Hello,
I have just registred me (as JosephK but of course it's a pseudonym, I
don't like trials) to talk about my projects ITheora and TheoraSea (and
to learn english by practising :) ). I have seen that you already know
about them by the article about TheoraSea on SOM and the article about
ITheora on theora.org.
Maybe can I explain how I have think all of that.
The first idea was to allow anybody to host and share videos with a free
player and with free technologies so I have "skinned" Cortado but as I
thought Cortado not very fast, I prefered give the choice between
Cortado and plugins for browser (I had a very old computer and MPlayer
for Firefox was better than Java, but now it works with <video> tag too
(tested with Opera 9.50)). Instead of metavid project, ITheora needs to
work on a "server side" (php instead of javascript) for the sharing.
The second idea was to offer a place to centralize the sharing of videos
(it's the first advantage of Youtube) and as I didn't need to host
neigther the videos nor the player (I've finally done it because some
people wanted to use a player already installed), it was quite easy to
do, so I worked on Pligg.
I 've added the overview of the video with the default skin (to
normalize I ask people to not remove this skin if they want to share
video), the thumbnail (like other youtube-like) and changed RSS feeds in
podcast (work perfectly with Miro). Theorasea is now translated in
french (of course because I'm french), and in spanish with the Luis
Felipe's help (translator of SOM). All of that cost me only 50? for a
year for the hosting at OVH, so of course I won't display some
advertising area on this site. (Some people think that TS is not free
because they think I host videos and because there no mention about any
licence or "term of use", but Pligg is on GPL2, ITheora will be on
GPL3
(I didn't know if it was compatible with Cortado license, but now yes)
and all the vid?os are licensed by their owner. (I have try to explain
in the "Host a video" page but it's seem to be not enough))
The third step is the hosting, as the model of developpement is a little
bit like P2P, it's possible to add different video hosting service on to.
It can be some private individuals that use their personnal site or
thematic groupe (about free software, cooking, free culture...) or
generalist site like blip.tv. I don't do this because I can't (not
enough means :) , but I think it's not necessary).
The hosting don't implicate that you had to refer on Theorasea (we can
use the code engine of ITheora on TS or your own version of ITheora),
and user is the only owners of the video, because he is free to share or
not, to allow download or not, etc... (of course ITheora is not more
reliable than Youtube to protect of downloads)
To finnish, "Sea" is not an error of translation ("to see"),
it's an
allusion to the lot of fishes on xiph.org ;)
And "My eyes have seen you" refer to the Doors's song (from
"Strange
days"), I like this song :)