[Ubuntu-be] Nieuw lid.

[Bram Biesbrouck]

Op maandag 24 juli 2006 16:46, schreef Marc Portier:
> Toni Van Remortel wrote:
> > On Wed, 2006-07-19 at 21:35 +0200, Bram Biesbrouck wrote:
> >> Will flash 9 be available for these systems?
> >
> > Actually, that should not be the question. Flash might be an open
> > standard to use, most times you are bound to Macromedia to be able to
> > use it on the client side.
> > As you tend to provide an open source solution, please follow your own
> > way of thinking, and use a real open standard that doesn't depend on any
> > manufacturer.
> >
> > Flash might be the easiest way to solve your problem, but it certainly
> > doesn't fit in the open source way of thinking.
> > Sad, but true.
> >
> > Regards,
>
> uhuh,
>
> regarding this discussion about what 'The Question' is, I couldn't help
> thinking about what president Kennedy once said:
>
> "don't ask what America can do for you, but what you can do for America"
>
>
>
> which easily brings me to other (more pragmatic) aspects of life that
> have been attributed to the 'The Open Source Way" as well
>
> - doing the simpliest thing that will possibly work, and no simpler
> - timtowdi
> - if you have an itch: scratch it
> - ...
>
>
> and to me the question at hand is equally valid and interesting as e.g.
> - will cygnus run well on windows vista?
> - will open-office keep handling future ms documents coirrectly?
>
>
> just to be clear, I'm completely aligning with your statements 'in
> principle' However I just as easily align with the chosen 'tactics' for
> targeting flash (put differently: no itch with that over here)
>

Let me jump in here and explain my reasons for choosing flash (or, more 
specifically, FLV) as a transport-protocol (because that's what it is to me).
I developed my own lossless codec and fileformat container for the Instrudeo 
project. Because of this, and because the format/codec is exactly suited for 
all the things I need to do with it, technically, the performance and 
file-sized I get from it are great. Just for a reference: I can save a 30min, 
800x600x24 screen video, commented and all, in a file of about 60 MB.
This is pretty great to me, since it's just what I need: good streaming 
performance, small disk size and intermediate seek-times. All of this is out 
there in the open, and I'm willing to explain the technology I used to 
everyone; it's all GPL'd.
The underlying specs of the codec and format aren't that difficult and 
rocket-scienty, but, again, it does exactly what I need it to do.

Now, by choosing FLV as my delivery method, I get a lot:
- A technology that doesn't differ very much from my own standard (so, easily 
portable).
- A viewer that's most widely penetrated in the computer-world. (let the 
flamewars begin)
- A community-enabled streaming server with an active development-team, that I 
enjoy communicating with (Red5).
- I can go on like this, but let's stop here.

The drawback is, indeed, that the format isn't GPL-compatible.
But, I don't need that, it's just an intermediate form of transporting pixels 
to a client-computer, and like I said, by using this format, I'm guaranteed 
that *most* of my viewers will get the pixels delivered to them.
Like you guys told me before, some 64bit platforms will get in trouble (and 
probably Solaris, HP-UX, etc too, I don't know), but, to my defence, when 
choosing a transport protocol, you are *always* shutting people out. Remember 
the days that you had to install the TCP/IP stack before you could go onto 
the internet? Or even more recently, I guess _everybody's_ mobile phone has 
the Bluetooth stack installed?
Indeed, I'm very sorry I'm shutting people out by choosing for FLV, and I will 
try to offer the streams in more formats in the future (by the way, everyone 
can convert my isd format to any other format using ScreenKast), but FLV is 
the way I will go, for now.

> -marc= (who gets nervous when open source is claimed to be a (more)
> dogmatic and/or moral Way of Anything. IMHO the movement has more then
> enough merits on the level of honest common sense, simple pragmatics and
> pure effectiveness that it can do well without the various attempts at
> replacing Religion :-)  Let it not close our eyes to reality...)

I think I'd like to contradict this, since I do am a (heavy) open-source 
believer. Every since I read Stallman's GNU Philosophy and ESR's Cathedral 
and the Bazaar (must have been 1999), I truly believe open-source is the 
right future for any software development. But I guess I'm more of a open 
source-adept then I'm a free-software one. Differently put, Bruce Perens says 
more to me then Richard Stallman...

b.