On 3 Apr 2012, at 22:15, Richard Dobson <richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> The Apple lossless codec was made open-source last year. Some people might as: why was it not published earlier? To that I'd answer: - legal issues: a company like Apple has huge potential legal liabilities. Before they release something like that into the wild, they make sure there are no relevant patents or other legal issues that could result in massive liabilities for publishing the code - engineering issues: Apple will not publish code they don't deem sufficiently mature and well documented. Sometimes release cycles mandate less than perfect code to get things out the door. You're just not going to publish lousy, quick & dirty code. You clean it up, document it, and when it's stable and reasonably bug free, that's the point when you can publish it. - demand: putting something out there requires a minimum amount of effort, support and infrastructure. There's no point in publishing code and incurring all that overhead if there's no demand. Only if there are enough requests for something to be public, there are no legal obstacles, the code is mature enough, and it's not considered a proprietary key competitive advantage over other platforms, things can and will be published. Anyway, we're not here to discuss Apple. I only mentioned Apple because in the past there was once a small chance that they might have picked it up, but it was largely ruined by the purists demands which sent the people from Apple who were lurking on this list to assess the potential running away. Not likely that they'll come back anytime soon... Ronald _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
