Dear mentors, I have already posted this earlier but since I haven't yet found a sponsor for my package, I'll give it another try since I think that this software will proof very useful for a lot of users.
qhimdtransfer is part of the software developed by a couple of people around me within the linux-minidisc project [1]. The project was started in summer 2008 with the eager goal to provide a free and complete implementation of a NetMD/HiMD transfer software (see [2] and [3]) on Linux. This was necessary since the audio data on both (Net-)MD and Hi-MD cannot be accessed by standard means (i.e. mass storage) but over special (encrypted) protocols (NetMD) or a proprietary, encrypted container format on a VFAT volume (Hi-MD). The MiniDisc format was very popular in the 90ies due to it's robustness, high recording quality and ease of use. With the arise of flash-bashed MP3s players and also due to it's proprietary method of transferring the audio data to and from the MiniDisc, many people turned their back to the MiniDisc. Despite that, there are still a lot of loyal MiniDisc users out there which would like to use their equipment with free operating systems like Linux. Thus, there have been a lot of more or less successful attempts to reverse engineer Sony's proprietary software SonicStage [4] in the past which made some advances but never achieved the goal of actually transfering audio from or to the MiniDisc. Thanks to the efforts of some very talented and restless hackers within our project, we have been able to achieve this goal, luckily. With our software, it is possible to use almost all features by the hardware which includes audio data uploads (transfer from the device to the PC) on NetMD and Hi-MD devices and with audio data downloads on both NetMD and Hi-MD (transfer to the device) being work-in-progress with the important task already been taken of having reverse engineered and understood the original software, SonicStage, for that matter. As I already explained before, the original software uses encryption for the transfers (NetMD) and the storage (Hi-MD) of the audio data, there is the potential risk of infringing any intellectual property or patents of Sony and affiliated companies. We haven't therefore published all code in our public git repository but only the parts which we think is safe for distribution. In practice, this means that the current official version can be used with a limited number of NetMD and Hi-MD devices only. However, I'm already in contact with Sony's Open Source department [5] in order to negotiate about an official permission from Sony to distribute all information and code necessary to make fully use of all NetMD and Hi-MD devices. A Sony employee has assured me that he will help to get in contact with the right person. Despite the limited functionality of our official version, we still think that this software will be a great contribution to the Debian project as provides the unique functionality of Hi-MD transfers on Linux. An Ubuntu PPA with packages for jaunty, karmic, lucid and maverick is also available for testing and is updated peridically [6]. * Package name : qhimdtransfer Version : 0.0.1-1 Upstream Author : Thomas Arp, Michael Karcher, Adrian Glaubitz and many others * URL : https://wiki.physik.fu-berlin.de/linux-minidisc * License : GPLv2 Section : sound It builds these binary packages: qhimdtransfer - Transfer software for HiMD Walkman The upload would fix these bugs: 571647 The package can be found on mentors.debian.net: - URL: http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/q/qhimdtransfer - Source repository: deb-src http://mentors.debian.net/debian unstable main contrib non-free - dget http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/q/qhimdtransfer/qhimdtransfer_0.0.1-1.dsc Best Regards, Adrian Glaubitz [1] https://wiki.physik.fu-berlin.de/linux-minidisc [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetMD [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-MD [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SonicStage [5] http://products.sel.sony.com/opensource/ [6] https://launchpad.net/~glaubitz/+archive/linux-minidisc -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
