Petition Apple for Linux QuickTime

Evan Vetere writes "Apple is being petitioned to release a QuickTime client for Linux." Apple has been babystepping around Open Source for awhile now, but multimedia is one area where the veil of secrecy is extremely opaque: the codecs that drive video display and streaming are almost always proprietary. It would be great if apple would lead the way towards fair open standards by releasing an Open Source Quicktime client for Linux. It would do a world of good towards getting it accepted as a standard.

Not a very good approach..

i think the idea of the petition is great, i support it, i signed it. but i see what i think is a real problem when i was skimming through the signatures. there are a lot of posts that point out reasons that aren't really advantageous to Apple *at all*. this is understandable, but why should Apple care that not having QuickTime is what's keeping you from begin able to ditch Windows? you're not ditching Windows for MacOS, are you? or asking them to support other BSDs (other than MacOS X, that is), or Solaris, or BeOS.. why should they?

i think they should, but what i'm getting at is that a lot of these comments actually seem to emphasize things that would (IMO) encourage Apple to *not* make QuickTime for Linux..

there also seem a fairly high number of pretty derogatory posts and posts that if were working for Apple, i would read and think "what a bunch of jerks, screw them."

things like..

"Or, you could just exclude millions of users from your worthless, overhyped video system."

or...

"Quicktime on Linux would be nice, even thoug the .mov media format sucks ass."

uh huh, thanks. or...

"Im going LINUX..........
................follow or perish"

what incentive. how about...

"I'm not too fond of Apple or Mac OS... ugh, user-friendlyness, get it off me! :)"

how does saying, "i don't like you, but do a lot of stuff for me anyway" make sense?

then there's a number of people who pointed out that they switched to PC's from Mac and they miss QuickTime. i'm sorry, but i can't see a lot of sense in supporting the people who ditched you for your competitors..

really people, haven't you ever heard that you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you? same thing goes for the hand that you're asking for food from.

Don't want a client

I don't want a QT client from apple. When Apple writes its own clients, they're always MacOS-ish, regardless of the underlying architecture, and they never let you do some of the tricks you need to do. And, there isn't a real reason to have a different client for QT and AVI and MPEG.

What I want to see from Apple is a QuickTime codec library. Something that we could put into an existing project, whether it be xanim or the new media player from the LiViD project. If I'm using the LiViD player for MPEG and for AVI, I don't want a seperate, Apple-made-and-feature-poor player for quicktime movies.

Re:Use a proprietary OS? Say it's not so!

Tim, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get a decent video client for Linux. If it means that I must grit my teeth and get jeered at by you for dealing with Apple, I'll pay that price, okay?

However, what I would *really* like to see is a good, open source streaming video standard. I've emailed maddog at Linux Internation and asked him if LI would be interested in working on such an effort. If not, next week at LWCE I'll talk to a bunch of people from other Linux companies and see if we can't form some sort of Linux Video Group to fund development of that product.

Ideally, I'd like to see something compatible with QuickTime. Right now, Microsoft is giving free bandwidth to online video and audio producers who their multimedia servers *exclusively*. I would not like to see Microsoft end up in total control of the "next hot net thing."

If making a deal with a small devil to keep a bigger devil at bay is what it takes, so it goes. I am afraid that if we don't act very rapidly to come up with a viable cross-platform alternative to MS video, Linux and *nix will be left out of online media entirely.

- Robin

Why is this good for Apple?

It's not clear to me why it would be in Apple's interests to provide a "free" QT implementation.

• Firstly, there are likely some components of QT that aren't Apple's to give away.
• Secondly, one of the points to QT has been to be an Apple technology, a licensable thing that they have collected fees for.
• Thirdly, Apple makes money from selling computers.

  A "free QT" that doesn't help sell Apple computers and doesn't provide licensing fees is a somewhat worse deal for Apple.

• Fourthly, a "free QT" may be usable by evil competitors to injure Apple. Oh, say, Microsoft?

Pushing Apple to pretend to do something nice for Linux whilst providing incentive for them to play licensing games is just not my idea of wisdom.

Re:Don't want a client

I don't want a QT client from apple. When Apple writes its own clients, they're always MacOS-ish, regardless of the underlying architecture, and they never let you do some of the tricks you need to do.

Um... such as... what? I have no idea of anything I've ever "needed" to do in QuickTime that the client ever kept me from doing.

