On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 10:29:29PM +0100, ChristianHJW wrote: > > Please allow me to announce the creation of a new open source Media > Container Format, named 'matroska' > > Project page is here http://sf.net/projects/matroska ; homepage is > http://matroska.sourceforge.net , HTML should be online soon. Another redundant project? "ten BSD programmers are sealed in a computer lab for a month. At the end of the month, the door is opened. Investigators discover, bloodied and dead, all ten programmers--- and thirteen new flavors of BSD." > I am personally not happy about the fact that we had to found a new project, > but it seems that it was the only alternative now. Of course we are well > aware of the fact that both projects will become weaker this way, but we > hope to be able to release the container including creation tools and > playback filters until January/February 2003, and then the users will decide > what format they prefer. This announcement is not about 'letting the users decide'. You haven't released or produced anything yet. This is the grown-up equivalent of declaring 'I didn't get to do it my way, so I'm taking my toys home with me' and watching to see which kids in the crowd are going to follow you home. We're on the way to having every dissident hacker pushing his own incompatable container format, most based on someone else's container format. OK, sure, whatever. "Step one: Achieve something. Step two: toot horn" If you were really interested only in doing something different or trying out something new, you'd just have gone off and done it, and let the world know if it did/didn't work out. We already went through all this a year or two ago when you all declared the beginning of MCF and sent mail to the Ogg lists that it would be better than our project in every way and we should abandon Ogg and use MCF. It was quite the initial introduction and left a lasting impression. So, I'll repeat a previous flame that the original MCF folks never really rebutted (just seemed to ignore). Quite a few MCF proponents keep touting things that Ogg can't do... except they're wrong. For example, somone told with great confidence on HA that he was going with MCF because there was no way to figure out what codecs Ogg used and that each mixed stream type was hardwired. That would really suck if it were true. It isn't. Looking at it from a high level, Ogg (the software) is full of feature hooks for which no one has written the code yet. But it's apparently easier to start from scratch (again), effectively abandoning a half completed system that's already running, solid, and deployed worldwide, and then use my own lists to pull people out of the project that works and has forward momentum. A second time. It's in poor taste all over again. </flame> Personally, my position is that XML (binary or no) belongs in a stream or at a higher non-linear level-- not defining the lowest level transport attributes. The correct way to build a large system is not to smash every conceivable feature into a single monolithic API layer. Build small pieces that work together. We here at Xiph started with: 1) a nice, robust linear transport layer that's optimized specifically and only for linear transport, ie, 'does one thing very well and can be used to build larger things' 2) filters, aka OggFile, the first 'larger thing', now in progress along with resource usage optimizations (eg, zero-copy). We're going to get that right before building a huge feature-rich system on a foundation that's unproven / doesn't exist. In summary, I'd prefer you let the people here who have demonstrated they're capable of working together without forking continue to do so without this ongoing pseudotechnical distraction. (And if you want to do something productive with XML, how about contribute to the metaheader or XML page stream type in Ogg? Hmmm?) I'm not on most of the lists in the cc: line. If you want to make sure I read your flames before ignoring them, please make sure I'm copied. Monty ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf _______________________________________________ Flac-dev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flac-dev
