Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

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Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

2005-02-04 02:35:20

Please excuse me if this is a stupid question or something, but I was just wondering how open the source of foobar is? The main page says:

"Most of standard components are opensourced under BSD license (source included with the SDK)"

One of my reasons for moving away from Winamp to Foobar some time ago was the refusual to continue to support a product that had lost all its developers, was lacking any drive for improvement, and ran by a corporation that could care less about it. I wanted any future media player I backed to be open, so this could no happen again.

What parts of Foobar are not open source, and what is the reason for this?

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #1 – 2005-02-04 09:08:29

The core is not open source, but you can extend the core by external components, where most of them are open source. Almost every functionality in foobar2000 is a component (you can even replace the whole GUI) and so it's very likely that foobar2000 will exist forevah

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #2 – 2005-02-04 10:35:37

Is there any reason for the core to not be open source? Any chance of it becoming open source?

Oh, and I love Mp3tag

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #3 – 2005-02-04 11:01:35

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Is there any reason for the core to not be open source? Any chance of it becoming open source?

Oh, and I love Mp3tag
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=270869"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

No it will not be open source, the reason for this is uninteresting.
Be happy with the very friendly SDK and realize that the only reason foobar2000 is as good as it is - is because it's closed source.

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #4 – 2005-02-04 17:19:03

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realize that the only reason foobar2000 is as good as it is - is because it's closed source.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=270877"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I hope this doesn't become some sort of flaming thread on open vs closed source, but can you please explain that statement. It makes no sense at all. Actually, it just sounds stupid. How would fb2k suffer from from opening the core's source?

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #5 – 2005-02-04 17:37:24

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Be happy with the very friendly SDK and realize that the only reason foobar2000 is as good as it is - is because it's closed source.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=270877"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I am very happy with foobar, it is still the best media player out there right now. I was not expressing unhappyness - I hope no one thought that.

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realize that the only reason foobar2000 is as good as it is - is because it's closed source.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=270877"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I hope this doesn't become some sort of flaming thread on open vs closed source, but can you please explain that statement. It makes no sense at all. Actually, it just sounds stupid. How would fb2k suffer from from opening the core's source?
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=270926"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I agree. I really think foobar being open source would ensure that it will be around for a very long time. I also dont see how it could suffer from being open source. If Peter didnt want people making contributions and wanted to still maintain the core build, he could - but just release the source as well. I would like to here Peter's reason for staying closed.

Again, please dont interpret this as unhappyness with foobar.

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #6 – 2005-02-04 17:38:33

1) Although code is often a nice example, I tend to learn more from my own mistakes than I do from ripping apart someone else's program.
2) Opening the source and saying "here you go, do whatever you want" is quite different from an open invitation for core developers to join a team. There is no collaboration from free-for-all.
3) There is enough information in the SDK for a capable developer to replicate the player's core functionality. Surprisingly, nobody has done so yet. Perhaps it is because there is a severe shortage of capable programmers who would actually want to reimplement the core.

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #7 – 2005-02-04 18:07:37

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3) There is enough information in the SDK for a capable developer to replicate the player's core functionality. Surprisingly, nobody has done so yet. Perhaps it is because there is a severe shortage of capable programmers who would actually want to reimplement the core.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=270931"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I think that's why some people would get some sort of comfort seeing the code be available. If something happens which leads to an end of fb2k's development, there's no assurance that someone will write a clone of the core. There's more of a chance of the project surviving if the code is out in the open and can be continued by someone else.

I really don't care about closed/open source, though. I like quality freeware applications, so I'm content with foobar.

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #8 – 2005-02-04 18:09:06

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3) There is enough information in the SDK for a capable developer to replicate the player's core functionality. Surprisingly, nobody has done so yet. Perhaps it is because there is a severe shortage of capable programmers who would actually want to reimplement the core.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=270931"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Or that it's just so good that there is no need to do so.

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #9 – 2005-02-04 20:30:01

Many of the people who want it to be open source actually just want it to run on their platform. I believe a good alternative if it may not be open source is to provide binaries for Mac OS X and most flavors of Linux.

