History of Open Mash
The idea of forming the Open Mash consortium was originated by Larry Rowe and Steve McCanne to overcome the problem that there is no public domain, portable toolkit for doing research on distributed collaboration and streaming media applications. Many excellent systems have been developed by researchers over the years (e.g., the DAVE System developed by R. Mines, the SCOOT System developed by E. Craighill, The VueStation System developed by D. Tenenbaum, the Continuous Media Toolkit (CMT) developed by L. Rowe, and the Mash Toolkit developed by S. McCanne) but after 3-4 years the projects typically dissipate as it becomes harder and harder to fund the software-engineering required to produce a viable software package.

Several attempts have been made to create multimedia system libraries and middleware (e.g., the IMA, ITU, ISO, DAVIC, and other standards organizations have attempted to define a standard), but they have all failed for one reason or another. The most successful systems are those being developed by commercial organizations to support applications on specific platforms (e.g., the Active Movie/Direct Show System for Windows computers, the Quicktime System for Macintosh and Windows computers, the Real Networks G2 System, and the Java Media Framework being developed by Sun).

The problem with these systems is that:

1. they are not portable,
2. source code is unavailable, or
3. they do not support IETF protocols.

Some vendors are attempting to resolve these problems, but as a practical matter the research community needs a public domain supported system for experimentation. Too often the applications being explored in the research community require features and capabilities that are less important in the commercial marketplace (e.g., N-way communication, high-bandwidth media streams, etc.).

The Mash Toolkit was based on a collection of tools developed by the Internet Mbone research community for experimentation with distributed collaboration (e.g., sdr, nv, vic, vat, wb, mtrace, etc.). Steve McCanne along with his students developed the original abstractions using a split system architecture. A split system architecture uses a conventional systems programming language for the high-performance routines (C/C++) and a scripting language for combining these routines into applications and interacting with the user (Tcl/Tk/Otcl). Similar technology was used to construct CMT, VuStation, and the network simulator ns. A significant advantage of starting with the Mash Toolkit is that a research community already exists that uses the Mbone tools and software and the system has considerable support for multicast applications services (e.g., the announce/listen protocol, scalable reliable multicast, the scalable naming and announcement protocol, etc.).

A proposal was written to NSF to fund work on a continuous media middleware consortium in March 1999. The proposal was funded by NSF in the summer of 1999, and the openmash.org domain was registered in August, 1994.

Who Can Participate
The consortium is open to anyone who wants to participate. You can get involved in the Open Mash Consortium in two ways. First, your company or organization can support the consortium financially. Or second, you can develop software and contribute it to the consortium or assist with the website. For further information contact Larry Rowe who is the executive director of the consortium.