"This is a very tenuous time for Microsoft," Gartenberg said. "This is
not a time in Microsoft's history when it can be seen as trying to do to
Real what it did to Netscape."   Rrrrrrriiiiiight....
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/22/technology/22REAL.html
July 22, 2002
RealNetworks Poses Challenge to Microsoft
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO, July 21 -- In a significant challenge to Microsoft,
RealNetworks plans to announce a new version of its software on Monday
that can distribute audio and video in a range of formats, including
Microsoft's own proprietary Windows Media.
The new software is intended for large media companies and other
corporations that need to send audio and video data to customers and
employees in a variety of different formats. But RealNetworks
acknowledged that it was possible that the company might incur
Microsoft's legal wrath.
Nevertheless, Rob Glaser, a former Microsoft executive who founded
RealNetworks as Progressive Networks in 1994, said he believed the
strategy was good for both Microsoft and consumers.
"A rational way for them to respond would be to say, `This is great,' "
he said. "That would be Microsoft of the future."
Mr. Glaser said his company, based in Seattle, had developed a version
of the Microsoft Media Server software that comes with the Windows
operating system.
He said RealNetworks' engineers had studied the data that was sent
between the Microsoft media server software and the Windows Media Player
program and recreated the technology needed to play files in the
Microsoft format. This method created a so-called clean-room version,
meaning the developers built the transmission software without any
knowledge about the underlying program.
Microsoft has adopted a similar strategy at several junctures,
Mr. Glaser said, reverse-engineering technologies like NetWare,
PostScript and JavaScript at different times.
Microsoft executives said the company currently licensed the Windows
Media Player technology to a variety of companies including Yahoo,
RealNetworks and the America Online unit of AOL Time Warner. But a
Microsoft executive said that a clean-room copy of the Windows server
technology could lead to quality and performance issues.
"It's kind of hard to speculate about the technology until we see it,"
said Dave Fester, the general manager of the Windows Media division. If
a company has not licensed the server software, he added, "we would need
to look at it and see what they're doing."
RealNetworks appears to be endeavoring to avoid being "Netscaped," a
reference to the fate that befell the Netscape Communications
Corporation when Microsoft decided to make an Internet browser, which
was pioneered commercially by Netscape, a standard part of the Windows
operating system. Netscape was later acquired by AOL Time
Warner. Microsoft's decision to build an Internet browser into Windows
and give it away at no additional cost led directly to a bitter
antitrust lawsuit brought by the Justice Department in 1997.
RealNetworks, which was a pioneer in the market for streaming media to
desktop personal computers, has been under growing pressure from
Microsoft, which is giving away both the server and Windows Media Player
program as part of its operating strategy. RealNetworks also faces
challenges from Apple Computer, which offers the QuickTime media player
as a part of its Macintosh OS X operating system and sells a more
full-featured player.
Moreover, in recent months Macromedia Inc., which makes the Flash
animation software used on many Web sites, has added video capabilities
to its technology, making it a potential rival.
RealNetworks is gambling that with a proliferation of different
standards and formats for video and audio, the media corporations that
make content available over the Internet will flock to a single system
that supports multiple types of data. The company is trying to shift the
focus of the competition from the PC desktop to the server, according to
analysts.
Several analysts said the RealNetworks shift in strategy could put
Microsoft on the defensive.
"Real has got the experience and sophistication to pull this off," said
Richard Doherty, the president of Envisioneering, a market research and
consulting firm based in Seaford, N.Y. "It will open up a new horse race."
Until now the companies have been engaged in a technology war to rapidly
increase the power and quality of each of their media players. At the
same time, they have competed over which of the programs are placed on
the desktops of personal computer users. RealNetworks claims to have
700,000 subscribers for pay services, but it is perceived as being
increasingly vulnerable, according to some analysts, because Microsoft
has included its Media Player as part of the Windows operating system,
which dominates the PC market.
There are dozens of data formats for playing audio and video on the
Internet, but the dominant ones are RealAudio and RealVideo from
RealNetworks, QuickTime from Apple, Windows Media from Microsoft and the
industry digital movie standards MPEG-2 and MPEG-4.
Microsoft and RealNetworks are currently locked in a close race for
desktop media player leadership. In the first quarter of this year,
according to survey data collected by Jupiter Research, a market
research firm based in New York, RealNetworks' RealOne Player had a 29.1
percent share of media players, while Microsoft's Windows Media Player
had a 28.2 percent share. Apple's Quicktime player was third, with a
12.2 percent.
The new server software from RealNetworks is part of a version of the
company's media server that is to be introduced on Monday and which will
be called the Helix Universal Server. RealNetworks said it would offer
performance data based on a test it financed at an independent testing
service, KeyLabs, that indicate that the Helix software can, under some
conditions, deliver up to four times the speed of the Windows Media
Server in Microsoft's operating system. (Software servers are programs
that run on powerful computers and can send streams of digital
information to many computer users simultaneously.)