And, there isn't a real reason to have a different client for QT and AVI and MPEG.

Agreed. However, QuickTime supports both AVI and MPEG anyway, so your point is moot. I've never found Xanim's MPEG playback to be all that great anyway; I use it for AVI but I've moved to SMPEG-based stuff for MPEG playback. So I'd love to see QuickTime ported so I could get back to one program for all of them again.

What I want to see from Apple is a QuickTime codec library.

QuickTime is NOT a codec. How many times do people have to be told that? QuickTime is nothing more than a file format. One which, I might add, is already supported under several libraries. Codecs are another matter entirely. Take Sorenson, for example. It's not a file format. Theoretically, barring the fact that there is no software to do this, you could compress an AVI with Sorenson, if you really wanted to.

MPEG is both a file format and a codec. I never saw this as much of a Good Thing. But MPEG4 drops that and uses the QuickTime file format, leaving the codec as pure MPEG.

If I'm using the LiViD player for MPEG and for AVI, I don't want a seperate, Apple-made-and feature-poor player for quicktime movies.

I haven't seen LiViD's player yet, so I can't comment on that. But if I can use one program for QtickTime, AVI, and MPEG, I'll use it. By the way, what makes everything Apple makes inherently bad, as you seem to imply? For that matter, what features is the QuickTime player missing?

Go on ya good thing

With comments like this popping up, can they be ignored for much longer.....?


"If you'd like porting or development help.
I can arrange it, and I if you make or
allow a Linux Quicktime port, I will
make it the "standard" for all Andover.net
streaming video. We have about 2.4 devout
readers on our various sites (notably
including http://slashdot.org and
http://freshmeat.net), and we're starting
to move into video news production, so
this is a substantial offer.
I would also be willing to explore the
use of Mac OS X as our primary editing
platform and, if it works well for us,
will happily publicize the fact that we
use it.
- Robin "roblimo" Miller
Editor in Chief,
Andover.Net
phone [phone] "

Re:They'll never do it. (um... *bullshit* :)

Huh? Your comments indicate you read the summary here, but know very little about Quicktime (sorry). Let me fill you in on the state of Quicktime:

If all the qt codecs were open source...

We wouldn't HAVE as many codecs. Think Sorenson would donate their codecs for the good of mankind? They're only bad guys if they *prevent* you - yes YOU - from writing your own implementation of a QT coded. Wasn't it Linus who said people who complain about other's licenses are just whiners. You CAN do something about this if you code yourself.

...a certain other company beginning with M would suddenty support it..

Microsoft *already* supports QT in Windows Media Player. In fact, it STEALS your file associations and makes itself the default player for MOV's on Windows. That's wrong, but as a registered Apple developer Microsoft has easy access to Quicktime internals. Plus, Microsoft settled out of court for allegedly misusing that access to build a Windows media player that even today is only half as good.

Please, do NOT wish for a Linux version of MS Media Player - they made a version for the Mac, and using a G3/300 it is SOOO slow it actually drops frames and the audio pops. Mind you I've gotten better performance in Quicktime, fullscreen, on a PowerMac 6100/60MHz and only 40 megs RAM.

BTW, the downloadable Macintosh version of QuickTime *also* has the annoying register message. If you upgrade your Mac to System 9 you get a registered player.

By complaining that Apple will never open source the QT player you add further to the internal arguement that Apple shouldn't support a bunch of yammering Linux users who believe all software should be free. If that's your opinion - I respect it - but if you ever buy ANY OTHER software you have no right to complain and you cloud the arguement.

Oh, two things:
if you read the Apple developer docs you can "extend" Apple's Quicktime and make any damn player design you want. There are Perl-based MP3 players for the Mac, that just hook into the QT runtime.

I will bet anything that Apple will support QuickTime Player on Linux sometime between the summer release of OS X Consumer, and say 2 years from now. Why do I believe this? Because Apple wants to sell software, and it would be STUPID for them to handout an x86 Linux player when they are going to try selling their OWN verison of UNIX.

Technological reasons aside, I think a big reason Apple is 'going UNIX' is to fuck Microsoft and their crap NT model. Apple is a FAR better friend to the Linux/OSS community than say Sun, yet people always bitch about Apple Quicktime or the inevitable missing floppy drive.

This post made with Mozilla M13. Yum.

