------------------------------------------------------------------------ A poll associated with this post was created, to vote and see the results, please visit http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=73698 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Question: Is third party plugins/applets important for your Squeezebox purchases ? - I won't buy any more Squeezebox products unless support for third party development is prioritized - I won't buy any more Squeezebox products unless the third party plugins I rely on is supported - I use third party plugins but I would still consider buying more Squeezebox products without them - I don't use third party plugins so they aren't important to my Squeezebox purchases ------------------------------------------------------------------------
danco;504105 Wrote: > > Could we have a brief summary, erland? And why aren't you maintaining > your plugins? > All I like to do is improve the Squeezebox platform and music listening experience for the users, it's just a bit frustrating that the biggest obstacle in the way is Logitech itself. However, this thread is not about why I stopped maintaining my plugins, it's about how important it is to you to be able to continue using third party plugins, anyway, here is the short version from my perspective: I'm just tired of: - Enhancements regarding APIs(programming interfaces) being postponed to the future, even though patches sometimes has been supplied - Not being able to discuss anything with the Logitech developers that is more advanced than very simple questions, they don't have the time to answer anything besides simple questions. - Having no clue of what Logitech plans to do in the next release, when implementing a new feature in a plugin I have no clue if Logitech plans to solve that problem in the next release making my work unecessary. - The SqueezePlay source code being licensed so it doesn't allow you to redistribute modified version, which for example makes it very hard to make a customized version of the Now Playing screen on Controller/Touch/Radio. I also know that other developers has complained of: - Changes in APIs(programming interfaces) without any notice and information that they have been changed, in the best case you find these changes when testing. - Almost no documentation on a large part of the APIs (programming interfaces), the code is basically the documentation. danco;504105 Wrote: > > As I understood it, the SBS architecture (and SB itself) had changed > considerably recently. That means that developers do need to learn > different programming methods. That obviously takes time, but the > software is still open source. > Learning new programming languages is the fun part, so that's definitely not the problem, at least not for me. As mentioned above the source code of the new players is available so you can read it but you are not allowed to modify it and redistribute the changes. danco;504105 Wrote: > > Did Logitech previously have a staff member part of whose job was > communicating with third-party developers? If not, then unless Logitech > move to a closed structure, third-party development shouldn't be > affected. > As far as I know they've never had a dedicated staff member to support third party developers. This is something that the developer responsible of each part of the code has been unofficially responsible to handle. The problem during the last 2-3 years is that the priority has changed, now any enhancement that improve possibilities to write third party plugins seems to be low priority. Also as Michael says, I don't think there has been any decision to stop supporting third party development, it's just that Logitech has decided to focus differently which in the end IMHO will result in less or no third party developers. danco;504105 Wrote: > > On a different but related point, does anyone know if an incompatible > plugin can stop connection of an SB to the SBS? I would have expected > that connection would be fine, but the plugin would just not load. I ask > because this possibility is the only one I can think of that explains > why I had troubles with my SB Radio in the past. > Sounds like a topic for a separate thread. -- erland Erland Isaksson 'My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info) (Install my plugins through Extension Downloader) (Developer of 'TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse, Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library, Title Switcher and Database Query plugins' (http://wiki.erland.isaksson.info/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=73698 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