At a news conference scheduled to be held in San Francisco, RealNetworks
is also expected to announce that it plans to make the Helix software
available as part of a strategy known as community source, which will
make it possible for RealNetworks partners and competitors to take
advantage of the original programmers' instructions.
RealNetworks is to announce a range of partners, including Hitachi,
Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Deutsche Telekom, NEC, Nokia, Cisco Systems,
Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Palm, Texas Instruments and others. These
partners could then incorporate the software into their own hardware and
software products.
Under the licensing strategy, companies will be able to freely gain
access to the underlying code that the Helix program is based on, but
they will still pay a licensing fee when they sell commercial products
based on the technology.
The community-source approach to software, which was pioneered by Sun to
distribute its Java programming language, is a variation upon the
original free software or open-source approach which has confounded the
software industry in recent years.
While open-source software can be freely shared, with some restrictions,
the community-source approach is more restrictive and yet still tries to
persuade others to collaborate and add innovative ideas.
Other large technology companies including Sun, I.B.M. and Apple, have
all now adopted variations on such open-source strategy, with varying
results. In Sun's case, the company has been criticized because, while
Java has become an industry standard, the company has not been the
principal financial beneficiary in many cases.
RealNetworks is trying to strike a balance between opening up its
technology to persuade others to participate and innovate and not losing
control of the technology entirely, Mr. Glaser said. "We think we've
struck the balance well," he said.
Analysts said the strategy shift by RealNetworks was likely to shake up
the industry. "The moment you've open-sourced something you've cornered
your competitor," said Matthew Berk, an analyst a Jupiter Research. "To
date this stuff has been very proprietary. Opening it up makes it
accessible to creative and gifted programmers who will come up with wild
stuff that the companies have never considered."
Mr. Glaser said he expected other companies to produce technology that
would rival RealNetworks' commercially as a result of the
community-source strategy.
One possibility is that companies such as Sun or I.B.M. could decide to
add the Helix technology of RealNetworks as a standard component of
their operating systems. Although RealNetworks might not get a
significant financial benefit from such an arrangement it could
contribute to making its Helix software a de facto industry standard.
Mr. Glaser said he had struck upon the idea of making his media server
software open source while visiting with an executive from Nokia, the
world's largest cellphone maker.
"Taking all of this stuff beyond the PC has been a huge motivation for
us," he said. When he realized that Nokia was interested in deploying
the software technology on as many as 30 to 40 different types of
phones, he realized that RealNetworks did not have enough programming
talent to support the effort.
"I told him, `I don't think we have enough engineers even if you guys
were willing to pay us,' " he said.
That touched off a search for an alternative way of having the two
companies cooperate.
http://quicken.com.com/2100-1023-945406.html
Real takes the open-source route
By Jim Hu
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
July 22, 2002, 1:55 PM PT
RealNetworks on Monday unveiled a new open-source version of its
streaming media technology that supports multiple file formats for audio
and video, including those that use Microsoft's Windows Media technology.
The new campaign, dubbed "Helix," and first reported by The New York
Times, marks one of the most ambitious moves in the company's
history. RealNetworks is simultaneously releasing technology without
permission that plugs in to Microsoft's competing software and is
raising the hood on much of its own software technology to "open source"
developers or anyone else who wants to look.
The twin moves raise the risk of lawsuits and renewed competition --
potentially even from Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft itself, once it
gets a look under the hood at RealNetworks' technology. But it marks a
dramatic, potential way for a company watching its market share diminish
to regain momentum and support across an industry where many other
players remain skeptical of Microsoft's power.
"It's a very bold move on the part of Real," said Michael Gartenberg, a
research director for analyst firm Jupiter Research. "This was a shot
fired by Real and fired directly at Redmond."
The move is the latest in a series of strategic twists and turns that
has made RealNetworks one of the only companies to survive direct
Microsoft competition for years. While the company has expanded into
paid subscription content business, its software and streaming media
infrastructures have been under increasing pressure from Microsoft,
which has deemed multimedia to be one of the major drives under the
latest versions of its Windows operating system.
Real's Helix announcement mainly involves the technology that allows
media files to move from place to place over the Internet. RealNetworks
and Microsoft both produce servers that allow video and audio to be
streamed from a content company such as CNN or NBC to a personal
computer. Real has charged for this software, while Microsoft has given
it away for free.
In April, RealMedia reached 17 million at-home viewers, compared with
Windows Media at 15.1 million and Apple Computer's QuickTime at 7.3
million, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. At work, Windows Media drew
about 12.2 million unique viewers, compared with RealMedia's 11.6
million and QuickTime's 5 million.