Re:Don't want a client

"The Linux community is great at writing its own GUI apps (look at KDE and Gnome), so all we really need is a complete libQuickTime.so."

That's basically how it works on Mac OS and Windows (AFAIK).

Quicktime is not a player per se(although it comes with some players/apps), it's an multimedia library (in Mac OS it's called "Quicktime Extension" and in Windows it's "qt40.dll" or something to the same effect).

It includes basic graphic functions (like rotating and scaling of images), several import and export functions, several media (mp3, mpeg 1/2 video, several properity codecs, and a bunch of other standard codecs) functions, and more.

It quite different from RealPlayer, since anybody who writes an app can use Quicktime for free (although if you install it with your software you must run an ad while it installs). So basically Quicktime is an shared library/API that developers may use as part of their applications. Feel free to check out Apple's Quicktime developer documentation for details.

Once Quicktime becomes avalible for Linux, you'll see many multimedia apps to follow it -- since it provides many useful APIs for multimedia apps (even Microsoft Encarda uses Quicktime Extensively). So if you want to create a Mp3 player, you can use the Quicktime software to do so or use Quicktime to create a simple image editing program.

"I don't care much for Windows QuickTime's interface myself..."

Luckly on the Mac OS their is several non-Apple Quicktime Players (such as Adobe Premier [which also does much other stuff], SoundApp [plays Quicktime Sounds], Graphic Converter [uses some of Apples quicktime APIs] and PlayerPro [alternative non-Apple Quicktime Player]) that hook into the Quicktime Extension "shared library" for basic Quicktime Playing, and add features of their own.

Re:We need your support !

Let Apple know that the Linux community will support them by BUYING the commercial version of the player if it's available, as that is their main benefit in doing the port

There was a pretty nasty discussion on the Apple QuickTime-talk mailing list last autumn about this exact point, and I can give you quotes from Charles Wiltgen, who used to be the main QT evangelist for Apple over many years, but who left quite recently to go elsewhere. In fact, the thread we were writing was forced shut by Charles, and deemed as off-topic. The discussion can be read here [apple.com], here [apple.com] and here [apple.com]. These are Apple's daily digests of the list. The primary reasons for Apple not having made a cross-platform (why limit it to Linux?) are as follows:

Vendor licencing
Apple wants the vendors to sponsor development of the player to their platform. In the Linux case, this was quite clear. "Red hat is one Linux vendors who just had a very successfull IPO, and there are a few other Linux vendors with plans to do the same." (sic)

I asked for cost estimates. No response.

When mentioning that Apple indeed ported the QT client to the MS Windows platform, the obvious response is that they went from a 7% or so market share to a 95% market share.

Market Share
Apple are not interested in spending millions of dollars (their estimate) on porting the QT Client to Linux because of market share. How many percent more users would they receive by doing this? The amount is negligable. However, I think they shouldn't concentrate on a Linux port alone, but rather a true Cross-platform port. If complex systems like Oracle can be ported to Linux (closed source, even! No need to open that up!) then why not the QT client?

I tried to make it clear to them that their precious market share is exactly why they should invest in spreading the client to as many platforms as possible. He who owns the player, owns the market, right? To this, the general response is that "the future of QT is MacOS X and Altivec".

Ofcourse, if they have the QT client natively on MacOS X, then obviously they should be able to port it to whatever, right?

I tried pointing to SGI's at the time interest in Linux over NT. I tried pointing to various other clients which are available cross platform (Acrobat, Flash, etc) and that have become de-facto standards as a result of increasing accesibility of their clients.

No luck. Linux, and most other Unix flavours are used as servers 99% of the time. For them, the streaming server is perfect. "QuickTime is on every mainstream OS right now, which is what our customers (consumers, content developers, software developers) want."

MacOS X and Altivec
After a while, the list got blocked from Linux/cross-platform discussions, and there was a private mail-discussion about the topic. Charles wrote "It's actually getting really boring, not to mention off-topic. Apple's future is Mac OS X and Altivec, period. Naturally this is Quicktime's future as well."

Charles was notoriously narrow-minded. He truly despised MPEG2-support (that's why there isn't any in the QT client) and in general was quite disliked as such.

Hopefully this time such a petition can get through. But don't count on it.

It's a secret:

Everything that QuickTime downloads is somewhere on your hard drive, usually in your browsers cache. Just go in there, and poke around and pull out most recent quicktime movie, and 9 times out of 10, that's the one you were looking for. If you want a more elegant solution, pay apple for the pro version that does more than simply play movies.

