Dear all,
I had recently some contacts with Eric at the MIT, and indirectly with
others at the Media Lab, to investigate the possibility to join our
efforts for the development of a strong open-source SA community.
The proposal has been discussed on both sides and we reached an
agreement on the draft you find in attachment.
The were many reasons *on my side* for that initiative, the most important
are:
- my project ThreeDSPACE is not a fully SA project, it aims at other goals
too, and proprietary; in near future it will move into spaces far from the
real
computer music and above all far from open source initiatives and common
platforms; so our intention here at the EPFL was to save all the work done so
far in this field and promote collaboration in an open-source context to bring
on the SAINT initiative.
- the activity on SA is spreading exponentially, in both universities and
industrial research centers; I think it is very important to have a visible
and expert group of people taking care of the discussion *on the MPEG
standard*, to help people in understanding standardization issues and
degrees of freedom (thing that is sometimes not clear in a world like
computer music, so far very tied to pure research).
- I liked so much the idea of bringing some of the good aspects (or so
I see them) of the MPEG activity into this research world; everything is
open for those who want to work, but everything is under precise control
and the activity is coordinated: less waste of resources, less redundancy
in work, but full acceptance of really better or different solutions.
- I also liked the other idea to attract other not strictly computer music
labs (like mine) and companies to further increase SA acceptance and usage
in the widest possible range of applications. For that a similar e-mail
will soon
be sent also to the MPEG-4 Audio reflector.
Eric can perhaps complete with other points on his side.
The general rules that you find in attachment still need a final and
"official" editing, this means that they still have some degrees of
freedom and possible enhancement in them. If some of you are interested
in this activity or have any comment or suggestion on this text,
please don't hesitate to e-mail on this reflector or privately to Eric
and me. We will be happy to see other people interested from the
very beginning (that will be anyway before Xmas, I believe).
I really hope that this e-mail will not cause any resentment in the
saol-dev community; this initiative is not intended to harm or to
discourage anybody, just the contrary. It seems to me that the written
points are clear enough on that.
I look forward to seeing comments and reactions (and interested parties :-))
Best regards,
Giorgio
__________________________________________________________________
Giorgio ZOIA
Integrated Systems Laboratory - DE/LSI - ELB 135
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)
Ecublens, CH-1015 Lausanne
SWITZERLAND
Phone: +41 21 693 69 79
Fax: +41 21 693 46 63
E-mail: Giorgio.Zoia@epfl.ch
Web page: http://lsiwww.epfl.ch/people/giorgio/giorgio.html
__________________________________________________________________
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