[Reader-list] Open source rival for MP3

[Menso Heus]

Hi all,

There are a couple of different things with this article: 

First, and probably most important, is that this must be the zillionth
group of people that is going to create a standard to replace MP3. A 
couple of years ago there was suddenly VQF and more of that which was 
all going to make an end to MP3 and create an open standard of 'free' 
service.

The netizens came, observerd, tested and decided: we want MP3, not something 
else. Why? Because MP3 was already widely spread and well-known and most of
the other options just plainly sucked.

And it makes sense, as end-user you get to download free players such as 
Winamp for example and you can download music for free. Why should the end
user care about licensing fees for people who want to built encoding software,
it's not like MP3's are very rare or anything and as long as they're available
it's not a problem to the end-user, so he can't be bothered.

Another problem is: why should I switch again? Why should I leave alone my
realplayer (actually, that's obvious, but for the sake of the argument) or
Quicktime or Windows Media Player for Yet Another Media Player? Why should 
I suddenly stop encoding my CD's into MP3 and switch to this new standard?
Only because it's open? I hate to burst Ogg Vorbis' bubble but 99% of the 
people out there couldn't care less about open standards or cross platform
compatibility, they just want things to work and unless my current player
can't give me what a new one can I'm not going to change.

Since they're all going to give it away for free they'd better make sure 
they either made something that totally kicks ass or they're doomed. If
it's slightly better than Real or WMP than they still have the marketing 
problem. Two years ago MS might have been willing to incorporate the player
with their browser, now they made their own player so they're not going to 
do it. Real has expensive licensing which means they also have money with 
which they can advertise and all that and for now, sadly enough, it seems 
Real is sort of the standard. (No, I don't mean sad because the licenses
are expensive, I mean sad because it sucks imho).

Anyway, I don't think we'll hear a lot of these guys but let's wish them 
luck.

Menso

Note: I could be terribly wrong, I hope I am.

On Mon, Jun 25, 2001 at 12:23:14PM +0000, Saumya Gupta wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
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> Reader-list mailing list
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> http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list

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