RealNetworks is launching a project to build an open source media player, offering to give Linux, Unix, and Solaris users the same media playback and support capabilities available from the company"s RealOne Player for Windows and Mac systems.
The project, announced Wednesday in conjunction with the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco, will be taken on by the Helix community of developers. Real introduced Helix last year as both a community and platform for the standardization of digital media. Since then, it has released source code for the server, client, and producer portions of its media delivery system. With Helix, Real is aiming to propagate the use of a multiformat system rather than a proprietary approach like that taken by Microsoft with its Windows Media format.