Mario Lang writes:Mario: I understand your cynicism, but I would encourage you to temper it considerably. There's already a free of cost player available from DAISY which was created expressly to be given away. I wish they'd publish the source for it, though I'm not sure it would be all that useful to any of us as this player is a plugin for Internet Explorer written in VB script. Also, please consider the progression of DAISY protocol specifications. DAISY 1.0 was completely proprietary. That ceased with 2.0 > From: Mario Lang <mlang@teleweb.at> > > Janina Sajka <janina@afb.net> writes: > > [...] > > > There was a meeting regarding this very issue following CSUN last year. > > At this meeting I was tasked to chair a committee report to the DAISY > > Board recommending that DAISY's next generation of user agents and > > authoring tools use GPL/LGPL licensing, meaning that they would be open > > source. The DAISY Board niether adopted nor rejected this > > recommendation, and I believe the issue continues unresolved within the > > DAISY Consortium. Regretfully, I am not attending their meeting later > > this month in Korea. > > Excuse my pessimism, but this is quite what I expected. Or do you seriously believe this > comitee would "take away" the valueable income source of all those poor AT-companies? > No, they will not I fear, and most probably sell DAISY readers with > decrypt-features for a fortune... oh well. > > > However, nothing prevents any one of us, or any group of us, from > > initiating a project to create open source tools for DAISY. I would > > expect that creating user agents would be comparatively simpler, and > > provide the tool most needed. One would need to control audio file > > playback of .wav and .mpg, while displaying text at the same time. There > > are more issues, of course, but this ese are the basics in simplest > > terms. Synchronization is achieved through SMIL 1.0 in the case of DAISY > > 2.02 and SMIL 2.0 in the case of DAISY 3.0 > > > > Regretably, RFB&D has adopted a copyright scheme based on "security > > through obscurity," so the unpacking agent would most likely need to be > > binary only. > ANd here is where I stop thinking about the whole issue. > > Play this silly game without people like me... > > see, text-files are nice, ogg files are nice too, I dont need to play > with things which crypt the content of a book. > > It's like crypted .pdfs, they are too only trouble. > > > Good authoring tools are another subject altogether, though there are > > certainly component applications that could be incorporated, such as > > docbook. > WRiting authoring tools which *dont* support encryption sounds interesting. > Could be used to produce content which is actually useable. > > > I am happy to assist anyone wanting to look at taking this up to the > > extent I can. One thing I can do is to send out several DAISY 2.02 > > titles that are not encrypted and which provide both text and audio. I > > expect to have such content for DAISY 3.0 in a few months. > > How about lobbying for not crypting stuff? > > Or demonstrating that the algo can be broken? > > Both would be a kind of solution. > > I still don't believe that serious people can believe they achieve anything > but problems with "security through obscurity". > > -- > CYa, > Mario > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Blinux-list@redhat.com > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list -- Janina Sajka, Director Technology Research and Development Governmental Relations Group American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) Email: janina@afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175 _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list