audiomuze wrote: > The way I see it those looking for online media consumption/ streaming > devices will and should begin looking to alternatives (please lets not > debate that in this thread - anyone wishing to explore this topic please > do so in a separate thread) > I agree, we should handle this in separate threads, I just want to say to people to not panic, when a good product disappears it usually appears something else after a while that will fill the gap.
audiomuze wrote: > > The purpose of this thread then is to tease out what needs to happen and > how best to make that happen. Hopefully those with the technical > knowledge of some of the innards will respond where the answer isn't > obvious. Please feel free to add additional questions that you may feel > need to be answered in a quest to ensure continued viability of the > ecosystem sans Logitech. > Before answering the specifics I like to say that as far as I can see at the moment there isn't any immediate urgency, on long term something needs to be done but we can take the time and analyze it a bit instead of panic. audiomuze wrote: > > - determine and archive online downloadable copies of the last known > good versions of LMS to preserve a means of having a fully funtional > Squeezebox as we know it > - first point above should cover all platforms for which there is a > build available, including the source code version. This could serve as > the basis for an open source fork, in effect a community maintained and > enhanced LMS > - obtain copies of say last 3 firmware releases for each of the devices > > To anyone with some spare disk space, mirroring the content of the following is probably a good start: - http://downloads.slimdevices.com/ - http://update.slimdevices.com/update/firmware/ The source code of both LMS and the open parts of the firmware is hosted on github: https://github.com/logitech As I've understood it's not possible to recompile a working version of the Touch/Radio firmware based on this source as the binary firmware builds also contains some closed source parts which isn't available to the public, I think it was related to some driver and the communication with some online streaming providers. In reality, it's not legally possible for anybody except for Logitech to make the LMS nor firmware binaries available for download, you can obviously do it but you would violate the license and take the risk of being sued by Logitech and/or its partners. However, keeping a local backup for yourself is of course ok as long as you don't re-distribute it. audiomuze wrote: > > - ascertain how to remove all dependencies on mysqueezebox.com - to my > knowledge it is only the Touch that requires this on initial > registration - can it be worked around/ removed? This is key as we want > to ensure that the devices have no external dependencies > It's possible to load firmware from a USB stick on the Touch and I think there was some kind of swipe action or holding left arrow that could get you past the mysqueezebox.com registration without registering. There are other dependencies to mysqueezebox.com also in the Touch, for example artwork rescaling when playing some online content, but those are probably not a main concern for people using local music. Since Logitech seems to plan to continue maintaining mysqueezebox.com I don't think this point need any urgent actions for the Touch. I'm more worried about the Radio which don't have the USB stick possibility, but I suspect it's possible to get past the mysqueezebox.com registration screen also on a Radio. However, generally, if it's possible to get past the mysqueezebox registration screen you can later activate ssh or install Patch Installer applet and then you are free to do whatever you want. Squeezebox Classic/Boom/Transporter/Receiver all load their firmware via the local LMS, so for these there aren't any issue to load the firmware you like and they don't force mysqueezebox.com registration. As mentioned above it's not possible for a third party to publish patched firmware from a legal perspective as it would violate the licenses. So the easy solution is to make the factory reset process a bit more complex by doing it in steps: - Factory reset and load the firmware you want - Skip the mysqueezebox.com registration - Patch the necessary parts through ssh or by using a patch provided by Patch Installer applet audiomuze wrote: > > - 3rd party applets and plugins - a whole host of these come to mind and > methods need to be devices to store and access these in future (Erland's > plugin suite, Spicefly , Triode's EDO etc. come to mind) > Here you should be more worried about the individual third party developers than the Logitech infrastructure. The plugins are hosted by each developer, it's just the repository file that's hosted by Logitech, the repository files is not going to be any issue as both me and Triode have it in our local development machines and it is based on repository files hosted by each individual developer so they can always be re-generated. It's also possible to enter a specific repository url in the LMS Settings/Plugins tab and in this case Logitech's servers won't be involved at all. Regarding the individual developers, I can't answer for everybody else but you don't have to worry about me, I don't plan to go anywhere else anytime soon and it's extremely unlikely that I would shutdown my web server which hosts the plugins without uploading them to some other server. Still, if you want a backup of my plugins you will find ALL versions since the initial release 2006 at http://erland.isaksson.info/download If you like to find where the binary for a specific plugin is hosted, you can generally find the hosting server through the repository XML files: http://mysqueezebox.com/public/plugins/repository.xml http://mysqueezebox.com/public/plugins/other.xml audiomuze wrote: > > - preserve the knowledge encapsulated in this forum and in the Wiki's - > can they be replicated, how would they be hosted, could they be cut down > to a focused Wiki dealing with the specific nuances of each devices e.g. > how to hardware reset a TP, SB3, Touch etc. > The forum is also exposed through mailing lists and due to this it's already replicated to gmane.org, for example: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.equipment.slimdevices.general The the information is already secured, it's just that it's a bit harder to search and find what you are looking for at gmane.org than through this vBulletin forum. I've searched a bit before regarding possibilities to mirror vBulletin forum but everything I've seen requires access to the backend database. Hosting a vBulleting forum would be possible, but it costs a bit of money for the one that wants to make it available, both in license to vBulletin but also through hosting costs if we want to keep the same amount of users in the community. Who knows, maybe Logitech would even be willing to discuss letting some third party take over the hosting of the forum when they eventually don't want to host it themselves and thus automatically keep the content. If it would be possible to even acquire the domain name for that third party it would probably be possible to cover the hosting/license costs by adding some advertisements as the Google rating on forums.slimdevices.com generally seems to be pretty high. Since mediawiki which is used for the wiki is open source there is probably a bigger chance that there is mirroring tools available for it, but I haven't looked into this so far so I don't know for sure. If you don't need history of pages it will always be possible to setup a new mediawiki site and manually copy page by page, if a few community users do this it wouldn't take that much time. There are free hosting providers for mediawiki solutions, so the hosting would probably not be an issue. audiomuze wrote: > > - maintaining a community of interest: viable? Only viable if there is > ongoing development or forking of LMS > In my opinion this is probably the most important part, mirroring information to some other place is very easy compared to gather a new community with people with similar knowledge/experience as this one. The people are worth a lot more than the information itself, the information can always be recreated, it's a lot harder to find people with similar experience/knowledge as the current community members. It's also important to remember that it's only part of the knowledge that's specific to the Squeezebox, a lot of the knowledge is usable and very valuable also on other music streaming hardware platforms. This is also the main reason why I don't want people to panic, please stay around and see how this evolves before jumping over to a closed/limited platform in panic already now. I can't say anything more regarding this at this time other than asking people to have some patience and don't switch to alternative hardware/communities in panic. I personally think it's unlikely that Logitech will shutdown the forum/community anytime soon, but I can of course not guarantee it, they have done some crazy things before that didn't make much sense. Except for what you already mentioned, it might also be worth to consider if it's possible to secure the contents in the bugzilla database. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96208 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
