Urakawa Joint Project Charter

Editor: George Kerscher,Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium
Last revised: 31 July 2005, GK
Status: public draft 1

Abstract

To advance worldwide open, non-proprietary standards for multimedia that are fully accessible to persons with disabilities, the DAISY Consortium, INRIA, CWI, and NRCD will engage in development of a multimedia authoring software framework that includes an object oriented abstract data model, an Application Programming Interface (API), a code library, and at least one sample application.

The project is expected to span two to three years, with the first delivered sample application within the first year. The work product will be open source, royalty free, and available under licensing terms that will encourage commercial and non-commercial companies to build on the API and code library.

Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) and the DAISY/NISO Standard, also based on SMIL, are the primary specifications targeted within the application domain. The founding members will welcome additional organizations to contribute to the work, and will seek outside funding to extend and enhance the work product.

Background

SMIL version 1.0 became a recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1999. The founding members of this project have been involved with the implementation of SMIL and related multimedia applications. SMIL 2.1 has recently become a W3C recommendation, and work has started on the next release of SMIL.

In other application domains, the availability of a so-called Software Development Kit (SDK) (a domain-specific framework including a code library and its associated API documentation) is known to be the best way to reduce development time and costs, to increase stability and quality of the product, and thereby support proliferation of applications in that domain. Examples of this process are the Document Object Model) (DOM) and the Simple API for XML (SAX) APIs/SDKs developed to support the XML specification.

Currently, each company or organization that develops a SMIL production or presentation application must develop its own data model from scratch. Sometimes these data models can be reused from one SMIL generation to the next, but all too often, the core data model changes and this requires that the application be re engineered. The four founding members of this project have vast experience in the development of multimedia applications. By using that combined knowledge base, we believe that we can create a comprehensive authoring software framework that includes an object oriented abstract data model, an API, and a code library that is robust and can carry us well into the future.

Executive Summary

Purpose

The world needs a better way to create high quality multimedia authoring software. This project will create a software development framework that anybody can use to build multimedia authoring applications. The framework includes an object oriented abstract data model, an Application Program Interface (API) for that data model, and a code library (a "processor implementation") that implements the data model and the API. This framework can then be used to create production tools, authoring environments, and possibly even playback applications, intelligent reading systems, and any other type of multimedia application needed.

High-level Deliverables

• One Object Oriented Abstract data model for a SMIL Next Generation (NG) & DAISY/NISO Z39.86 implementation (final nomenclature TBD)
• One API specification for the object oriented abstract data model
• One implementation of the data model and the API (equaling a directly useable code library for multimedia data processing)
• One basic application built using the framework
  Note: This basic application is expected to be further extended and developers will be able to use this code and the framework to build other applications.

Standards

The founders of this project place emphasis on the commitment to support open non-proprietary standards. The W3C has created SMIL and is working on requirements for the next generation of SMIL. We will work to ensure that the framework supports implementations of current and future SMIL recommendations.

Importance

Cost and time have prevented companies and organizations from building robust multimedia applications that are fully accessible to persons with disabilities. Advancing developments in the implementation of specifications and standards have also not been implemented, because of the lack of robust software. This project provides a wonderful opportunity to bring together key players who can serve to accelerate multimedia development worldwide. Eventually this framework will lead to a broad range of multimedia software to select from.

Founding Partners

In May 2005, the following organizations met in Tokyo for three days and then moved to Urakawa for an additional two days of meetings. More than 30 representatives participated in the discussions that lead to this joint project. the organizations are:

National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities Research Institute (NRCD)

The primary contact at NRCD for this project is: Hiroshi Kawamura, Director, Department of Social Rehabilitation

Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA)

in English: The French National Institute for Research in Conputer Science and Control (INRIA, even in English)

and in English: INRIA Web site

The primary contact at INRIA for this project is: Vincent Quint.

Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI )

Dutch National Research Center for Mathematics and Computer Science. (CWI)

The primary contact from CWI for this project is: Dr. Dick Bulterman, Head, Convergent Media Infrastructures.

DAISY Consortium

The primary contact from the DAISY Consortium for this project is: George Kerscher, Secretary General

Broader participation

Many other organizations and companies will want to know about this project. We intend to make a broad announcement and expect that a few companies will want to directly contribute at the earliest stages. However, we expect that at the application level many, many more companies will want to participate. The project is structured to accept only a few more people in the object oriented abstract data model , and the API and code library development groups, but at the application level contributions are almost limitless. It is at the application level where we expect to see great growth.

Intellectual Property (IP) and Royalty

This work will use the same IP policy as the W3C. All work products will be available royalty free (RF) and use a licensing approach that will encourage reuse of this software in other products that are either commercial, or freely available. While the exact licensing terms have not yet been established, the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a base from which we will start.

Strategic/political issues

• Jointly, we have the resources to start the project immediately.
• The prestige of the founding members ensures that the multimedia community will take notice of the work.
• What we collectively learn can be fed into the requirements for SMIL (NG), and to advancing DAISY Consortium work.
• This monumental and potentially society changing project should be attractive for additional funding from outside sources.

Organization, Process, Work Teams, and Management

The process of development will be iterative, meaning that there will be multiple passes or cycles. Each iteration will add sophistication to the work product. We have taken this approach, because the iterative process has proven itself to be an effective approach in mainstream software development. This has the added benefit of delivering functioning applications fairly quickly with frequent revisions.

The work is separated into discrete categories. This allows us to create separate work groups with members who have talents optimized for that work. Each work group will have a group lead, who is responsible for the organization, reporting, and the final deliverables of their group.

Management and Reporting

The core management of the project is based on close cooperation between the work group leaders and the Management Group. The Project Manager (PM), a member of the Management Group, is charged with collecting periodic reports from the group leaders and providing clear written reports on the progress of the project. The high level view of the various working groups will be the responsibility of the PM. The PM is not responsible for the management of each group; that is the responsibility of the group leaders. The Management Group will make the high-level decisions needed by the work groups and will be responsible to provide the resources needed by the work groups.

Budget/financial Summary

Each participating organization, either the four founding organizations, or organizations that join over time, are responsible for their own budgets. There is no over arching budget associated with the Urakawa project. However each organization makes a commitment to provide resources from their organization. It is the responsibility of each organization to maintain their own budget and to find the resources to continue the development.

Funding sources to continue and expand the scope of work will need to be identified. Each organization is free to identify and approach sources of funding for this monumental and perhaps society changing work.

Contributions Summary

The four founding members have funding available to begin development. Each organization has committed the following Full Time Equivalent FTE), with the expectation of providing additional resources to be committed in the future:

Note:Face-to-face meetings will normally be hosted by one of the organizations. Each person attending is expected to have their own organization cover their own travel and accommodations, etc.

References

In addition to the four founding members referenced above, these links are of interest:

• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
• W3C Document Object Model (DOM)
• Synchronized Multimedia Home Page (SMIL)
• DAISY/NISO Standard
• Simple API for XML (SAX)
• W3C Patent Policy
• Lesser General Public License - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)