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Comment by someonehere | Hacker News Reader

You want half assed? FaceTime when it was announced by Steve Jobs, he himself up on stage said it would be open source. The developers in the front rows looked at each other and said, “did we say it would be open sourced?”

It’s still not open sourced to this day.

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You are correct that the idea to make it open source was a spur of the moment that took the developers by surprise. But the reason why it never happens can be spelled VirnetX

> VirnetX has been described as being a patent troll, accused of marketing no actual products or services and instead earning its revenue through licensing patents

I'm so glad we have the patent system around to promote innovation and protect creators!

> Steve Jobs, he himself up on stage said it would be open source

This seems to be the quote you are referring to:

“FaceTime video calling. Now, FaceTime is based on a lot of open standards — H.264 video, AAC audio, and a bunch of alphabet soup acronyms — and, we’re gonna take it all the way. We’re going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we’re gonna make FaceTime an open industry standard.”

Note Jobs promised open industry standard and not open source. They are not the same thing. But you are correct that we are still waiting for Jobs' promised open standard!

This CNET article also misconstrues "open industry standard" as "open source" and also blames VirnetX:

https://www.cnet.com/news/steve-jobs-promised-to-make-faceti...

TBF he said it would be an open protocol, not open-source. That being said, obviously Apple still never followed through...

Apparently it's some variant of SIP. I'm surprised that it's been a decade and no one has RE'd it all and written an open-source client (or have they all been threatened by lawyers...?)

http://blog.krisk.org/2013/09/apples-new-facetime-sip-perspe...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1509717

You want half assed?

Not Apple's fault. See other replies in this thread that it was killed by a patent troll.

Why would Apple be afraid of patent trolls? If they wanted to release it as an open-specification, they could.

Why do you think Apple is immune to patent lawsuits? They have frequently had to settle them.

That's the problem. They cannot because one of the technologies they're using is covered by an existing patent that doesn't allow them to open it up. They would have to re-engineer how the whole system works to make it different enough to not be applicable to that patent.

To be clear, the patent in question is reaaaaaaally generic so there's really nothing they can do to get around it while still keeping a video-calling system that allows people to call with an Apple ID.

It would obviously be useless if they released the spec for it but you couldn't use it to connect to existing FaceTime devices.

A very lame excuse.

Apple is already on the hook for about a billion dollars to VirnetX. That's not a lame excuse at all.

VirnetX Market cap: 356.004M

Apple could offer every shareholder ten times the market value and end the problem.

What makes you think they would sell when it is more profitable to milk their patents?

It is.

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