Feature:Real Audio

Rob Lanphier is an employee of RealNetworks who has written a short open letter containing a few of his opinions on some issues that have be discussed on slashdot lately. He comments on the recent MediaPlayer mess, as well as the Real MP3 Problem. Read it if you're interested in that sort of thing.

The following is an open letter written by Rob Lanphier to other Slashdot Readers

I'd like to address some of the chatter that has popped up on Slashdot recently about RealNetworks. I have to put the standard disclaimer that although I'm an employee of RealNetworks, I speak only for myself here, not RN.

There's a couple of things I'd like to point out:

1. The Windows Media Player thing:
   

   I can't say much more than what's on the RN website

   This has updated technical details on this subject which are worth the read if you are interested in why this is such a big issue for RealNetworks, and why we are standing by our claims. One thing I would like to add: "We no-o-o-o-ot whi-i-i-i-i-ining. Mo-o-o-om, make them stop saying we're whining".

2. The MP3 Thing:
   

   Speaking of whining, there's a road to redemption for MP3 fans. Our new RealSystem G2 has a file format plugin interface that would allow support for streaming any file format, and one could write a G2 file format and renderer plugin for MP3 using all of the free code that's out there for doing MP3 stuff. A good programmer could knock out a credible proof-of-concept in about a week (I, of course, don't claim to be a good programmer, so I'm disqualified).

   As far as Rob Glaser's alleged MP3 quote that is flying around, I'd never heard that one personally, and I suspect it's being mangled or taken out of context. Does anyone have a direct reference to the quote?