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #10 – 2005-02-04 21:36:10

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I think that's why some people would get some sort of comfort seeing the code be available. If something happens which leads to an end of fb2k's development, there's no assurance that someone will write a clone of the core. There's more of a chance of the project surviving if the code is out in the open and can be continued by someone else.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=270939"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Bacon I guess is the only person who understands what I am saying Its not that I want to run it on another platform, or even use the source myself. I am merely interested in the survival of the project. I wonder this about all the small closed source programs I use. What if the author were to lose all copies of his code? What if he were simply to give up without notice? What if he died? Personally, I would want something I created to live on, and have a longetivity of its own.

Plus, who knows, maybe someone would code something that blows are mind with it.

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3) There is enough information in the SDK for a capable developer to replicate the player's core functionality. Surprisingly, nobody has done so yet. Perhaps it is because there is a severe shortage of capable programmers who would actually want to reimplement the core.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=270931"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I guess Ill have to take comfort in this, although I still dont see a valid reason for the core to remain closed.

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #11 – 2005-02-04 21:59:56

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What if the author were to lose all copies of his code?

Unlikely.

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What if he were simply to give up without notice?

Ditto.

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What if he died?

Okay, you're starting to sound crazy.

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Personally, I would want something I created to live on, and have a longetivity of its own.

I trust Peter's judgement in this matter.

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Plus, who knows, maybe someone would code something that blows are mind with it.

Also unlikely. Hmm, I sense a fork with the Winamp input wrapper linked into the core...

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3) There is enough information in the SDK for a capable developer to replicate the player's core functionality. Surprisingly, nobody has done so yet. Perhaps it is because there is a severe shortage of capable programmers who would actually want to reimplement the core.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=270931"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I guess Ill have to take comfort in this, although I still dont see a valid reason for the core to remain closed.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=270975"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Because Peter says so. I had to remind an open source software zealot in another forum of this fine point. His software, his rules. If he wants total control over the core, it is his choice. If you don't like that, you're welcome to write your own player and share your code with every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a pirated copy of Visual Studio. Or you can sufficiently hammer the code and make it all work with GCC, in which case, you'll have a player that will only work with components compiled with GCC. Whew, run-on.

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #12 – 2005-02-04 22:01:40

I don't see why making the whole program open source would cause a "free for all". There are thousands of open source projects that say otherwise. If you don't like someone's contribution, don't add it to the official source

In fact, it could in reality change nothing for most users. Most users would just wait until the next official Win32 build to download anything like usual. The SDK would still have purpose as a standard base for other developers making components to remain compatable with whatever version of the core, and the core could still be worked on the same people who work on it now.

Only beneficial things can come of it, imo. Unless of course there is something I'm missing, which is possible

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Because Peter says so. ...

well why didn't you say so in the first place instead of being cryptic and giving silly reasons...

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #13 – 2005-02-04 22:02:58

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I still dont see a valid reason for the core to remain closed.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=270975"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Just some possible reasons for keeping it closed, that comes to mind:
1) To avoid fubared versions of foobar2000.
2) To my (limited) knowledge, there isn't alot of issues with the core. Hence the core itself might not benefit alot from letting "the whole world" have a look at it.
3) There is enough confusion concerning components already. Adding confusion about foobar2000 itself (version/branch/mod), wouldn't really be a good thing, IMHO.
4) The core seems to be in capable hands.

I understand what you mean, but I just don't think it comes for free, that's all.

Question On The "openness" Of Foobar

Reply #14 – 2005-02-04 22:25:35

The SDK is there to allow people to add whatever features they want. If there is something they can't add with what the SDK provides, then either it requires changes breaking component compatibility (which only I could do even if the source was open), or person trying to implement the feature is doing something seriously wrong (happens very often).

With a few remarkable exceptions (foo_ui_columns is one of them), I'm generally disappointed with what third party developers do with the SDK. Quite surprising that no one has even made a stable and fully functional skinned UI replacement by now. Even some of popular components made by people I know (*cough* foo_shuffle) are broken to the point where I have to consider reimplementing them myself just to resolve crashes people report. I don't see how sourcecode release would help with that. Additionally, multiple branches would introduce even more mess, since even now people new to foobar2000 download a lot of third-party components only to get stability issues along with not-really-important features.

As for porting to different OSes, sourcecode release won't magically spawn people capable of doing that properly. Somehow no one has written fully functional foobar2000 clone yet.

Sourcecode loss argument is not really valid, I keep backups on multiple redundant devices. I'd be surprised if someone who spent as much time on programming as I have wouldn't know well enough how to handle this.

Uninteresting.

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