Components

• audio codecs
• video codecs
• streaming format and protocol

Small is beautiful.

• Keep it small.
• Keep it simple.

Learning from MPEG mistakes.

• Publish standards and documentation freely on the internet.
• Restrict medias to natural video and audio.
• Don't include two differents codecs for the same task (such as AAC and TVQ), chosse the best one (AAC).
• Don't emphasize on hardware implementation of a whole part. Specialized chips are just good for thing like FTT, but not complete stream decoding.
• Keep it integer, avoid use of double and float. Think to ARM.

Learning from Quicktime mistakes.

• Be developer friendly.
• Reply when questions are asked to the mailing list.
• Produce and update small amounts of documentation but good ones.
• Provide samples.
• Have a clean api.
• Avoid all the frontend and display stuff.
• Restrict to natural video and audio.
• Too much to say.

Learning from Real mistakes.

• Free and open: The development, formats and algorithms must be free and open to benefit from all the advantages of free (as in speech) software development.