Real Networks Goes Open Source

[Aaron Howell]

Its clever actually, and the reverse of the traditional microsoft approach.
Make the server free, and make it damn near impossible to get a free player.
You can still get real one player for free, but you're now required to sign up for a real one passport (even if you never activate it)
and you get bombarded with advertising and junk (has anyone figured under windows how you get rid of message center once and for all short of going in and nuking the associated dll?)
Eventually Real will bite the bullet and charge everyone for the player which is probably how they intend to recover the cost of making their server software opensource.
one thing Microsoft has always had going for it though is that media player is a heck of a lot more accessible than real, especially in their latest versions.
Regards
Aaron
On Tue, Jul 23, 2002 at 05:24:55PM -0400, Janina Sajka wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jul 2002, Charles Crawford wrote:
> 
> > 	Well now this is interesting.  I wonder how it relates to Vorbis?
> 
> It doesn't relate directly. My expectation, however, is that they'll add 
> ogg support at some time in the near future, as they now have no reason 
> not to support it.
>  > 
> > -- Charlie Crawford.
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > 
> 
> -- 
> 	
> 				Janina Sajka, Director
> 				Technology Research and Development
> 				Governmental Relations Group
> 				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
> 
> Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175
> 
> Chair, Accessibility SIG
> Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
> http://www.openebook.org
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
     +----------------------------------------------------------+
    /             |\      _,,,---,,_                           /|
   /              /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_                      / |
  /              |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'                    /  |
 /             '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)                         /   |
+----------------------------------------------------------+    |
| Aaron Howell                  Kitten Internet            |    |
| aaron at kitten.net.au           Internet consultancy,      |    |
| Phone: +61-417-625550         System administration,     |    |
| fax: +61-7-36010099           system design/integration. |    |
| icq: 6715521                  http://www.kitten.net.au   |    |
|                                                          |    |
|                                                          |    +
|                                                          |   /
|                                                          |  /
|                                                          | /
|                                                          |/
+----------------------------------------------------------+