Ericsson open-sources OpenWebRTC, rival to Google’s WebRTC implementation • Hacker News Board

Re: Ericsson open-sources OpenWebRTC, rival to Google’s WebRTC implementation

#41

Post by pthatcherg » Fri, Oct 03, 2014, 5:38 AM UTC

jmspring wrote: post #36

pthatcherg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signalling is already removed from the WebRTC API. ORTC doesn't change that. All would change is not needing to use SDP as the API surface. But that's API surface, not signalling.

signaling/api surface, easy enough for me to not be precise in my terminology, that said, there is still no agreement to produce an rfc/draft with agreed to sdp for an independent implementation.

I'm pretty sure this RFC draft qualifies as defining the SDP for an independent implementation:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-jsep-07#section...

Re: Ericsson open-sources OpenWebRTC, rival to Google’s WebRTC implementation

#42

Post by pthatcherg » Fri, Oct 03, 2014, 5:45 AM UTC

jgrowl wrote: post #34

Ericsson's code base looks like pure C? Should make it a lot easier to interop with other languages like GO.

It's on my TODO list to try and make Go bindings for WebRTC :).

Re: Ericsson open-sources OpenWebRTC, rival to Google’s WebRTC implementation

#43

Post by pthatcherg » Fri, Oct 03, 2014, 5:46 AM UTC

glandium wrote: post #39

SimeVidas wrote: post #18

Am I reading this correctly? Firefox uses Google’s WebRTC implementation?

Note the Google implementation is full of code from Cisco. FWIW.

That would be news to me. They aren't listed in the AUTHORS file:

https://code.google.com/p/webrtc/source/browse/trunk/AUTHORS

Re: Ericsson open-sources OpenWebRTC, rival to Google’s WebRTC implementation

#44

Post by pthatcherg » Fri, Oct 03, 2014, 5:48 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #21

SimeVidas wrote: post #18

Am I reading this correctly? Firefox uses Google’s WebRTC implementation?

Thought of the same thing. Anyone know?

There are a few different layers to the WebRTC stack. I believe they use the lower layer which does the video and audio processing. But they don't use the higher layers from which do ICE, SCTP, and SDP.

Re: Ericsson open-sources OpenWebRTC, rival to Google’s WebRTC implementation

#45

Post by pthatcherg » Fri, Oct 03, 2014, 5:53 AM UTC

jephir wrote: post #28

api wrote: post #25

Does WebRTC strike anyone as too many things in one package? It's P2P, video, audio, codecs, and a whole slew of other things all bundled up together into the same "standard." The P2P part is really really useful, but I could see some vendors wanting to break that off for various reasons. You can do that of course but... well... it's sort of like if "WiFi" referred to 802.11 + a bunch of video codecs + a routing stan…

> Does WebRTC strike anyone as too many things in one package? It does too many things. I want to use WebRTC data channels for a multiplayer game, but the current implementation libraries tie-in all the media components. It would be nice if there was a WebRTC implementation that provided data channels without having the media functionality.

While we don't provide a build target for compiling the data channel without the audio and video parts, it's not that hard to remove from the build. It's just some build file hacking (basically remove webrtcvideoengine.cc and webrtcvoiceengine.cc).

Would you mind filing an issue at https://code.google.com/p/webrtc/issues/list to ask us to make a nicer build target? It won't be top priority, but we get around to it. Or better yet, if you get it working, send a patch. We'd probably include such a build target.

Re: Ericsson open-sources OpenWebRTC, rival to Google’s WebRTC implementation

#46

Post by pthatcherg » Fri, Oct 03, 2014, 5:57 AM UTC

api wrote: post #25

Does WebRTC strike anyone as too many things in one package? It's P2P, video, audio, codecs, and a whole slew of other things all bundled up together into the same "standard." The P2P part is really really useful, but I could see some vendors wanting to break that off for various reasons. You can do that of course but... well... it's sort of like if "WiFi" referred to 802.11 + a bunch of video codecs + a routing stan…

You can't have video chat with audio, video, codecs, p2p, the whole thing. The only piece you can remove from the whole and still have video chat work is the data channel.

If all you want is the data channel, then you can ignore the audio/video part, and just use the data channel separately. It doesn't do you any harm.

Re: Ericsson open-sources OpenWebRTC, rival to Google’s WebRTC implementation

#47

Post by rockdoe » Fri, Oct 03, 2014, 6:50 AM UTC

SimeVidas wrote: post #18

Am I reading this correctly? Firefox uses Google’s WebRTC implementation?

They cooperate on the same stack (webrtc.org) which deals with audio/video processing. Networking, JavaScript bindings, etc (the part exposed to the outside world where standardization matters) are separate. This ironically means that interoperability isn't a given, took a while to achieve, and was worthy of a press release.

The relevant code was originally from GIPS: http://www.gipscorp.com/ which Google bought.

Re: Ericsson open-sources OpenWebRTC, rival to Google’s WebRTC implementation

#48

Post by rockdoe » Fri, Oct 03, 2014, 7:03 AM UTC

Does Ericsson plan to maintain and update this implementation (my understanding is that WebRTC is still an evolving standard) or is this the kind of "we're abandoning the project and dropping the maintenance burden on the open source community" kind of thing that this kind of announcement usually means? Closed source projects opening their code don't generally end up very successful if they're "dead drops".

As an aside, I notice that the first issue in the github is "implement H265". That seems like a weird priority if you saw what needed to happen to get Mozilla and Google to even consider supporting H264. I think Firefox still doesn't support it and uses VP8.

Re: Ericsson open-sources OpenWebRTC, rival to Google’s WebRTC implementation

#49

Post by Swannie » Fri, Oct 03, 2014, 9:53 AM UTC

glandium wrote: post #39

SimeVidas wrote: post #18

Am I reading this correctly? Firefox uses Google’s WebRTC implementation?

Note the Google implementation is full of code from Cisco. FWIW.

Don't confuse a WebRTC implementation with the Cisco supplied H.264 codec binary and MPEG LA coverage. You get H.264 support in Mozilla & Chrome via this mechanism.

Re: Ericsson open-sources OpenWebRTC, rival to Google’s WebRTC implementation

#50

Post by stalund » Fri, Oct 03, 2014, 12:37 PM UTC

rockdoe wrote: post #48

Does Ericsson plan to maintain and update this implementation (my understanding is that WebRTC is still an evolving standard) or is this the kind of "we're abandoning the project and dropping the maintenance burden on the open source community" kind of thing that this kind of announcement usually means? Closed source projects opening their code don't generally end up very successful if they're "dead drops". As an asi…

I'm the Ericsson Research person responsible for the release.

This release is not about throwing code over the fence. We have developed OpenWebRTC over last few years and are using it to build various applications. This will continue, with the difference that we will maintain the OpenWebRTC framework in the open.

That being said, we are a relatively small team. For OpenWebRTC to remain competitive as the WebRTC standard continues to evolve and people find new uses for the technology, we hope to get as many external developers involved as possible. OpenWebRTC builds on GStreamer which is a well-maintained project with a active community. Improvements in GStreamer will therefore almost automatically be reflected in OpenWebRTC.

To be completely transparent Bowser is not our top priority, OpenWebRTC is. Bowser primarily serves as a demo application for OpenWebRTC and is a good way for people to try out the technology before committing to it. Some people will find Bowser very useful, especially while WebRTC support is missing on other iOS browsers, and we are happy for any value it creates.