#239850 - 04/11/2004 07:36
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: hybrid8]
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old hand
Registered: 23/07/2003
Posts: 869
Loc: Colorado
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I'd be more than willing to pay for a V3 final. And other stuff. Let the bidding begin.  I'll start. $350 for a patch allowing Japanese tags using one of the available freeware fonts. Custom info mode is fine (ie. just artist & track, album if it can be fit). Paid by whatever means the supplier prefers. 
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Dave
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#239851 - 04/11/2004 09:32
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: webroach]
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enthusiast
Registered: 06/03/2003
Posts: 269
Loc: Wellingborough, UK
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Quote:
Let the bidding begin.
We need a mechanism first. I'd pay $100 for stable Flac and Ogg support and a further $100 for Flac and MP3 cue sheet support, but who is going to do the work? Let's concentrate on the mechanism.
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#239853 - 04/11/2004 15:02
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
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Quote:
I'm sure it's a fairly big deal to get familiar enough with the player software to become productive quickly.
A big deal, yes, but not an insurmountable one. One that would, frankly, be a lot of fun.
Besides, who said quickly? The alternative is the current speed of empeg development, which has been squeezed down to near zero over the years. Were the empeg development community able to get their hands on the source code, I'd estimate a few months of a learning curve before things could really start churning out at a nice rate. Efficiently organized, that could probably be made even less, but these types of projects are rarely efficiently organized, so we'd all probably be duplicating each others' work for awhile.
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#239854 - 04/11/2004 15:26
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: tonyc]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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Closed-source access would likely sound more appetizing to DNNA than open. With only a few people signing up for NDA access and development. A subscription-based model might also be workable for a number of empegBBS readers. I'd be into it at $50 or even $100 per year.
Bruno
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#239855 - 04/11/2004 15:35
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: tonyc]
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addict
Registered: 29/06/2002
Posts: 531
Loc: Triangle, VA
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Also, wouldnt having the empeg community working on it making it better also make their current products better? Dont they still use it on something? I would definitly be willing to pay a yearly subscription for it.
_________________________
-D
Modifying and Tweaking is a journey,
not a destination................................
MKIIa : 60gig - 040103286 - Blue - v2 + PCATS tuner
MKIIa : 20gig - 040103260 - Blue - v3a8 + Mark Lord Special Edition Cherry Dock
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#239856 - 04/11/2004 15:51
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: tonyc]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 15/01/2002
Posts: 1866
Loc: Austin
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perhaps this is the wrong place to bring this up, but why not start from scratch? we could write an alternative player app. a few key people could take on lead development roles and others could add changes. we could ask the people in blue for pointers, as they are the most familiar with the hardware. sure, nothing will happen for a few months. but, nothing is going to happen for a few months, anyway. weve got the talent in this community to do this, and i think it is entirely possible.
discuss
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#239857 - 04/11/2004 16:09
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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You guys are all forgetting something important:
Even if DNNA was willing to release their mission-critical core codebase to a select few (I suspect they're not), it would require a significant amount of work and a large chunk of support time from the people who wrote it. Releasing a piece of internal code isn't as simple as zipping up a directory and emailing it to someone.
Right now, the Cambridge guys are busy working on Rio's core business... portables. I don't think they've got the time to do that kind of thing.
I think the best we can hope for is that their new manager follows in Rob's footsteps and lets them occasionally have a "pizza night" and do bugfix passes on the carplayer 3.0 code.
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#239858 - 04/11/2004 16:21
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
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Quote:
Releasing a piece of internal code isn't as simple as zipping up a directory and emailing it to someone.
It is if you want it to be. If IBM had simply dropped us a copy of AFS as was it would have taken no longer to bootstrap than the modified copy they passed us. Most of their modifications? Stripping names of people out of comments.
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#239859 - 04/11/2004 16:25
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: Daria]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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And that was for an open-source project. None of us, I think, really think that'll happen here. We're just talking about a set of developers who would be under NDA to not reveal the code.
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Bitt Faulk
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#239860 - 04/11/2004 16:39
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: tfabris]
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enthusiast
Registered: 06/03/2003
Posts: 269
Loc: Wellingborough, UK
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Quote:
Even if DNNA was willing to release their mission-critical core codebase to a select few (I suspect they're not), it would require a significant amount of work and a large chunk of support time from the people who wrote it.
The significant amout of work would relate to putting the (software and process) systems in place to make such access possible.
