Xiph.Org Foundation

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Xiph.Org Foundation
logo
legal form 501 (c) (3)
founding 1994
founder Christopher Montgomery
Seat Somerville (Massachusetts) , United States ( ⊙ coordinates: 42 ° 24 ′ 30.9 ″  N , 71 ° 7 ′ 43.6 ″  W )
main emphasis free multimedia formats
Action space worldwide
people Christopher Montgomery, Jack Moffitt, Ralph Giles ( Theora ), Jean-Marc Valin ( Speex , CELT , Opus ), Josh Coalson ( FLAC ), Michael Smith, Timothy B. Terriberry ( Daala )
Website xiph.org

The Xiph.Org Foundation ( German  Xiph.Org Foundation , after the fish genus Xiphophorus ) is a non-profit organization for the development of open , fully usable multimedia - data formats . Its headquarters are in Somerville, Massachusetts in the United States . Important projects are the audio formats Vorbis and Opus and the video format Daala .

Work of the foundation

The Xiph.Org Foundation develops a number of open and fully usable multimedia data formats , including protocols and standards and associated implementations. The primary focus is on developing a family of complementary multimedia data formats. These offer a free substitute for corresponding formats that can be used with restrictions under patent law . The best-known examples are the free audio formats Vorbis and its successor Opus, which represent alternatives to patented formats such as MP3 and AAC .

Current (2015) development work is focused on Daala, a video format intended to provide an alternative to the patented MPEG-4 AVC / H.264 , HEVC / H.265, RealVideo and Windows Media Video formats .

The organization works with various partner organizations. These include the Mozilla Corporation, which acts as the (sometimes main) sponsor of various Xiph projects, and the standards organization Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). As part of the IETF's working groups, she also works with IT and telecommunications companies such as Google Inc. , Microsoft , Cisco Systems and Polycom .

The Free Software Foundation led 2006-2008 Xiph projects on their list of particularly urgent Free Software Projects.

Projects

The work of the Xiph.Org Foundation is divided into different projects. These fall into three areas: container formats , media encoding formats and software.

For the container formats n, Ogg is the standard container that is recommended for the Xiph.Org formats. Others are Ogg Skeleton for extended data stream information, various RTP containers and the XSPF container for XML- based playlists .

The media encoding formats include

  • the lossy audio format Opus ,
  • the lossy video format Daala ,
  • the lossless audio format FLAC , as well as
  • the text format Kate .

Obsolete formats, the development of which has been (partially) stopped, are the audio formats Vorbis and CELT , the lossy video format Theora , the speech coding format Speex and the text format CMML .

At Software -projects there including the streaming server Icecast and the associated source client named Ices and the audio CD -Auslesesoftware cdparanoia . Icecast is responsible for ensuring that media content is sent to the relevant clients via the network. The source client Ices in turn sends this content to be streamed to the streaming server.

In addition to these main projects, there are a number of sub- or developer projects . These include Tremor , a Vorbis decoder optimized for specific hardware, the Tarkin video format, which was no longer developed in favor of Theora, and the Ogg Writ text format .

In addition to its own development work, the foundation has also brought existing free software projects under its patronage, which complement its own software range. Among these are Speex and FLAC.

Since 2001, software from the Xiph.Org Foundation has usually been released under an adapted BSD-like license to enable use in proprietary products. However, utilities are usually released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

history

The organization and its predecessor, the Xiphophorus company, were founded by Christopher Montgomery , who also developed the Vorbis and Ogg formats. The name is the (now abbreviated) generic name of the swordtail fish ( Xiphophorus hellerii ). The first project work began in 1994. After the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft demanded license fees for the use of MP3, the development of the Vorbis alternative process began in 1998. Even before it was officially declared ready for the market in 2002, it soon gained a certain degree of popularity and popularity thanks to its superior sound quality. Then the company left On2 Technologies Foundation in June 2002, an older version of its commercial video compression method, which was developed to Theora. This became the free format of choice for lossy video compression until Google bought the On2s VP8 free in 2010 . In 2002 it was renamed the Xiph.Org Foundation. Official recognition as a non-profit organization ( 501 (c) (3)) by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been in place since March 2003 . By September 2012, Xiph developers were the main participants in a corresponding working group at the IETF, successfully turning the CELT-based method Opus into an Internet standard . Subsequently, the focus of development shifted to Daala. In 2015, the standardization work for an "Internet Video Codec" ("NetVC") officially began, in which Xiph.Org played a major role and contributed the results of the Daala project.

Web links

Commons : Xiph.Org Foundation  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Xiph.org people.xiph.org - personal webspace of the xiphs - Jean-Marc Valin , accessed September 11, 2009
  2. ↑ Timothy B. Terriberry: people.xiph.org - Timothy B. Terriberry, Ph.D. . Xiph.Org. 2009. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
  3. ↑ Summer of Code Mentoring . Xiph.Org. 2009. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
  4. ↑ Minutes of the Xiph.org Monthly Meeting for September 2003 . May 10, 2003. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
  5. ↑ Minutes of the Xiph.org Monthly Meeting for September 2003 . Xiph.Org. September 16, 2003. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
  6. ↑ Janko Roettgers: Open codec pioneer leaves Red Hat, joins Mozilla to work on next-generation video codec . In: GigaOm . October 15, 2013. Retrieved April 20, 2014.
  7. ↑ High Priority Free Software Projects . Free Software Foundation. Archived from the original on March 14, 2008. Retrieved August 25, 2008.
  8. ^ Projects / Formats on the main page of the Xiph.Org-Foundation-Wiki, January 17th, 2006
  9. ↑ a b Dr. Volker Zota: Ogg Vorbis: Free audio codec on the rise on Heise online , March 5, 2001
  10. ↑ Xiph.org: Contact information . Xiph.org. Retrieved August 25, 2008.
  11. ↑ naming . Xiph.org. Retrieved August 25, 2008.
  12. ↑ A Challenger to MP3? . Tristan Louis. January 16, 2001. Archived from the original on June 17, 2013. Retrieved on September 2, 2008.
  13. ^ Brian Zisk: vorbis - Dvorak Interviews Monty . April 19, 2000. Retrieved September 4, 2008.
  14. ^ Advogado: Interview: Christopher Montgomery of Xiphophorus . Advogado. April 4, 2000. Retrieved September 2, 2009.
  15. ^ Xiphophorus company: Xiphophorus home . Archive.org. December 12, 2001. Archived from the original on December 12, 2001. Retrieved on September 2, 2009.
  16. ↑ Xiph.org Foundation: Xiph.org home . Archive.org. November 27, 2002. Archived from the original on November 27, 2002. Retrieved on September 2, 2009.
  17. ↑ Speex reaches 1.0; Xiph.Org now a 501 (c) (3) Non-Profit Organization on the Xiph.Org-Foundation website, March 24, 2003
  18. ↑ http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/opus/2012-September/001698.html
  19. ↑ Michael Larabel (Phoronix.com), August 7, 2015: A Look At Daala's Git Repository, The Lead Developers & Code Count
  20. ↑ Internet Video Codec (netvc) - History