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Topic: March XiphMeet (Selected Parts) (Read 1941 times) previous topic - next topic
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March XiphMeet (Selected Parts)

Here is my selected part of this month XiphMeet for the lazy ones who don't wanna read the log
I am not a developer ar all & furthermore I am not native english ... so I may have missed some parts ...
feel free to correct me ... my selection focus on the topics that often come out on HA topics ...
you won't find any technical discussion here.

IMHO the main news is Theora Beta 1 being out soon

1)VORBIS:

<xiphmont> 'CVS head is waiting to be released as 1.0.2, and has been since New Year'
...
<rillian> We Will Do vorbis 1.0.2
...
<xiphmont> BTW, it is a subminor release... I'll be happy with bugs fixed and assisting distros with packages.
...

2)THEORA:

<rillian> I'll start with theora
<rillian> fluendo.com has given us funding to get to beta 1
<rillian> for which we are very grateful
...
<derf_> What exactly does that mean?
<rillian> they've agreed to make a donation to xiph
<xiphmont> And we've agreed to use that to fund Theora.
...
<xiphmont> "There is no contractual guarantee to deliver anything" however, we plan to use it for Theora.
...
<rillian> the main sticking point has always been the spec, so I'm happy to subcontract with anyone who would be motivated to write for pay
<derf_> I'll write for money.
...
<rillian> anyway, I'd like to shoot for the end of april for theora beta 1
...
<Arc> oh rillian, you said beta-1 is being aimed for end of april. when is alpha-3 appx comming out?
<rillian> Arc: looking like next week, since we have to deal with the pp stuff

3)OGGMUX
<xiphmont> I want to have a full proposal of OggMux, containing feedback of all the recent discussions in fully-fleshed-out but not editied form tonight.

4)OGGENC:

(Big discussion drift on which formats Oggenc should support: Flac/Vorbis/Speex/Theora & ... stranger ...even on other non-Xiph formats ...
obviouly not everyone agree & some dev fears oggenc become a monster ... some thinks a joined Theora+Vorbis or Flac+Vorbis Oggenc is a must do ...)
[My opinion on it: Joining Lossless+Lossy is clever, Joining Audio+Video is clever, Joining Speex is nice but not that usefull,
Joining Xiph-Codec with no-Xiph Codec is completly idiot ... so I vote for a support all Xiph Codec Oggenc ...]

End Of Xiphmeet.

[It's 3 Months I keep an Eye on Xiphmeet & As Usual Nothing Special On Flac/Speex ...
Xiphmeets are mostly Vorbis/Theora/Icecast related to my experience ... most Flac/Speex info there are 2nd hand like "I heard dev N°X did that, is it true?"
I would wish a better Flac IRC presence Josh;) ]

5)RELASHIONSHIP WITH BIG COMPAGNIES:

At the end of the Xiphmeet there was a guy that joined the discussion:
<bkm> I'm the IEEE-ISTO guy... & a big discussion on Xiph codecs as alternative standard, patents, relashionship with companies, Xiph incomes & possibility of a forum to help it.
...
<bkm> and what's nice about Xiph, AFAIK, is you already have a few strong relationships with some companies
<xiphmont> well, the strong relationships tend to be factions within companies ;-)
<xiphmont> I suppose all relationships are special cases when looked at closely.
...
<xiphmont> Well, that's the perennial worry as we're currently in a situation where being in the right gives us nothing; we cannot win any patent issue that comes up.
...
<xiphmont> ...and really, that's the current biggest worry potential adopters have.
...
<MikeS> bkm: I think the question is more "what do we do if some company outside the standards org sues us over some patent?" (even if we're "clearly right", legal costs to get a judgement are... out of our range?)
...
<bkm> there is no incentive to sue Xiph, that I'm aware of
<bkm> it is more an issue for companies that adopt the Xiph Standard
<xiphmont> the fact that we've not been sued indicates that it has not been worth anyone's time.
...
<MikeS> bkm: well, it's a problem some potential users (of vorbis) have: we say it's patent-free, but we can't give any guarantees on that, or defend vorbis ourselves. So, though there's no incentive for someone to sue us, the very fact that someone _could_ scares off users.
<adiabatic> bkm: We're cutting into FhG's patent licensee income stream.
<adiabatic> derf_: Games.
...
<bkm> either way, when Xiph Forum publishes their standards they make no promises to adopters, they only show them all the companies who have committed to RF
...
<MikeS> So basically: we stay the same way ("no guarantees") but we have Big Hulking Companies behind us saying "well, we guarantee _we_ don't have anything bad hidden here" and hope that users consider that acceptable.
...
<xiphmont> yes, we've been trying to be better about specifications.
...
<MikeS> well, none of our stuff includes anything about MP3. references or otherwise.
...
<xiphmont> I've decided the next month or two to throw in with him and get focusedon doing some of that legwork.
...
<Arc> and what do these corporate members get out of the deal
<derf_> Standards.
<xiphmont> and safety in numbers.
...

6)OTHERS:
As far as I have read ... No news on Vorbis 5.1 (for QK  lol) & No news on better teaming with external coders,
specially as last month Monty said he wanted a better Vorbis release team & more regular release ...
No Advancement on Xiph new website, seems the webmistress was too busy this month ...

Note: I don't use Icecast so far so I didn't include any news on it as I am not a specialist but it seems Theora's Icecast streaming advance as far as I understund ...
<MikeS> well, we need to do an ices2 release. icecast itself is fine - we've got a release out, we've more-or-less got a plan for the next release.

Hope It Helps ...
 

March XiphMeet (Selected Parts)

Reply #1 –
Quote
6)OTHERS:
As far as I have read ... No news on Vorbis 5.1 (for QK  lol) & No news on better teaming with external coders,
specially as last month Monty said he wanted a better Vorbis release team & more regular release ...
No Advancement on Xiph new website, seems the webmistress was too busy this month ...

Oh I was mostly curious about where in the development timeframe, 5.1 Vorbis was going to fit in.  If it is still a year or more away, then I might try and tinker a bit there, in the meantime.