Sorry, didn't spot this thread until now, guess it's time for some official answer. I'm not going to start a long discussion about it, I'm just going to post some comments, even though most of them have already been answered by other people earlier in the thread.
1. Setting and viewing ratings for a single song through TrackStat is still free, can't promise it will be free forever but currently it is, it's just browsing the ratings and importing them from from iTunes, MusicIP and similar systems that costs money. Of course, it's pretty useless to set/view ratings unless you can browse them and use them in smart playlists, but I just wanted to say that some functionality in TrackStat still is available for free. 2. The old versions of the plugin which doesn't require licensing is still available for manual download from my download site. I can't promise they will be there forever but they are available at the moment. 3. Anyone is free to modify the source code, it's still open source (GPL) and you are free to modify it, redistribute it and even charge for it if you like to. 4. Nobody would be happier than me if someone, Logitech or third party, volunteered to maintain, support and offer my plugins for free or even for a more competitive fee than I'm offering. The following enhancement request is one of the most wanted and Logitech have obviously completely ignored it during all the time I've been around, I guess they don't feel it's important: http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=142 Anyone that things ratings should be part of the core system should at least vote on this enhancement request to indicate to Logitech that it's important. I've asked for help to maintain the plugins, I've even offered Logitech to spend my spare time to adjust them to be incorporated in the core product, for free, but there have never been any interest for this from Logitech's side. Just to show what I'm talking about, here are some really old threads from the past: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=24309 http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=28543 As you can see, there really wasn't much interest from Logitech representatives, even back in 2006 when their management really cared for the products. 5. The price for a one year license to TrackStat is $5. At least in Sweden $5 is about the same as ONE burger meal on my favorite fast food restaurant and personally I consider TrackStat usage for one year to be worth more than one extra burger meal per year, but that's just me. To anyone that still continue to think $5 is too much, consider what you would have earned during one extra hour on your day work instead of spending the time arguing in this thread, I bet most people would have earned more than the price of a one year license to TrackStat. 6. I'm really not doing this for money, it's just that it's really hard to justify spending 5-10 hours per week 5-6 years in a row, continuously 365 days per year, without getting some kind of compensation for the time. It was easier earlier when you got invited to Logitech hardware betas and Logitech showed some appreciation to the third party developers that spent time enhancing their system and making Logitech earn more money on it, but this isn't the case anymore, at least not for me. Logitech has very clearly showed during the last years that supporting third party development on the Squeezebox platform isn't a priority, I know Michael and Andy still care for us and I appreciate all their efforts a lot, but they don't have the power to do much and their managers don't have a clue what third party developers have done and can do for the Squeezebox hardware in the past and in the future. 7. The alternative for me would have been to drop support and maintenance of the plugins completely. If anyone would prefer that, just let me know, I'm happy to consider it if it's the general opinion. The main (and only) reason I selected to use the current approach was that I was running out of spare time and it started to feel like work instead of spare time, with the current approach I'm able to work a few hours less on my day job and instead get some spare time which I can use to develop new features in existing plugins and develop completely new revolutionary plugins related to Squeezebox usage. I'm really sorry if this all makes some people upset, but really, I'm not stopping anyone from taking over my work, you even get the current source code for free as a base, just take over the maintenance, spend a few hours per week continuously to support/maintain it and give it away for free or for a charge to other users if you feel that's something you like to do. I'll not try to stop anyone that really wants to do this, I would really encourage and even help anyone that is interested to do this, because my vision is that I could spend the main part of my spare time to focus on the future, which I believe is the SMD project. Finally, most importantly, I would like to send a lot of appreciation to anyone that have showed the appreciation for my work either in this thread or in other places or by donating or purchasing licenses, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for all your nice words and encouragement in the past. Now, let's focus the time on making the Squeezebox continue being the best music listening system also in the future. -- erland Erland Isaksson ('My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info)) (Developer of 'many plugins/applets (both free and commercial)' (http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/User:Erland). If my answer helped you and you like to encourage future presence on this forum and/or third party plugin/applet development, 'donations are always appreciated' (http://erland.isaksson.info/donate)) Interested in music discovery ? See 'Social Music Discovery (SMD)' (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?p=656713) project. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=90975 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
