amcluesent;181733 Wrote: > Not wanting to start a flame war here, but seriously is the current open > source approach to developing Slimserver viable? > > Is it time for Logitech to fork the build, so that the community can > take the GPL version for U*nix and there is a closed source Win32 > binary for the man-in-the-street?This has nothing to do with open source. > Logitech can already today choose to fork the build and make a Win32 binary, but I can't see any reason why the Win32 binary can't be open sourced.
One reason to choose the closed source path is if you want to make sure no competitor can use your work. SlimServer is already adapted for specific use with the SqueezeBox/Transporter and the SlimProto protocol used. This makes the source code almost unusable for any competitor which wants to use SlimServer with their own hardware. Another reason to choose the closed source path is if you want to earn money on the software, SlimDevices has so far been focused on earning the money on the hardware. When moving to the massmarket it might be a good idea to focus a bit more on the software, but as long as SqueezeBox/Transporter is delivered with SlimServer and there is no alternative software I can't see any benefit of going the closed source path. Any new SlimServer replacement which costs money must also be a lot better than the current SlimServer since users always can choose to run the open sourced SlimServer version instead. So you would get a huge development cost to develop something new and it would take some time before you can start earn money on it since a similar open sourced version exist. In my personal opinion it is a lot better to focus these efforts on the hardware or the current open sourced version. SlimServer must be good enough so it isn't a reason for people to choose other hardware, but it doesn't have to be the best software out there. There are two major complaints to SlimServer today, some people have problem to get it to work and other people complains about the usability of the web interface. These issues needs to be solved by Logitech, but as I see it both these issues will be a lot easier to solve in the current architecture compared to writing a Win32 replacement of SlimServer. -- 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' (http://wiki.erland.homeip.net/index.php/Category:SlimServer)) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=32904 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