Re:maybe they want it closed

this proves that all you want is a "free ride"...

It proves nothing of the sort. What I meant by that is that something is better than nothing. At any rate, Windows users get a 'free ride' don't they?

If all you wanted was a client for linux, you would be satisfied with closed source

Frankly, I don't really use streaming video that much. I really want it to be available for Linux as more of a checklist item, and for other people. Just because I think that having something is better than nothing doesn't mean I am completely 'satisfied'.
At any rate, RealPlayer is already available for Linux. I think Microsoft even did a port of their media player for Linux at one point. Personally I'd rather see QuickTime become the de-facto industry standard than Microsoft's format. I can't say I have that much of a preference between QuickTime and RealPlayer, but both is better than only one.

maybe apple wants quicktime to be closed source!

Maybe they do, but why does that mean that people can't petition them to change their mind?

it's quite possible that they want to keep the secrets of quicktime to themselves,because they don't want assholes to steal it and make money off of it.

Frankly, if people really want to find the 'secrets' of QuickTime, what they have to do is look up Apple's patents and/or reverse engineer Apple's code. How is an open source player going to be stolen and made money on anyway? Apple's code will still be protected by patents and their algorithms will still be protected by patents (which of course is another topic altogether). There are lots of ways for them to protect QuickTime and still do an open sourced version. Your argument just doesn't make much sense.

the complaints are misdirected

we linux users can't play the videos that windows/mac users view with the latest quicktime product. i'm sure apple knows this already, and i guess it's ok to remind them, but i think there's a better idea.

how about the next time you run across a web site that is using a media architecture that _you_ can't view (because you are using something other than windows or macos) *tell the webmaster*!

next time you head over to broadcast.com, and you can't play the "windows media" streams, let them know. email starwars.com and tell them you can't view the trailer that's in quicktime. and so on...

perhaps if the _content providers_ realize that there is a large market that is entirely overlooked, they will pressure the people who provide them technology into doing something smart -- making it accessible to everyone. of course, apple will listen to people (ie, lucasarts) that license ($$) their technology. if not, too bad for them. maybe the content providers will switch to a more widely accepted format.

either way, we win.

- pal

Open source QT? nooo...

If Apple open-sourced QT, then MS would be able to make its Windows Media player play QT movies. QT is Apple's ace in the hole, it's more popular than MacOS (even with the stupidly designed qt4 player). They're not going to give that away.

I don't see anything wrong with a *nix QT client though. I remember reading that Apple usually has to hold back the release date for each version of QT because the Windows version takes so long. Other platforms would probably only add to that delay, and with streaming taking off the way it is, any kind of delay can be lethal. Just look at the delay between QT4 and 4.1. 4.1 isn't a huge upgrade (afaik, it adds support for vbr mp3s and ads in video streams) but it took a long time; I'm sure much of that delay was syncing the Mac and Windows versions.

handy quicktime link [apple.com]

PS - I love the name "Windows Media Player for Mac." They couldn't just call it the MS Media Player?
___________________

Re:Use a proprietary OS? Say it's not so!

What's wrong with the Darwin Streaming Server? I've been running it on linux for about 3 months, and the latest release even has binaries available for linux and solaris. It's open source, and works on a well documented protocal (RTSP), as well as now being able to stream over HTTP. The only downside now is that you have to "touch" movies to stream them, which means you have to buy quicktime pro or another product that can hint movies (an open source project to be?).

I'm also pretty sure it is independant of quicktime and media format since it's just a streaming protocol, but don't hold me to it.

Some Linux users have problems

Looking through this thread is really sick. Here is a legitamte attempt to get Apple to support QT4 on Linux (presumably with Sorensen, so we can watch all the cool trailers and stuff.)

What is the response of some (lots) of Linux user? We don't want an Apple player. We want specs and source!

Get a grip. Don't you realize that big business doesn't get wise to open source over night? And that there are some people who spent lots of time and money developing Sorensen? Why should we get their work for free?

I just have a problem with the ever growing population of Linux users who can't leave well enough alone.

