This blog post was originally published on the Streaming Video Alliance website.
Although the Alliance has been very productive in developing best practices, specifications, and guidelines that can help make a better viewing experience at scale, it is hard to implement words and diagrams into a streaming video production workflow. With that in mind, we have established the Streaming Video Alliance LABS. This new program furthers the Alliance Working Group life cycle in which our groups move from defining an idea/challenge, developing and publishing a solution, to, now, codifying the solution in the form of reference code. By enabling our member companies to contribute resources for developing open source software based upon our published specification, which, like our publications, will be made publicly available, we are giving both member and non-member adopters a blueprint for how to implement against our technical publications. Whether that’s using Python, node.js, C# code, or some other language, LABS projects will provide clear direction on how to build working products and features that directly represent our published solutions. Additionally, adopting member companies can contribute back to the project through forking and code iterations, which may incorporate innovations or novel approaches which are based on experiences implementing and tweaking the open source code for real-world implementation and deployment.
The first LABS project will be to develop reference code for elements of the Open Caching Network: control plane, nodes, APIs, etc. The Open Caching Working Group is in the process of identifying the initial elements and should begin development shortly.
At the outset, LABS will be only open to Alliance member companies. We are currently in the throws of finalizing our governance documents, which will define who can contribute and what contribution means, but adding to the code base will strictly be for members only. Companies that are interested in contributing should consider membership in the Alliance, not only as a way to add to and improve upon what’s being built, but also as a way to shape the ideas and technical publications which the code reflects.
You can also read about the announcement of LABS in our Q3/Q4 2019 Lisbon face-to-face meeting press release.