Meeting Reaction
Following a meeting with members the BBC's Future Media & Technology department on 6th November 2007, this article outlines what was discussed and agreed.
The OSC had a constructive meeting with BBC Future Media and Technology Executives and iPlayer engineers yesterday (6th November).
Topics discussed included the existing single-platform nature of the iPlayer client, DRM, the iPlayer's history, and a cross-platform open standards based iPlayer.
The Future Media and Technology team are better placed than us to comment on how the iPlayer got to where it is today, but we were happy to finally meet individuals who can answer the outstanding questions around the iPlayer.
Two essential agreements came out of this first meeting:
- The BBC Future Media and Technology team will communicate much more openly around the iPlayer, including addressing the currently unanswered concerns. OSC will help facilitate this process in the Free and Open Source software communities.
- We have been invited to share the already completed groundwork on an iPlayer client based on Free and Open Source software components that would deliver a cross-platform open standards based iPlayer that meets the functional requirements of the BBC and BBC Trust.
Initial steps on point one include Becky Hogge of the Open Rights Group and Mark Taylor of Open Source Consortium debating the iPlayer and DRM on BBC Backstage this Friday and Ashley Highfield being interviewed by Groklaw as soon as this has been arranged.
On point two, follow up meetings have been arranged to introduce the iPlayer team to members of the OSC's 'open iPlayer' team.
We would like to acknowledge Ashley Highfield and the Future Media and Technology team for the initial steps that they are taking. The proof of the words we have heard will come in the form of a cross-platform open standards based iPlayer available for all platforms, and available for all.
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