MrSinatra;174599 Wrote: > first of all, i'm sure the GPL would prevent me from selling it even if > i developed it. > I'm not a GPL expert but I think it probably would be possible to do this as a separate thing from slimserver, the result would be that you wouldn't have to license it as GPL.
>From my perspective there is a number of ways to do it: 1. A device driver connecting to slimserver, using the already existing CLI interface to add and play the currently played track on your PC. 2. A device driver implementing SlimProto and connecting directly towards the SqueezeBox. In both situations you don't have to mix your code with any GPL licensed code, so you shouldn't have a problem with the GPL license. Note! I'm not sure my understanding of GPL is completely correct, so you might want to check with someone that knows it better before you start. Regarding a device driver you should note that there are a number of problems you need to solve. 1. You probably want some of your PC sound to go through the PC speakers and some other sounds to go through the SqueezeBox. So the software you are using on the PC probably would have to support some way of selecting output device. 2. The SqueezeBox is a networked device, networks sometimes sends data fast and sometimes not. SqueezeBox solves this by buffering all sound before its played. This works since slimserver knows the next thing that is going to be played so it can send it in advance to the SqueezeBox, that wouldn't be the case with a device driver. The result you probably be bad sound quality. I guess the SqueezeBox could buffer the data by it self, but you probably don't want a delay of 15 seconds from the time you press play until the music starts. Another issue with the buffering is that you probably expect the sound to be in sync with the visualization stuff in the player of your choice, due to the network and buffering this will probably be hard to accomplish. If you are not a developer yourself, I'm sure there are many developers that would be interested in helping you if you just payed them for their work. As an example you might want to look at http://www.rentacoder.com or similar sites. MrSinatra;174599 Wrote: > > secondly, it would be very difficult to sell as a 3rd party item. > > its like selling 3rd party chips for a car or xbox... if the car > maker, or xbox itself offerred it, they would be far more successful.All > those companies selling iPod accessories sure have a hard time selling their stuff, don't they ? If a device driver solution were available, I'm sure it would be possible to get an agreement with SlimDevices/Logitech to announce it somewhere here. MrSinatra;174692 Wrote: > anyone care to bet if the next product that the slim/logitech team does > has a device driver app? I'm not into betting, but I think there is a lot of other things that are more important than a device driver. I would be dissapointed if SlimDevices/LogiTech choosed to write a device driver as the next thing instead of focusing on improving the current SlimServer/SqueezeBox architecture. If a device driver could be written by a 3rd party developer on the other hand that would be good, then you would get what you want and I would still get the benefit of improvements in the current architecture by SlimDevices/Logitech. As I see it this is one of the strenghts with the open source solution with available protocol specifications. SlimDevices/Logitech can focus on the core and 3rd party developers can focus and the add-ons and bells and whistles. What I'm a bit tired of is people that just complain on the current solution and aren't willing to help improving it themself or paying for someone else to do it. I still appreciate that people are announcing what things they like to be improved, because thats a matter of getting feedback, but when they just repeat the same thing over and over again it is starting to get a bit annoying. You should be aware of that although many parts of SlimServer has been written by SlimDevices there are also a lot of contributors who have spent their free time without any salary contributing to it in one way or another. Some contribute by writing code, others contribute by helping to find bugs or beta testing the stuff. -- erland Erland Isaksson 'My homepage' (http://erland.homeip.net) 'My download page' (http://erland.homeip.net/download) (Developer of TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse, Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library and RandomPlayList plugins) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=31324 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
