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Georges Auberger: Songbird Singing A New Tune
Georges Auberger reports
that the Songbird media player is dropping Linux support. "After
careful consideration, we've come to the painful conclusion that we should
discontinue support for the Linux version of Songbird. Some of you may
wonder how a company with deep roots in Open Source could drop Linux and we
want you to know it isn't without heartache. We have a small engineering
team here at Songbird, and, more than ever, must stay very focused on a
narrow set of priorities. Trying to deliver a raft of new features around
all media types, and across a growing list of devices, we had to make some
tough choices." An untested and unsupported version of Songbird for
Linux will still be available for developers.
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Georges Auberger: Songbird Singing A New Tune Posted Apr 5, 2010 19:56 UTC (Mon) by lImbus (guest, #58664) [Link]
After reading the linked blogpost, I do understand why they decided to concentrate on lesser targets/operating systems, but I fail to understand why they dropped linux.
Is this because their mission is to kill iTunes (noble cause) like Firefox killed Internet Explorer ?
Had this been published on the first of april, I would've bet a considerable amount of my manhood this to be a april's fool joke.
Georges Auberger: Songbird Singing A New Tune Posted Apr 5, 2010 20:09 UTC (Mon) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
Silent spring?
Georges Auberger: Songbird Singing A New Tune Posted Apr 5, 2010 20:19 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] It sounds like Linux support won't be removed from the code. However, the maintenance will be relegated to the outside community. Doing the same to e.g. Windows support would be harder, as most Windows users don't even have a compiler.
Georges Auberger: Songbird Singing A New Tune Posted Apr 5, 2010 21:31 UTC (Mon) by fdr (subscriber, #57064) [Link]
I guess the only question then is if they'll accept portability-patches
upstream, or if they'll shut out patches that impose any engineering risk on the windows platform of any size.
Given their history and reluctance of dropping support, I would think
Georges Auberger: Songbird Singing A New Tune Posted Apr 6, 2010 1:05 UTC (Tue) by PaulWay (✭ supporter ✭, #45600) [Link]
This is sad for me because I have been running Songbird on one of my machines in the hope of customising its interface for my own purposes. For this specific application I need a display window that has the time and track information very large, and the playlist and catalogue only taking a small amount of screen space. I don't need the album cover, lyrics, or other things that every other media player out there seems to think is mandatory. Finding a media player whose interface is customisable at all has been hard; Songbird is the only one that seems to even offer support for basic skins or themes.
Of course, this announcement doesn't mean that I have to stop using Songbird; and I will be working on the theme I want. But it does mean that development and help will be less available - tell other people that you use Linux and they'll already start turning away.
We go on,
Paul
Georges Auberger: Songbird Singing A New Tune Posted Apr 6, 2010 4:39 UTC (Tue) by klevin (subscriber, #36526) [Link]
Meh. I have the same complaint about Songbird as most other recent attempts at a media player: to bulky, they just get in my way.
Georges Auberger: Songbird Singing A New Tune Posted Apr 6, 2010 15:43 UTC (Tue) by cry_regarder (subscriber, #50545) [Link]
Songbird has always been problematic for free software. They've insisted for several years that a click-through EULA be in the software. Here's an article from '07:
http://unethicalblogger.com/posts/r_tyler_ballance/songbi...
My understanding is that (among other things) the fedora package review was blocked on legal because of the EULA also.
Cry
Georges Auberger: Songbird Singing A New Tune Posted Apr 6, 2010 16:44 UTC (Tue) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] Sounds like the inevitable fork may even turn out to be a better piece of software.
Probably I don't understand what Songbird is Posted Apr 6, 2010 23:11 UTC (Tue) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link]
Isn't it a audio (or media) player? Don't we have a lot of them already under Linux? E.g. I'm very happy with Quodlibet, but used Rhythmbox and Exaile before. Why should I use Songbird?
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