The Benefits of Open Source
At some point, benefits to the bottom line can translate into quality improvements. "The theory is, if you have an open project which benefits everyone, you're bound to have a better product," explains Manley. "In commercial companies, the pressure to release quickly affects quality. A lot of commercial products are pretty good, but if you want to do something different, not covered by their software, you're stuck," he adds.
According to an August 2000 Forrester Research report entitled "Open Source Cracks the Code," Manley's theory is right on the money. The study surveyed 50 IT managers at Global 2500 companies and reported that 56 percent of respondents use open source software, and another 6 percent plan to install it in the next two years. Respondents predicted that their installation of open source systems would grow at rates between 100 and 1100 percent over the next two years, with the greatest growth happening in Web servers and server operating systems.
"Open source is just one tool. It's not the answer to everything." - Ben Sawyer
The reason? Quality, according to the survey. The report cited an IT manager at a computer company as saying, "Because more eyes are on the code, it's easier to get the bugs out. In an Easter egg hunt, it's easy for people to find the first bunch of eggs, but it's hard to find the last few -- the same goes for bugs."
The growth of open source software will also force commercial software companies to become more competitive, according to more than 50 percent of the managers interviewed for the report.
One of the biggest open source success stories is the Apache Web server, which powers 62 percent of Web sites, according to Netcraft's September 2000 survey of Web server usage. Certainly, high quality open source programs do exist.
Whether or not Icecast and Vorbis experience similar success in the streaming media arena remains to be seen. But one thing is certain, says Ben Sawyer, founder of Portland, Maine-based Digitalmill, and a streaming media expert and author: The existence of open source solutions helps keep the playing field honest. "What [Moffitt] is doing is really important for the growth of the industry," he says. "It's like checks and balances. Ogg Vorbis is another way for people of any stripe to compete against Microsoft, and Microsoft in turn, will compete vigorously," he said. Because the streaming space is still relatively new and because no one player has established indisputable dominance, the presence of an open source solution early in the game, keeps everyone on their toes, he explains.
And as long as commercial companies dominate the space, the specter of conditions or fees being attached to the use of their formats will always exist, Sawyer adds. With open source, there is never a "catch" or a loophole to its use. "With Ogg Vorbis there is never a fee. It benefits everyone because it removes from the whole equation of running a radio station or streaming on the Web, one more person who wants to get paid," he says.
The open source share of the streaming market is small and open source streaming solutions may never become mainstream, but they may help to promote competition. "Open source is just one tool. It's not the answer to everything," Sawyer says.
The Future
Montgomery says that Vorbis will not compete with the entrenched players. In effect, Vorbis acts as a royalty-free alternative to MP3, so developers don't have to pay licensing fees. "Our primary concern is keeping what we consider to be a key piece of tomorrow's technological infrastructure free, available to those who need it, and seamlessly interoperable amongst everyone."
Moffitt plans to keep pushing the envelope with his open source visions both by perfecting the products and by pushing Vorbis to artists and developers. He is currently contacting artists and music sites and encouraging them to produce their content and stream it in Vorbis. "Then listeners will demand that the player support Vorbis," he says. He has already struck deals with efolkmusic.com, Moonshine Records and several small bands to encode in Vorbis. And they are working to convince several game development companies that Vorbis is the way to go to integrate music into their products.
The other line of attack is to encourage software developers to include Vorbis with their products for free. Vorbis is already natively supported in Sonique 1.808, a popular MP3 player that was acquired by Lycos. While support for other players is in the works, the likelihood of popular software company MusicMatch, supporting Vorbis, is slim. That's because MusicMatch is partially owned by Thomson Multimedia, a co-developer of the MP3 format along with Fraunhofer IIS (www.iis.fhg.de/amm).
It's more likely that RealNetworks may want to include the Vorbis codec in its RealJukebox player, however. RealNetworks has been a big proponent of licensing many different audio formats, and has even licensed Microsoft's audio codec for use in RealJukebox. "If Real wants to play Vorbis, we're all for it," says Moffitt. "If they want to stream Vorbis we're all for it. Whether or not they're going to do it is a completely different question."
"I subscribe to the same viewpoint as many liberals -- that a corporate controlled media is a bad idea. It's like having a corporation own the airwaves outright. This is about civil liberties, as far as I'm concerned." - Lynn Winebarger
Moffitt thinks the reason why RealNetworks and Microsoft haven't supported Vorbis is that they have their own technologies they're trying to protect. "I have more confidence that RealNetworks will do it first but I don't have big hopes that they're going to rush to do it. So far they haven't given us a good outlook," he admits.
Even if companies don't rush to use Vorbis, the end result, says Moffitt, is to have an open audio codec that's license-free. "If [Fraunhofer] axes all of their licensing policies so that they can compete with Vorbis, we've still won," says Moffitt.
The fourth beta version of Vorbis was scheduled for launch in November, with final release of version 1.0 set for January 2001, says Montgomery. It will sport a graphical user interface (GUI), which Moffitt programmed after spending just a few hours learning VBasic from a book. "We'd like to see Ogg Vorbis become a major player next year and a de facto standard for Internet audio and streaming as time goes on," says Montgomery.
Montgomery stresses that there are lots of free players out there, but no free, full-featured encoders. "What we're doing is making it easier and cheaper for providers to get their content out to everybody," he says. "Because we're freeing the infrastructure from short-sighted strangulation licensing and interoperability issues, music and audio become much easier to use on the Net, and for that reason, Net music has a better chance to grow and flourish rather than continue limping along."
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