

Microsoft, Google, others Co-Author Real-Time Communications Specification - AshleysBrain
http://msopentech.com/blog/2014/08/19/microsoft-google-hookflash-others-co-author-real-time-communications-specification/

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dmahugh
You can find discussion of various aspects of ORTC's design on the public
mailing list archive for the ORTC community group here:
[http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-
ortc/](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ortc/). In addition to using
JavaScript rather than a legacy format to configure the real-time protocols,
ORTC addresses some useful real-world scenarios such as mixing and matching
data connections.

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walterbell
Is this interoperable with WebRTC nodes, or is it a fork?

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McGlockenshire
It's my understanding that ORTC was originally proposed by Microsoft as an
alternative to WebRTC.

I've never been able to track down what MS thinks was actually wrong enough
with WebRTC that required an alternate proposal.

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walterbell
Found some background at [http://ortc.org/History/](http://ortc.org/History/)
& [http://blog.webrtc.is/2013/03/06/sdp-the-webrtc-boat-
anchor/](http://blog.webrtc.is/2013/03/06/sdp-the-webrtc-boat-anchor/)

"My issues with SDP can be summarized as:

\- unneeded – much too high level an API

\- arcane format – legacy and problematic

\- offer/answer

\- incompatibilities

\- lack of API contact

\- doesn’t truly solve goal of interoperability with legacy systems (eg. SIP)"

from

 _" the Chief Architect at Hookflash and author of the new P2P protocol, Open
Peer. I used to be the CTO/ Chief Scientist at Xten, now CounterPath, and I’m
the original author of the X-Lite/X-PRO/eyeBeam SIP softphone clients. "_

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tommoor
As someone that has spent the last 18months building on WebRTC I can agree
with all of Microsofts points - particularly offer/answer state machine which
is hugely problematic.

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higherpurpose
If they went through the trouble of overhauling WebRTC, did they at least add
better end-to-end security to it?

~~~
sthustfo
It is basically WebRTC, but without SDP and Offer/Answer mechanism.

