Friday, June 27, 2008

Miro hopes to be Firefox of Internet video players

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

Want your Internet TV? A Worcester nonprofit wants to give you a free video player.

The Participatory Culture Foundation, an Internet activist group focused on keeping the Internet a free and open resource, has set its sights on Internet video and is working on the second version of its free, open source online-video player, called Miro.

The idea, according to co-founder and executive director Nicholas Reville, is to set Internet video free from proprietary players, and carriers and other companies that may put turning a profit ahead of creative and viewing freedom.

“The approach of the for-profits is to control the user and make money, and we don’t think media on the Internet should be that way,” said Reville, 29, a Worcester native and Brown University graduate.

The first version of the player, which went into beta-testing last year and was commercially launched in December, has been downloaded about 2 million times, according to Reville. Officials expect to reach more than 5 million downloads this year.

As the group ramps up to launch its second version of the player in August, Reville and his 10-person staff are operating more like a business than a nonprofit. “To get our point across, we need to develop the best product, so the day to day of what we do is similar to what for-profits do,” he said.

Miro, an open source platform that allows users to access its software code, operates as an online video operating system in the way that Apple Inc.’s iTunes works as a music platform. The video application offers more than 2,500 channels and is expanding with every revision, said Reville.

Building a product for consumer use under a nonprofit umbrella is not unheard of — The Mozilla Foundation is the best known through its free web browser application Firefox — and insiders expect more in the future.

“The challenge and the benefit of open source is that it forces groups to look at new models for doing business,” said Carl Stjernfeldt, a general partner at Waltham-based VC firm Castile Ventures and an investor in internet video company PermissionTV Inc. in Waltham and open source mobile application developer Funambol Inc. in California.

The PCF takes donations from users and a handful of investors, including Mozilla and Mitch Kapor, chairman of Second Life’s Linden Lab Inc. and founder of Lotus Development Corp.

While there are other Internet TV applications on the market, such as Joost, developed by Joost NV of Luxembourg, there is room for an open-source alternative, according to industry insiders. Whether it can reach the adoption rate of Firefox, which has been downloaded more than 500 million times, remains to be seen.

“An open source player absolutely has a place in the Internet TV space, but is it going to be the biggest? Probably not,” said Stjernfeldt.