By ITU News

The ITU-T Software Tool Library for speech and audio coding has been introduced to GitHub to open access to the library’s development.

Find the library at https://github.com/openitu/STL.

The ITU-T Software Tool Library has developed over more than 20 years of ITU standardization work on speech and audio coding. The tools are applicable to narrowband telephony as well as wideband and super-wideband applications, incorporating contributions from ITU and academia, as well as ETSI, 3GPP and 3GPP2.

The library offers modular, portable software routines for speech and audio coding and related testing. It is expected that future work may expand the library to include algorithms for image and video coding.

“The library’s move to GitHub is a natural one for a project that has always operated on open-source principles,” said Ludovic Malfait, representative of Dolby Labs to ITU-T Study Group 12. “There are a number of open issues that we look forward to solving with the wider open-source community.”

The use of the library’s content is guided by a modified General Public License, which does not permit the use of the code in products. Developments of the code follow ‘copyleft’ principles, returning new and improved code to the community.

“The practice of including software as a normative component of ITU standards was inspired in large part by the value the ITU-T Software Tool Library,” said Simão Campos, Counsellor of ITU-T Study Group 16 and original curator of the ITU-T Software Tool Library. “The library’s move to GitHub will put more minds to the task of developing the library, encouraging a mutually beneficial expansion of collaboration amongst standardization, research and open-source communities.”

The ITU-T Software Tool Library evolved in conjunction with the speech coding work of ITU-T Study Group 16 (Multimedia). It is today used primarily by experts participating in ITU work on speech quality assessment in ITU-T Study Group 12 (Performance, QoS and QoE), in addition assisting the work other standards bodies as well as academic and research institutes engaged in the development of speech compression algorithms.

ITU-T Study Group 12 will monitor and contribute to the library’s development on GitHub as well as lead the associated maintenance of the relevant ITU standards, Recommendations ITU-T G.191 and G.192.

The ITU-T Software Tool Library’s entrance to GitHub contributes to ITU’s response to WTSA Resolution 90, a call from ITU members for accelerated investigation into modes of collaboration between standardization and open-source communities.

For more information on the ITU-T Software Tool Library, contact the ITU-T Study Group 12 secretariat at tsbsg12@itu.int.