By Craig Kirkwood, Planet Publish Editor
August 1, 2002

Streaming media pioneer, RealNetworks, has announced the release of an open, cross-platform "community" designed to enable the creation of digital media applications. Helix is billed as both a platform and a community for the "standardization and expansion of digital media". It consists of source code for the creation, delivery and playback of digital media as well as a set of interfaces for building media-enabled applications.

"Today is a watershed day for Internet Media Delivery. Since we introduced RealAudio, the world's first Internet streaming system 7 years ago, the industry has been asking for a comprehensive and open platform that it could standardize and build on. Today, we are fulfilling that longstanding wish with the announcement of the Helix Platform and the formation of the Helix Community," said Rob Glaser, founder and CEO, RealNetworks.

The Helix Community, will offer two license structures - the RealNetworks Community Source License (RCSL) and the RealNetworks Public Source License (RPSL). Drafts of both licenses are available on the Helix Community website. The full Helix DNA source code offering, which provides a complete implementation of over 1000 Helix APIs and source code for the core Helix encoder, server and client, will be licensed under the RCSL.

RealNetworks is also licensing to the Helix Community several key patents that the company believes are essential for streaming media content over a network. Participants under the RPSL will enjoy royalty-free patent licenses, and participants under the RCSL will gain patent rights under the royalty schedule associated with the RCSL.

Opinion

The development of "standards" such as this are positive moves for an industry hungry for open source neutrality but there is a danger that embedded patents will provide litigation nightmares in the future. Legal action is currently underway over patents associated with various MPEG formats as well as JPEG and voiceXML. This kind of action is creating a climate of fear among developers and vendors unsure of when a patent case may rise up and catch them unawares.

Few companies are willing to open their source code without some kind of ROI but open source becomes meaningless - or worse, dangerous - when technologies within a "standard" remain in private hands. There is no reason to suggest this is the case with Helix but the point remains that the information and publishing industries should remain vigilant that true standards should not be confused with vendor agreements and trading cartels.

For further information on Helix visit: www.helixcommunity.org.