[sldev] Voice=Proprietary

[David Fries]

Let's see how proprietary it is.  It's in a separate process and it is
going to have to do three things.

1. communicate with the Second Life client
2. encode from the microphone and decode to the speaker
3. send and receive network packets with the voice servers

Current status,

1. I looked for "voice" in the latest First Look sources and didn't
find it.  Assuming the source is released in future clients, we would
know what API the processes use to communicate and what is being sent.
If it was a binary loadable library the hooks have to be there in the
source code that is release, then we could be free to write our own
API to another process or do it all in one binary.

2. The codec is listed as being Siren14.  Anyone have code for this?

3. This is where we ask Linden Labs for a nice document describing the
protocol, so it can be reimplemented.

The codec is probably the key here,

The bringing voice to Second Life blot post said they would be using
Siren14
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2005_April_12/ai_n13600182
'as ITU-T Recommendation G.722.1 Annex C. The technology, which is
being offered with royalty-free licensing terms,

This post questions GPL distribution.
http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-dev/2005-August/014464.html

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035_11-6159446.html
'Siren14 is a free-to-license (not to be confused with license-free)
ultra-wideband version of the G.722.1 codec from Polycom. Some of the
high-end features in G.722.1, like echo cancellation and noise
reduction, are omitted. Even though this is royalty free, you still
need a license from Polycom. Siren14 supports a wider dynamic range up
to 14,000 hertz, compared with 7,000 hertz in wideband.'

- We're screwed...

Look at it this way, on Linux the released binaries and open source
compiled binaries will have just as much voice support, none.

I guess there is OpenCroquet, they list support for VoIP,
http://www.opencroquet.org/index.php/Croquet_Roadmap
The first answer compares Croquet to other technologies.
http://www.opencroquet.org/index.php/FAQs

On Sat, Mar 10, 2007 at 09:16:52PM -0500, Jason Giglio wrote:
> That's not the point.
> 
> If it's fair game for them to add proprietary extensions for new 
> features, the open source part of the client becomes more and more 
> crippled and irrelevant as more of the new core functionality becomes 
> locked into proprietary parts that can't be redistributed.
> 
> -Jason

-- 
David Fries <david at fries.net>
http://fries.net/~david/ (PGP encryption key available)