QuickTime for Linux would be a major undertaking

QuickTime is not a codec. QuickTime is not even a movie player. QuickTime is an entire media architecture, and there isn't really anything else like it out there. It supports every type of media you can imagine (images, movies, audio, MIDI, 3D, panoramas, vector-based animations). It supports dozens of of formats. It has its own built-in little language, so you can make interactive stuff in it (it has built-in Flash support too). It has its own complex file format that allows you to combine any supported formats in one file (so, for example, you could have a Sorenson encoded movie with a music track in MIDI, the lyrics for that track in MP3, and in-movie controls in Flash). It probably contains more code than the Linux kernel.

And it was never written with portability in mind. QuickTime was only ported to Windows by implementing a nice chunk of the Mac OS API on it. Porting QuickTime to Linux would be a very, very big undertaking.

However, QuickTime will run on Mac OS X, which is less similar (from a technical perspective) to current Mac OS versions that Linux is. It's possible that porting QT from Mac OS X to Linux wouldn't be such a problem.

Alternatively, it might be possible to write something that just played QT- encapsulated Sorenson video streams with QDesign audio tracks (which is what virtually all streaming QT content is compressed with) and didn't do everything else QT does. The QuickTime file format and streaming protocol are both open, so this would be possible with no help from Apple if someone wants to license the relevant codecs from Sorenson and QDesign.

--

As somebody else said Quicktime != Codecs

If you want to petition for freely licensed specs for decoding then that is what the petition should be. If you want reference code for these codecs that should be in the petition. Sorenson should be the one to recieve the petition for their codec info or code. I just think we need to ask the right people for the right info, and realize what we already have available. The file formating info for Quicktime is already here, and we have free libraries and programs that can read it.

Quicktime for Linux is available NOW!!!!

Try this [linuxbox.com] link.

Re:Not everything should be open sourced and free!

Apple owns the specs to those CODECs and has absolutely no obligation, reason, or interest in releasing them to 'the community'. I'm sure someone can purchase those specs to create their own player if they'd like, but no one will. They won't because then they would have to charge money for their application.

Apple seems to have and exclusive license on the Sorensen codec, so even if someone wanted to, I dont think they could license it.

The real problem I have with Apple is they bring out their over-restrictive ASPL, and "open source" parts of what they call "darwin" (OS X) and expect people to code for them for free, they also tout QuickTime as the end all be all cross platform internet media streaming format, and its supported on what, 2 operating systems? Give me a break.

Their "open source" strategy seems to be to use as many buzzwords as possible to create mind-share, and maybe they'll sell a couple more G4s.

-- iCEBaLM

Binary Only is acceptible.

As long as I can view it, it's good. Open Source is just icing on the cake... (a very unlikely icing at that)...

Re:Don't want a client

I disagree, I think a Linux client done by Apple would be perfectly fine. Okay, a library would be more flexible, and the source would be ideal, but the fact is, what's in it for apple ? The brand recognition. They're not going to make an enormous amount of revenue off of the commercial player, but they CAN get market- and mind-share out of the bargain, which is what they need in the desktop battle. And as for the benefit to the community, most NEW linux users, particularly suits, are going to prefer consistancy and familiarity to flexibility and power. Not saying I agree, I just understand.

We need your support !

Myself and Jon Reeves Hall of the Linux Users Group at Georgia Tech are organizing this petetion, and so far response has been great. Let Apple know that the Linux community will support them by BUYING the commercial version of the player if it's available, as that is their main benefit in doing the port (and so few Windows users buy it, perhaps we'll become a tier-one development platform =)

--Josh Litherland, LUG@GT

Does it have to be open source?

I see a handfull of comments along the lines of, "Apple will never Open Source QuickTime" or "We don't need QuickTime, we need an Open Sourced QuickTime."

Okay, I'll agree that an open sourced version would be ideal but anything we can redistribute would be fine with me.

That would allow organizatios like Debian and RedHat to pass out CDs that you can use on many different machines (and your friend's machines, etc).

Can't we allow companies to keep their code private if their products are free (as in beer)?

Two different issues.

This issue seems to be a bit muddled the way it's presented, but these really have to be two wholly different issues, don't they?

A Quicktime client for Linux

A Open Source version without proprietary codecs.

The first of these would be within Apple's abilities, but the second isn't really. They can't give away proprietary codecs they don't themselves own, and the only alternative then is to not use those codecs which ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

And the actual petition just mentions a port, not an open source version.

Might be better than nothing, but on the other hand proprietary standards isn't something very desirable in and of itself.

-- Eythain