eschurr wrote: > my main concern is: who will support LMS? lately my LMS scans aren't > picking up iTunes playlists, and it may be because of iTunes 11. Who's > going to keep LMS alive and well? > My crystal ball tells me that the following will happen (sometime in the not too distant future): 1. Some critical problem occurs that makes LMS more or less useless for a lot of users 2. One of the following will happen: - Logitech steps up and shows that they really meant what they said when they said they are still supporting Squeezebox users, fixes the problem and makes us all happy. or - Someone in the community creates a community version of LMS and fixes the problem. or - Another company provides a solution with similar functionality as Squeezeboxes and we all switch to that.
Personally, I feel that the last alternative is most likely on longer terms, but I'm not convinced it will come from Sonos as some people seems to think. It's important to realize that to get the Squeezebox experience, you really need a solution where many different parties can contribute, if it's a closed solution 100% handled and controlled by a single company like Sonos and similar, their business strategy is going to ensure that features which aren't important to 80% of the users will be dropped. With a more open solution, you create an opportunity for smaller companies or individual developers to contribute to your platform and provide the bells and whistles which you don't want to spend resources on providing yourself. The solution doesn't have to be open source or free for this to occur, but it does have to be open to third parties to enhance the platform with new features. Just think about what iPhone/iPad would be without any third party apps, what LMS/Squeezebox would be without any third party applets/plugins or third party contributed code. Many core features in LMS was initially started as work by third party developers which Slim Devices later decided to include in the core product. eschurr wrote: > > i'm heartbroken over the news about Logitech not supporting the SB > anymore (i can't find anything official about that on their website). > I think this is the official information that exists: http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Squeezebox-Players/Logitech-UE-Smart-Radio/td-p/884530 http://blog.logitech.com/2012/09/28/an-open-letter-to-squeezebox-fans/ Both indicate that Logitech plans to continue supporting Squeezebox users for the foreseeable future, there is no official indication that they are planning to stop supporting Squeezeboxes. However, I think we all realize that Logitech is into this to earn money, so since they aren't selling anymore Squeezeboxes they will probably try to spend as little resources as possible to fix bugs specific to the Squeezebox unless it's really critical bugs. We might get some bug corrections for free since the UE Music Library server in many places is the same software as Logitech Media Server, but in most cases I suspect LMS is only going to get the critical bug fixes. The bugs that are going to be considered to be critical is probably those that will cause most head aches for the official Logitech support team, so if we report and complain to them through the official support channels when things doesn't work, it likely increase the chance of them spending resources on fixing it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96191 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
