On Jun 10, 2008, at 12:21 PM, Alex Shaykevich wrote:
One of the things that made QTJ so great was that the developer
wasn't responsible for distributing and codecs and, therefore, was
off the hook for any licensing issues. Even if someone were to hack
Java and something like ffmpeg into an actual editing engine, it
still leaves the developer in a quandry regarding legality and
licensing.
--Alex
I was trying to address that when I mentioned licensing to an OS
community. Not so much licensing the QT4J code, which is probably not
particularly useful except as a planning document, as I was thinking
about licensing access to develop against QTX to said community.
Apple is still responsible for QT and getting QT to the masses (which
has always chafed a significant subset of this community) while OS
devs continue to code against it being there. Whether this gets
around codec licensing issues is an exercise I leave to my legal
brethren but it could be one way for Apple to politely / quietly drop
QT4J off their plate. If nothing comes from the community at least
Apple wasn't the one who axed the product in the end--i.e. they could
plausibly say there wasn't enough interest in the product to justify
its continued viability.
The question isn't whether Apple will continue to develop a
multifaceted media application for two of the three main desktop
operating systems so much as whether they'll facilitate or even permit
someone to code against that application. I don't see how it is any
skin off their back--other than maybe some increase in what they pay
for licensing--to communicate their dev path to an OS community and
provide a modicum of access to their dev docs. In return they get
some additional push for ubiquitous QT installation that they can
leverage รก la iTunes / ITMS / etc.
Then again, I'm merely a code drone who doesn't even get to play with
Apple stuff except in my free time. I'm certainly no PM, PO, or the
like and if Apple decides to just /dev/null the whole thing then
that's their prerogative. It's just as likely (at least) that I'm
completely wrong in my assessment and QT4J will continue to drift into
obsolescence with no fast and hard break like I think will happen with
QTX. The ultimate point being we probably won't know until they
release it because Apple is not particularly involved with this
community.
That's probably enough speculative ranting from me on a rumor thread.
-Nick _______________________________________________
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