OML
    Open Media Library

    Founding Manifesto

    Open playback infrastructure for the video industry

    OML is a community-led initiative building a new cross-platform playback core and plugin ecosystem for video products across OTT, IPTV/telco, and broadcast.

    Our goal is to reduce fragmentation, lower integration cost, improve stability across platforms, and make vendor integrations more predictable.

    1) Vision

    We believe playback should be infrastructure - not something that every company has to reinvent.

    The video industry should be able to collaborate on a shared playback foundation and still compete where differentiation matters: product experience, content, distribution, and growth.

    2) Why this matters

    Today's playback stacks create repeated structural cost and risk:

    • organizations rebuild the same core playback capabilities again and again,
    • vendor integrations are brittle and hard to port,
    • platform differences create regressions and testing overhead,
    • changes in DRM/ads/analytics can trigger costly and risky rebuilds.

    This slows delivery, increases maintenance burden, and makes long-term platform evolution harder than it should be.

    OML exists to help reduce this repeated cost at the ecosystem level.

    3) What OML is building

    OML is an open-source, modular media framework designed to unify video playback across devices and formats through three core building blocks:

    A) Cross-platform playback core

    A new playback library with playback logic decoupled from any single platform.

    B) Plugin ecosystem

    A standardized integration model for DRM, ads, analytics, QoE, delivery optimization, and other extensions.

    C) Public API contracts and compatibility standards

    Contracts designed to let integrations evolve without forcing teams to rewrite the entire stack.

    4) Goals (practical outcomes)

    OML is designed to enable:

    • faster time-to-market,
    • more stable apps with fewer platform-specific regressions,
    • predictable vendor integrations through public contracts,
    • lower total cost of development and maintenance,
    • safer collaboration between platform teams and vendors.

    5) Who OML is for

    Engineering / Architecture teams

    Reduce duplicated playback work and integration churn.

    Product / Delivery teams

    Ship playback-related features faster across platforms with less rework.

    Platform / QA / Operations teams

    Improve predictability and reduce compatibility/testing overhead.

    Vendors (DRM / Ads / Analytics / CDN / QoE)

    Integrate against clearer contracts and reduce custom one-off integration work.

    6) Community principles

    OML is community-first:

    • open source,
    • community-driven,
    • roadmap discussed openly,
    • transparent decision-making process,
    • open to technical and non-technical contributions.

    We aim to build in the open, with public discussions, public tradeoffs, and a transparent technical history.

    7) Contribution principles

    1. No proprietary code: do not contribute code from commercial projects unless you fully own it or have the explicit right to contribute it.
    2. Clean contributions: contributors affirm they have the rights to submit their work.
    3. Transparent history: development happens publicly via issues, PRs, and reviews.
    4. Decision log: major technical decisions are documented as ADRs.
    5. No hidden dependencies: vendor integrations happen via public contracts, not private hooks.

    8) What OML is not (Non-goals)

    • OML is not "just another UI player" for quick website embedding.
    • OML is not a single-company project or a marketing asset.
    • OML is not intended to push vendors out. It aims to standardize collaboration and make integrations easier and safer.

    9) Trust foundation: OML creates NEW IP

    OML is a new work created from scratch as an open-source project.

    • OML is not a fork of any existing project.
    • OML is not a continuation or refactor of any proprietary codebase.
    • OML does not reuse proprietary components, trade secrets, or non-public IP from any company.
    • Every contribution must be original or contributed under terms the author has full rights to grant (consistent with the project license).
    If OML uses third-party open-source libraries, this will be done transparently, in compliance with their licenses, and clearly referenced as dependencies - not as transferred proprietary IP.

    This clean-foundation approach is intended to protect contributors, adopters, and vendors.

    10) Current phase (founding)

    OML is in the founding phase.

    Current priorities:

    • validate shared industry pain points,
    • align on architecture direction,
    • define initial plugin/API contract scope,
    • establish public roadmap and governance process.

    Planned public artifacts:

    • roadmap / issues,
    • ADRs (technical decision log),
    • contribution guide,
    • governance process documentation.

    Roadmap/Issues: Coming Soon
    Repo: Coming Soon

    11) Join the founding community

    We are a group of video industry practitioners - if you build or maintain video playback systems, platform integrations, or OTT/IPTV/broadcast products:

    • join the founding community,
    • share pains and priorities,
    • help shape the roadmap,
    • contribute architecture, standards, or implementation work,
    • join a working group.

    Join the founding community → Coming Soon
    Share your playback pain points → Coming Soon
    Contributor interest form → Coming Soon
    Community chat / forum → Coming Soon
    Repo → Coming Soon

    OML is building a new open playback library and plugin ecosystem for the video industry. It's created from scratch as new IP, community driven with clear contribution rules.