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RED HAT AND REALNETWORKS PARTNER TO OFFER LINUX DESKTOP USERS ACCESS TO THE INTERNET’S BEST AUDIO AND VIDEO PROGRAMMING
Red Hat Contributes Development Resources to the Helix Player, the Leading Open Source Media Framework
RealNetworks Expands Helix Player Licensing Options to Include General Public License
Kristiansand, Norway — GUADEC - June 28, 2004 — Red Hat, Inc. (NASDAQ: RHAT), and RealNetworks®, Inc. (NASDAQ: RNWK), today announced an agreement to ship the completely open source Helix™ Player with Red Hat’s desktop products. Red Hat will also offer a no-cost upgrade to RealPlayer® 10 for Linux to Red Hat customers upon their initial installation of the Red Hat Desktop when the player is available later this summer. As a result, users of the Red Hat Desktop will be able to enjoy a wide variety of programming from corporate training videos to movie trailers to news directly on their Linux desktops. Further, Red Hat is contributing resources to help qualify the Helix Player on its platform, a process expected to be completed this summer.
Helix Player is the free, open source media player, developed within the Helix Community (www.helixcommunity.org), that contains only open source components, including the underlying Helix DNA Client, as well as the Ogg Vorbis and Theora codecs. Helix Player is the foundation of the forthcoming RealPlayer 10 for Linux which includes both open source as well as commercial components such as SMIL, MP3, Flash, and the leading RealAudio® and RealVideo® media formats. Beta versions of RealPlayer 10 for Linux, as well as the free and open source Helix Player, are available today for free download at: https://player.helixcommunity.org/2004/downloads/.
"We expect to see continued innovation and growth in the Linux desktop market world-wide. Providing desktop standardization for digital media via the Helix Player to consumers, businesses and developers as a software application and media enabling framework expands the capabilities of the Linux desktop and provides the market with new capabilities and more choices," said Martin Pleahn, Executive Vice President, Products and Services, RealNetworks, Inc. "Through the Helix Community and the Helix Player, Real continues to contribute to the growing commercial importance and demand for Linux as well as media applications. Working with Red Hat greatly accelerates the distribution of media enabled Linux desktops and also extends the reach of the Helix development community to those developers and organizations also committed to advancing the Linux OS and desktop applications."
"An integral part of our Open Source Architecture strategy, particularly in the client environment, is to work with industry leaders like Real to have them license their award-winning technology in a manner that will enable Red Hat to put our full weight behind the technology," said Mike Evans, vice president of Partner Development at Red Hat. "As the leading provider of open source solutions for the worlds enterprise market were excited that users of our upcoming Red Hat Desktop will also have a commercial-grade media player with the Helix Player. We applaud RealNetworks efforts to make this technology available under the GPL."
Helix Player now available through General Public License
Also today, RealNetworks announced its intention within 30 days to add the GNU General Public License (GPL) to the Helix Player. This additional licensing option enables a broad set of software developers to build and innovate on RealNetworks’ award-winning media player framework under the terms and conditions of the pervasive GPL ‘free software’ license and in combination with other GPL developed software applications and systems. 'Free software' refers to the unrestricted liberation of software, not the cost of the software.
With the addition of GPL, developers now have three unique Helix Player licensing options to choose from to meet their development needs:
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GNU General Public License (GPL), a software license that requires developers to, in turn, open source the code of their application under an open source license; |
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RealNetworks Public Source License (RPSL), like GPL, this is an OSI-Certified open source license. The RPSL license is compatible with other non GPL compatible open source licenses; and, |
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RealNetworks Community Source License (RCSL) enables developers to build proprietary applications. |
"We encourage interested free software developers to learn from, improve and share the Helix Player," said Eben Moglen, General Counsel and Director, Free Software Foundation. "Real's understanding of the power of the free software development paradigm and adoption of the complementary commercial license and the GPL license allows both Real and the free software community to benefit from the GPL’s ‘share and share alike' approach."
For product developers seeking to port or optimize RealNetworks’ leading media formats, RealAudio and RealVideo, the source code of can also be licensed through the no-cost RCSL attachment.
For more information, contact:
Lisa Strong, RealNetworks, (206) 892-6585, lstrong@real.com
Leigh Day, Red Hat, (919) 754-4369, lday@redhat.com
ABOUT HELIX
Helix represents a platform, Helix DNA, and a community (www.helixcommunity.org), for the standardization and expansion of digital media. The Helix DNA platform consists of source code for creation, delivery and playback of digital media developed by Real over the past ten years, as well as a set of interfaces for building media-enabled applications. Helix Community members are able to use this source code to build media-capable products with industry-leading technology and commonly used interfaces. The Helix Community offers source code of Helix DNA under commercial community and two open source licenses. Real has also released a family of commercial products built on top of the Helix DNA platform, including the free RealPlayer, RealProducer Plus, and the Helix Universal Server.
ABOUT RED HAT, INC.
Red Hat, the world’s leading open source and Linux provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with satellite offices spanning the globe. Red Hat is leading Linux and open source solutions into the mainstream by making high quality, low cost technology accessible. Red Hat provides operating system software along with middleware, applications and management solutions. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide and through top-tier partnerships. Red Hat’s Open Source strategy offers customers a long-term plan for building infrastructures that are based on and leverage open source technologies with focus on security and ease of management. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.
ABOUT REALNETWORKS, INC.
RealNetworks, Inc. is the leading creator of digital media services and software including the award-winning Rhapsody® Internet jukebox service and RealPlayer, the first product to integrate finding, organizing, buying, playing and managing digital audio and video in a single product. Consumers can access and experience audio/video programming and download RealNetworks’ consumer software at http://www.real.com. Broadcasters, network operators, media companies and enterprises use RealNetworks’ products and services to create and deliver digital media to PCs, mobile phones and consumer electronics devices. RealNetworks’ systems and corporate information is located at http://www.realnetworks.com.
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