Jeff Coffler wrote:
> Not intending to put a value judgement on the "pay
for a better
> SlimServer" issue, but:
>
> From: "Mark Lanctot" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>> I have even less money than coding skills right
>> now, but this doesn't feel right to me.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> Maybe I shouldn't expect things to be free
>> forever, but for some of us a Squeezebox is a
>> large investment and pumping more money into it on
>> an ongoing basis is not very appealing. I don't
>> mind paying for players when/if I require them as
>> they are worth it though.
>
> The other way of looking at this:
>
> Name any other product (or any product at all,
really) that offers
> unlimited software upgrades (and new features from
time to time, etc)
> for the life of the product, where the life of the
product is
> essentially "unlimited". I'm failing to come up
with anything.
Perhaps it's that the Squeezebox is such an
unusual product in that the hardware is intensely
dependent on the software.
For regular consumer products, product updates and
bugfixes ARE free. Think of router firmware, for
example. No one charges for that. But on the
other hand, these aren't updated forever (a few
years at most), and few new features are added,
with new features being added to the next piece of
hardware and often finalized before release.
Slim's current policies seem similar. The SLIMP3
and Squeezebox1 are still supported, but the only
firmware changes coming will be bugfixes. The
hardware has essentially reached its limit and new
features are only being added to the newer hardware.
The closed firmware and open-source software form
a well-defined demarcation point for Slim.
The software is a grey area as new features can be
added to it which are quite usable with older
hardware, so it's kind of a mixed case. It's also
a special case here as software changes can
*radically* alter player performance and
functionality, more so than almost any other
device you can think of.
>
> That said: if Slim Devices were to do what most
other companies do,
> they'd charge for new major versions of their
software. Doing this
> would change the cost structure a lot, and likely
fund a number of
> engineers hired by Slim Devices. It might also kill
the non-Slim
> contributors to the SlimServer (unsure).
>
It is a tricky change. Slim could squash a lot of
bugs quickly this way but they may have to abandon
the open-source concept which would stifle or halt
3rd party development and may alienate users.
Open source can co-exist with a financial
structure, mostly in the form of donations at this
point.
I'm fortunate in that there are a few bugs that
affect me and none of them are "show stoppers".
But there's an absolutely massive bug list for
SlimServer right now. It's being well managed but
it must be incredibly hard to handle it and it's
far more work than Slim can handle. Some of the
enhancement requests seem frivolous - no offence
to anybody. However they are equally as important
to the people that created them as the ones I
created or voted on, and they were intended to
help everyone out by making the Squeezebox even
more useful and functional.
--
___________________________________
Mark Lanctot
___________________________________
__________________________________________________________
Find your next car at http://autos.yahoo.ca
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