From Brazil: QuickTime Server on OS 9
The Marlin Project began when Alberto Victor de Mondonca rallied a group of Brazilian developers around the work of Alin Pilkington, a Santa Monica, Calif., developer.
Pilkington had received from an Apple engineer incomplete code for a Mac OS 9 implementation of Apple's (aapl) QuickTime Streaming Server (the company's server technology for streaming multimedia QuickTime files over the Internet). The engineer told Pilkington that the company was not interested in investing the time to get it up and running on the current Mac OS. Through developer mailing lists, de Mondonca heard of Pilkington's project and quickly organized developers he knew in his home town of Vitória, Brazil.
The goal with what Pilkington called QuickTime Server Classic (QTSC) was to provide similar capabilities as the existing QTSS but in a more accessible and lower-cost version, one available to the millions of Mac users running Mac OS 9. In the tradition of open source, interested parties are welcome to log onto the Marlin Project Web site and participate.
Currently, QTSS is available only for Mac OS X Server, a server-centric OS that costs $500. The Marlin Project is based on Darwin Streaming Server, a free, open-source version of QTSS and available for other OSes, including FreeBSD, Red Hat Linux Solaris 7 and Windows NT Server.
However, despite the efforts of those involved in the Marlin Project, Apple has not yet recognized the group's work.
Initially, the Marlin Project attacked the QTSC problem from a Unix perspective. However, team members have said they'll accept new ideas on how to port this and other tools to the current Mac OS, especially those that can be used by ISPs.
Team members said they believe there will still be a strong market for such Mac OS 9-based tools even after the introduction of Mac OS X, the consumer version of Apple's next-generation OS, due early next year. They pointed to the fact that the majority of Macs currently in use will not be able to make that upgrade.
With the precipitous rise of the Internet use as well as the general computer market in both Brazil and Latin America, streaming-media products are regarded as a hot area here. However, regional developers haven't always received the recognition they deserve. For example, little attention was paid the Brazilian developer scene before a team of Brazilian teenagers released Rapster, a Napster client for the Mac.
Similarly, neither the Marlin Project nor its corporate sponsor, the Brazilian ISP Interlink, have been recognized on the developer's page on the Apple Brazil Web site, despite some support from the corporate division's regional director, Marco Fadiga.
International recognition was slow to arrive, too, coming only after a functional code source release of QTSC. Through the grapevine of the Internet, North American companies including StarNine, Sorenson, Active Concepts and even Apple started to express interest.
Marlin Project members said that Apple was the most useful of the above contacts, answering technical questions under its Darwin open-source developer support.
Project members said they provided QTSC code to other companies for possible integration into commercial server software, but they said they haven't heard word back.
The low-cost of QTSC on the existing Mac OS 9, said a team member, was the reason that the majority of visitors to the Marlin Project Web site come from outside Brazil, primarily from Germany, Holland and Japan.
The minimum configuration for running QTSC is a PowerPC running Mac OS 8.5 or later. At least 96MB of RAM is recommended. Marlin Project members tout this as proof that high-end machines aren't necessary for small sites that want to stream live video.
Rogério Taira is Webmaster of MacNews Brasil, Brazil's leading Mac Web site.