JJZolx wrote: > I just can't imagine anyone willing to volunteer that much time and > energy into building such a thing without realizing some monetary > compensation. You're talking about something _way_ above and beyond the > (albeit very impressive) software efforts put forth by third party > software developers. System design, circuit board layout, prototyping... > wow. I don't see anyone doing that for grins. And it's not really > something that 100 people can pitch in on, even if they all had the > skills. There probably aren't more than one or two people remaining with > an interest in Squeezebox who actually have the ability to do the system > and circuit board design necessary to create a real replacement. > For a purely software project done on the spare time it would have to be at least 3-4 persons who all have the architecture/design skills and not just simple coding skills. It's one thing to provide a patch or edit a source code file, it's a completely different thing to architect/design a new system from a blank sheet of paper. For a hardware project I imagine that you would have to add a few additional people to handle that part, one would be a minimum but for long time survival that part would probably also require 2-4 people if it's done on the spare time. On top of this you would have to have some testers but those are easy to find around here, the challenge is just to make them to structured testing and not just random testing all over the place.
It can't be a lot more people than this because then it gets too crowded and the people who know what to do end up spending the time trying to explain to other people what to do and how to do it. It can't be less people if it's done as a spare time project because then the project will halt when the family situation changes for one of the persons and he/she no longer can spend time on the project, I have seen exactly this issue in the SMD project where we were 3 core contributors and that was enough as long as we all had enough spare time, when one disappeared everything more or less halted. If it's a full time project you can have less people but not in a spare time project which people can maximum spend 10 hours/week on. I also believe it needs to be a company behind it for it to work on longer terms, doesn't have to be an existing company, can be a new one, but there needs to be a business aspect else it will never survive on longer terms. Most people enjoy to contribute for free a few years but eventually (with a few exceptions) most are eventually going to want some kind of continuous economical compensation if they need to offer all their spare time for the project. Some are even only going to want to continue working on it long term if they can have it has their day job. I'm fairly sure there are enough people with the right skills in this community to create something new. There isn't enough remaining if you purely look at those who have done plugins/applets and third party hardware packaging, but I've realized that there are a lot of people lurking around here who have a lot of experience from their day jobs even if they have never done any spare time work related to Squeezebox to show their abilities. The question is just how to attract them to do something on their spare time and if they have the ability/willingness to work together as a team. The hardest people to find around here seems to be people with non technical skills, like graphical design and drawing, and that's also something that's definitely needed if you want to accomplish a consumer product and not just a DIY project. All this makes me think that it's not unrealistic at all that something new is going to be released from someone in this community, the question is more about when it will happen, who will be part of it and if it will be released through a company or community effort. I also know there are a companies doing products in this market segment who wants to take a part of the cake Logitech has left behind. So overall, I think the next 6-12 months might be pretty interested in the music streaming market, I just hope that Sonos doesn't get too strong so it will be too hard for someone else to establish a new platform. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=97881 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
