[Reader-list] Open source rival for MP3

[Saumya Gupta]

Ogg Vorbis: An Open-Source Rival for MP3

An online music format that challenges MP3 in quality but owes nothing 
to any corporation will finally debut this weekend. Designed for free 
public use, the Ogg Vorbis format owes its existence to a single 
event. 

If Thomson Multimedia weren't demanding license fees for MP3, "there 
would be no need for Vorbis," says project manager Jack Moffitt. 
Seeking an alternative to MP3 and proprietary formats like Apple's 
Quicktime and Microsoft's Windows Media, a group of software 
developers has been working on Ogg Vorbis for nearly 33 months. In a 
1999 statement, lead programmer Chris Montgomery wrote that "the Ogg 
project works to put the foundation standards of Internet audio into 
the public domain, where all Internet standards belong."

The preliminary release, available from the Vorbis Web site, is the 
first version of the codec (encoder/decoder) with all features fully 
implemented. While not an MP3 product, it achieves comparable 
performance, backers claim, by attaining "CD quality" at a bit rate of 
128 kilobits per second. Next month's official release of Vorbis 1.0 
should achieve CD quality in the 80-kilobit-per-second range, 
comparable to the newly released MP3Pro. 

Growth of a Standard 
In 1996, U.S. Patent no. 5,579,430 was granted to Fraunhofer 
Gesellschaft in Munich for a "digital encoding process for 
transmitting and storing acoustical signals and, in particular, music 
signals." (Fraunhofer Gesellschaft is the parent company of the 
Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, creator of the core 
technologies incorporated in the MP3 standard.) 

One of 18 MP3-related patents held by raunhofer and patent partner 
Thomson, this is the basis of their current claim to a "fair share" of 
MP3 revenues. However, Thomson did not assert its claim until the fall 
of 1998. By then, the public had already adopted MP3 in an online  
music explosion that will likely remain unique in Internet history.

MP3 was originally designed for music transmission over telephone 
lines. Few, if any, saw it as a candidate for widespread use on the 
Internet when it was adopted in 1992 by the Motion Pictures Expert 
Group, a subgroup of the International Standardization Organization 
(ISO). As such, it became known as MPEG Audio Layer 3—MP3  for short. 

Henri Linde, Thomson's vice president of new business, assumed 
responsibility for MP3 licensing in 1994. No one at Thomson or  
Fraunhofer saw what was coming. In 1996, Pentium-class PCs with 
multi-gigabyte hard disks provided the first suitable desktop platform 
for high-quality audio compression. Only one more ingredient was 
needed, and "MP3 was in the right place at the right time," Linde 
says.
Late that year, Fraunhofer released an MP3 encoder and decoder, 
together with a Windows MP3 player, for noncommercial use. Soon the 
first MP3 recordings began to circulate on the Web. In 1997, the 
number and quality of MP3 sites on the Web grew exponentially, with 
new homegrown MP3 players vying for honors in a hacker's heaven 
reminiscent of the early 1980s. All were based on elaborations of 
ISO's publicly available MP3 source code.
By the end of 1998, most college students had become aware of MP3s as 
the Internet's first underground killer app. (So had the Recording 
Industry Association of America.) A solid consumer base had formed, 
and hardware manufacturers raced to produce pocket-sized MP3 players.

I Want Your MP3
In this heady atmosphere, Fraunhofer's September 1998 "letter of 
infringement" to MP3 software developers sent shock waves around the 
Net. The letter declared that "to make, sell and/or distribute 
products using the [MPEG Layer 3] standard and thus our patents, you 
need to obtain a license under these patents from us."
Development work stopped on popular products like Plugger, CDEX, 8Hz 
and Blade. Free MP3 encoders began to disappear from Web sites. 

Inside the Ogg 
With the concept of an audio encoder free of licensing entanglements 
already in the air, Montgomery, a recent 
MIT graduate, began work on Ogg Vorbis, named after the "bad guy" in 
Terry Pratchett's novel Small Gods. He was soon joined by other 
developers, with the total crew ranging up to 25 active programmers at 
times.
The point, he says, "is to put something out there that everyone can 
use without having to worry about one of the MPEG consortium members 
saying, 'We'll let you know in six months what the licensing fees will 
be, and we'll renegotiate every six months.' Or, 'We're                
           not going to charge you for it right now, but you may be 
getting a letter in a year.'"
Closed-source protocols "exist by definition to serve the bottom line 
of a corporation," he wrote in 1999. In contrast, "the foundations of 
the Internet today are built of a long, hardy history of open 
development, free exchange of ideas and unprecedented levels of 
intellectual                           cooperation. These foundations 
continue to weather the storm caused by the corporate world's rush to 
cash in."

Staying Clear of Patents
Montgomery says he finds MP3 patents "annoying but not abusive." The 
Fraunhofer patents "are fundamental to the way MP3 does things," he 
says, "but the way MP3 does things is, thankfully, not the only way to 
do it. We don't infringe on their patents, so we don't have many 
worries." If there is any litigation, it's going to come from a desire 
to put Vorbis out of business, he says. "On the other hand, if we 
defend ourselves successfully, they could lose the patent."
The MP3-patent claims have never been challenged in court or even in 
licensing negotiations, as Thomson's Linde confirms.

Rocking in the Free World
"Personally, I like the open-source movement," Linde says. "However, 
it is not a funded movement. If the effort is not to commercialize it, 
how good a product can it be?" 
Vorbis developers respond that the Vorbis codec is currently 
incorporated in leading MP3 software players like Winamp and Sonique, 
as well as Sonic Foundry's Siren Jukebox 2.0 and Sound Forge audio 
editor. In addition, game developers, including major player 
Electronic Arts, are showing interest in reducing development costs by 
tapping Vorbis. Two games have shipped with Vorbis-enabled audio so 
far: Activision and Realistic Entertainment's "Startrek Away Team" and 
Bohemia Interactive Studios' "Operation Flashpoint."                   
     
Iomega's HipZip is the first portable player to support OGG files.

By Stuart Kiang
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/kiang/kiang061401.asp