I disagree with regard to support time - it is unlikely to be significantly more than now for two reasons. Firstly, anyone given access will be expected to support themselves (in fact, probably mlord is the only person likely to be admitted so if he doesn't step up to the plate this is probably a non-starter).
Secondly I suspect that the code still closed accounts for less than 50% of the total and we get on okay with the stuff that is open.
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#239861 - 04/11/2004 16:43
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: mdavey]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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I seriously doubt they don't already have a remote-access version control system in place. It oughtn't take a lot of work to insert a read-only account.
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Bitt Faulk
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#239862 - 04/11/2004 16:51
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: RobotCaleb]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2858
Loc: Atlanta, GA
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Quote:
why not start from scratch? we could write an alternative player app.
Because this would cost a LOT of money for someone to do this any way except in their spare time (see Rob's earlier post), and I doubt it could be undertaken in anyone's spare time and yield anything close to the quality and feature set we already have. And I wonder if things like wma support are even dooable from scratch (ie: do you have to have some kind of agreement with microsoft?)
All that being said, writing mp3 player software would be a heck of a lot more fun than what I'm doing now. . .
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-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.
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#239863 - 04/11/2004 17:21
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: JeffS]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 15/01/2002
Posts: 1866
Loc: Austin
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exactly. spare time, for free. lrcdb, emphatic, hijack, etc all came about because people thought it would be neat and took it upon themselves to do it. as to the other things you mentioned, its only what you make of it. the quality and feature set comes in time.
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#239864 - 04/11/2004 19:58
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: RobotCaleb]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 05/01/2001
Posts: 4903
Loc: Detroit, MI USA
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Quote:
why not start from scratch?
All of this stuff is way out of my league, but as a "user", the reason I'd not like things to start from scratch is that the empeg software is what makes the empeg so great. It'd be a shame to discard all of that. I think what most people are itching for is bug fixes, working "hacks" into the main software and an odd feature here and there. No sense in reinventing the wheel (if we have a choice).
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Brad B.
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#239865 - 04/11/2004 20:28
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: SE_Sport_Driver]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Assuming that we can't get access to the existing code, and assuming that we're unhappy with the current release schedule (two assumptions that are not necessarily true), my preference would be to create something like "openEmpeg" which would mimic the current UI, but provide source access for improvement. I'm still of the opinion that UI design is one of the hardest parts of this (not to say that the other parts aren't also hard) and that's been done for us.
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Bitt Faulk
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#239866 - 05/11/2004 00:23
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
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I think the UI is one of the *easiest* parts -- now that I've implemented Hijack from scratch (including the font, and rendering thereof). Sure, there's a lot more to the player UI, but then we have a lot more memory to play with there as well. Piece-o-cake.
But the sound part.. very very difficult. And don't even mention the visuals!
Cheers
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#239867 - 05/11/2004 00:30
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Not implementing the UI. Designing the UI. It has to be attractive and useful for in-car use. No offense, but Hijack's UI is neither.
Visuals. Good point. I forget since I don't really use them.
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Bitt Faulk
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#239868 - 05/11/2004 00:37
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
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You did say something about mimic'ing the current UI, in which case our design is already there.
cheers
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#239869 - 05/11/2004 00:39
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
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Quote:
Not implementing the UI. Designing the UI. It has to be attractive and useful for in-car use. No offense, but Hijack's UI is neither.
Visuals. Good point. I forget since I don't really use them.
Visuals are one reason that the more advanced of the open source players never made it into my daily life... but a bad one, seeing as I use "now&next" most of the time.
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#239870 - 05/11/2004 01:00
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Thus my point.
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Bitt Faulk
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#239871 - 05/11/2004 23:23
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: wfaulk]
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addict
Registered: 29/06/2002
Posts: 531
Loc: Triangle, VA
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I'm far from having a clue what it takes to write anything in linux, or windows for that matter, but one thing I have always wanted for the empeg was for the visuals to be plug-ins. That way you could create your own so you're never stuck with the same set.
_________________________
-D
Modifying and Tweaking is a journey,
not a destination................................
MKIIa : 60gig - 040103286 - Blue - v2 + PCATS tuner
MKIIa : 20gig - 040103260 - Blue - v3a8 + Mark Lord Special Edition Cherry Dock
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#239872 - 06/11/2004 01:30
Re: Let's talk money... For software.
[Re: SonicSnoop]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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I think that the entire software should be that way, so that you have plugins for visuals, codecs, UI, etc. It is significantly more difficult to do.
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Bitt Faulk
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