Telefonica has launched into a project to build its own open set top middleware, based on the Frog Source software from French pay TV player Wyplay – a venture which could spell bad news for vendors within the operator’s existing set top ecosystem. Frog Source provides the code which 200 set top software components are built on, and this effectively provides operators with a cheaper alternative to proprietary software – by allowing them to create their own products and drive down costs, as long as they have their own software engineers to put the system together. Source is just one quarter of the full Frog offering, contributing to removing the need for any design involvement from hardware manufacturers or chipset…