Well, they are claiming that by years end they will have an open source client, server, and encoder. Its supposed to support all available major streaming formats, and run on winblows, mac and *nix. What this means to end users is that they can download one client that will cover all straming media types, as opposed to winblows media player which can't play real or quicktime. Being open source will also likely make it advance more quickly than WMT, and be far more stable, and resistant to viruses (not like Realplayer isn't already). People will simply have no reason to use WM player anymore, exacpt for the fact that it is bundled with the OS they use. And there's even a snowballs chance in hell that the result of the current anti-trust case will eliminate such bundling. It will also completely release content providers from dependance on M$'s WMT. Oh, I think this will hurt M$.
V
