[MPlayer-dev-eng] NUT revision/release schedule!

[D Richard Felker III]

Yay, NUT's "almost done", but what does this mean? We have a job ahead
of us for finalizing the spec and promoting NUT for adoption/support
by other projects. Here are two parts of a proposal for a schedule:

[Note: all dates are open to debate, I just made rough guesses.]

Rich


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Revision schedule:

May 20 - INITIAL "permenant" spec (version=3)

June-September - Revision period

October 1 - FINAL "permenant" spec (version=?)

Afterwards - No incompatible changes!

Permenant specs are ones that must be supported by any compliant
demuxer. Only the latest permenant spec need be supported by muxers.
During the revision period, it is expected that we will make several
intermediate versions, possibly with some incompatibilities. These
versions should not be used except for development, and after the
revision period is over, the good changes will be adopted into the
FINAL spec.

Rationale: By restricting ourselves to a revision schedule, we'll
avoid rapidly releasing multiple versions of the spec which may be
incompatible, and thus avoid bloating demuxers with code to support
lots of different old versions. This in turn makes us look much more
serious/professional and encourages people to adopt NUT, since they
can feel confident in the stability of the format.

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Release schedule:

May 20 - NUT press release/announcement - send to player developers

May 21 - Release sample implementation with BSD-style license

May 22 - MPlayer 1.0pre5 with NUT demuxing and MUXING!

May 28 - Contribute NUT demuxer patch to xine

June 1 - Have support for NUT in ffdshow or separate dshow filter

Early June - Find worthwhile (and legal :) content to release in NUT
format for promotional purposes. These files should showcase the
features of NUT, particularly mixed-framerate.

June 8 - Release winamp plugin for NUT, try to get it included in
official release.

Mid June - Convince one or more groups releasing extralegal content to
try NUT for minimizing overhead. Like it or not, this is what will get
NUT adopted the most widely, including eventual support in hardware
players!

Late June - Put streaming NUT content online -- radio stations, live
audio or video content, etc. This could be done on our own, or by
convincing existing services to add NUT as an option.

Rest of summer - ???

September - Release new player arch with excellent NUT support.

October 1 - Release FINAL spec, force everyone to upgrade... ;)

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