[codec] Collabora's position on the Codec WG
Sjoerd Simons <sjoerd.simons@collabora.co.uk> Wed, 29 July 2009 13:48 UTC
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Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:48:18 +0200
From: Sjoerd Simons <sjoerd.simons@collabora.co.uk>
To: codec@ietf.org
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Cc: robert.mcqueen@collabora.co.uk, christian.schaller@collabora.co.uk
Subject: [codec] Collabora's position on the Codec WG
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Collabora Ltd. and Collabora Multimedia support the formation of an IETF open codecs working group. Standardising best-of-breed audio and video codecs for use in Internet protocols, that are compatible for use in open source projects (meaning royalty and patent-free and implementable under a free and open source software license), will be of extensive benefit to the Internet community. Collabora Ltd. is the primary developer of the Telepathy real-time instant messaging framework and the associated Farsight VoIP framework, tools which allow for the development of, among other things, voice and video communication clients. Collabora also develops the Empathy instant messaging client, part of the GNOME Desktop, and now included in many popular GNU/Linux software distributions (including Fedora and Ubuntu), that uses Telepathy to provide voice and video calling. With the exception of the Speex codec, the licenses and obligations of existing Internet telephony codecs prevent them from being provided as part of a free and open software distribution; either as part of a GNU/Linux distribution, or a software package such as Empathy. This significantly raises the barrier for users to communicate. We believe that an IETF Working Group will be able to build upon the existing work done by groups such as Xiph.org to bring standardised, royalty-free codecs to the wider community. The track record of IPR-free codecs such as Speex, Vorbis, Theora, Dirac, FLAC and CELT demonstrate that it is possible to develop good quality, patent-free codecs using an open-source methodology. Although it can never be completely guaranteed that any given codec certainly does not infringe on a patent, regardless of the organisation that builds it, the codecs mentioned above have been available to the public for some time and are still considered IPR-free. Thus we believe that with sufficient prior research, patent issues for codecs can be avoided. By bringing together the relevant stakeholders: codec designers, protocol engineers, device manufacturers, and framework and application developers; we believe that significant progress could be made towards standardising a set of acceptable free and unencumbered protocols to foster much greater interoperability. Robert McQueen (Director Collabora Ltd.) Christian Schaller (Director Collabora Multimedia) Sjoerd Simons (R&D Lead Collabora Ltd.)
- [codec] Collabora's position on the Codec WG Sjoerd Simons
- Re: [codec] Collabora's position on the Codec WG Slava Borilin
- Re: [codec] Collabora's position on the Codec WG Roni Even