Hm I'd consider this re-inventing the wheel, and a damn good wheel. Catching up to the monumental development that's gone into the Empeg player seems silly, because the player is going to get better as time goes on. My prediction is that any attempts towards an open player would get to a certain point, and then the Empeg software comes out with the plugin architecture, WMA support (forget open source on that one!) etc. At that point, developers would run out of ideas for USEFUL new features to implement.

See, one of the problems of collaborative open source development is that it's prety much random as to what features get implemented. All sorts of "special interest" features would be put in. The Empeg team has customers to answer to (sort of) and therefore is very judicious as to what gets implemented and when. This more structured development cycle is good for a car stereo, which you do NOT want bugs in.

I think it's an interesting idea, but I personally would shy away from running any open source player when there's a great player on it already. And I'm usually a guy who LOVES beta stuff. Just not when it comes to the music in my car.

My $0.02 (with interest)

-Tony
MkII #554