Real's own new product, called the Universal Server, will allow one
server to stream Real's technology, Microsoft files, Apple Computer's
QuickTime, and others. Most other competing products do not support
competitors' technology.
"When you have all these different platforms, and all these different
protocols, it gets unmanageable," RealNetworks' Rob Glaser said at a
high-glitz press conference in San Francisco announcing the product. "A
lot of what (this technology) is about is breaking those bottlenecks and
making convergence really converge."
To make the new product compatible with Microsoft files, however, the
company pursued a risky strategy known as "reverse engineering," in
which developers examine a competitor's product to see how it works and
try to create something that works just like it.
Glaser said that engineers worked entirely in a "clean room"
environment, meaning that they had no access to actual Microsoft
code. Had they simply copied code, they could be liable for patent
infringement. The resulting product simply mimics the way that
Microsoft's files are sent across networks and allows a Windows Media
player to receive the file.
Other companies have been sued for simply copying a competitor's code
and putting it in their own products. But RealNetworks says it's not
worried about Microsoft lawsuits, because it took precautions to do all
development in the "clean room" environment. Microsoft itself has
engaged in this kind of legal reverse engineering.
Analysts say Microsoft, which still faces antitrust lawsuits, is in no
position to sue in any case.
"This is a very tenuous time for Microsoft," Gartenberg said. "This is
not a time in Microsoft's history when it can be seen as trying to do to
Real what it did to Netscape."
The influential giant?
Certainly, Monday's announcement acknowledges Microsoft's influence in
media technology, something Glaser and Real have often been loathe to do.
Microsoft was quick to spin Monday's announcement as further validation
of its strength in the marketplace.
"It's an admission of RealNetworks that it's important for them to
support Windows Media and that we're now the leading player among home
and work users," said Michael Aldridge, lead product manager for
Microsoft's Windows Digital Media division.
Aldridge added that RealNetworks currently has a licensing agreement for
its media player to support Windows audio and video formats. However,
RealNetworks and Microsoft do not have an agreement to allow the server
to deliver Windows Media formats to end users, which is what
RealNetworks trying to do.
Aldridge declined to comment on RealNetworks' replication of Microsoft's
technology.
In addition to its own new product, Real has promised to give away
source code to much of the underlying technology for streaming
media. That stops short of the actual file format, or "codec" itself,
but will provide the open-source community and other companies with
powerful new tools to build their own streaming media players or
software.
Glaser said he wouldn't initially make the software code that mimics
Microsoft's streaming available but that he was considering the idea. A
first chunk of code underlying the RealNetworks multimedia player
software will be released in 90 days. Other code, including the basic
functions of its streaming media server and encoder, will be released by
the end of the year, the company said.
The company's plan to reveal its source code--the basic instructions
underlying the software--echoes similar moves made by Netscape
Communications to defend against Microsoft. In March 1998, Netscape took
the bold step of opening its source code to allow software developers to
help create the next generation of its popular browser.
James Barksdale, then CEO of Netscape, said the move would allow the
company to "tap into a virtually unlimited developer talent pool."
Instead, the effort, which has evolved into the Mozilla.org project, hit
considerable roadblocks, and Microsoft overtook Netscape in market
share.
----
aDaM@XeNT.CoM -- .sig double play!
We have done a great job of having teams work around the clock to
deliver security fixes for any problems that arise. Our responsiveness
has been unmatched - but as an industry leader we can and must do
better... Going forward, we must develop technologies and policies that
help businesses better manage ever larger networks of PCs, servers and
other intelligent devices, knowing that their critical business systems
are safe from harm. Systems will have to become self-managing and
inherently resilient. We need to prepare now for the kind of software
that will make this happen, and we must be the kind of company that
people can rely on to deliver it.
-- Bill Gates, http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-817343.html
The problem with SOAP is that it tries to escape from the Web interface.
It deliberately attempts to suck, mostly because it is deliberately
trying to supplant CGI-like applications rather than Web-like
applications.  It is simply a waste of time for folks to say that "HTTP
allows this because I've seen it used by this common CGI script."  If we
thought that sucky CGI scripts were the basis for good Web
architectures, then we wouldn't have needed a Gateway Interface to
implement them.  In order for SOAP-ng to succeed as a Web protocol, it
needs to start behaving like it is part of the Web.  That means, among
other things, that it should stop trying to encapsulate all sorts of
actions under an object-specific interface.  It needs to limit its
object-specific behavior to those situations in which object-specific
behavior is actually desirable.  If it does not do so, then it is not
using URI as the basis for resource identification, and therefore it is
no more part of the Web than SMTP.
-- Roy Fielding, http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Apr/0181.html
http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork