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Comment by cjoh | Hacker News Reader

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cjoh·

I remember when Apple released FaceTime, they said it'd be an open industry standard. See:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/07/apple_announce...

and

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9177819/Jobs_has_loft...

Seems striking that it's been nearly a year and we haven't heard a peep about making it open. I would presume that if it were, it could be possible to bridge the two protocols or eliminate the need for skype.

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I just did some searching around to confirm this, because I had thought Apple released the spec back when they announced it, but you're right. Not a peep.

It sort of behooves them to release it... it would build support for FaceTime, which would make their phones more useful.

But it seems pretty certain they don't want other phones to be able to check that FaceTime box on their marketing materials just yet. I know being able to chat with my mom and sister who both have iPhones is one reason I'm considering buying one.

Seems low to announce it as an open spec if you don't have any intentions of opening it any time soon though.

They'll release it in two years but it's going to be the best spec ever written for a mobile device. Just wait til Gruber sees the indentation in the sample code.

I would venture a guess that one part of FaceTime is actually the streaming protocol it uses - HTTP Live Streaming - which is indeed by Apple and already Open Source, and used by Google, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming

Edit: Spelling

HTTP Live Streaming is fairly high latency (2-10 seconds typically), so I very much doubt it's being used for Facetime.

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