the Web interface.
It deliberately attempts to suck, mostly because it is deliberately
trying to supplant CGI-like applications rather than Web-like
applications.  It is simply a waste of time for folks to say that "HTTP
allows this because I've seen it used by this common CGI script."  If we
thought that sucky CGI scripts were the basis for good Web
architectures, then we wouldn't have needed a Gateway Interface to
implement them.  In order for SOAP-ng to succeed as a Web protocol, it
needs to start behaving like it is part of the Web.  That means, among
other things, that it should stop trying to encapsulate all sorts of
actions under an object-specific interface.  It needs to limit its
object-specific behavior to those situations in which object-specific
behavior is actually desirable.  If it does not do so, then it is not
using URI as the basis for resource identification, and therefore it is
no more part of the Web than SMTP.
  -- Roy Fielding, http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Apr/0181.html

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