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Topic: What motivates Peter Pawlowski? (Read 4168 times) previous topic - next topic
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What motivates Peter Pawlowski?

foobar2000 is a very useful piece of software with a strong reputation. What puzzles me is why Peter developed it and continues to develop it.

It's free to download and use so he makes no financial gains from it. There's no obvious donation system.

Based on his blog, Peter develops 5 other pieces of software. None are as well known or used as foobar2000. He doesn't seem to be using foobar2000 to build a personal brand to then sell other products.

It's closed source so he doesn't seem to be to be motivated by altruism. Peter is someone who does use the open source model in his irc client, Monochrome.

The only conclusion I can make is that foobar2000 currently contains (or in the future will contain) code beneficial to Peter to have running on as many computers as possible. foobar2000k is yet to be implicated as malware but that doesn't mean it isn't or wont be in the future.

I mean no offence by this post. I'd like to know what people think. If it reaches Peter I'd be very interested to know his response.

Finally, thank you for reading the whole post (those that did).

Re: What motivates Peter Pawlowski?

Reply #1 –
There is no open source because I do not think open sourcing it would be beneficial to everyone - it would create a chaos of forks. If I'm unable to continue the project or find someone to take over, all of foobar2000 will be opensourced.

About running 'beneficial' code - for your information, I used to get cool offers for bundling adware about once a week, they were all ignored.

In some ways, it can be considered 'beneficial' for me that thousands of people run foobar2000 - it is an excellent test field for code that I later reuse in commercial projects that I work on (I co-develop dBpoweramp apps these days).

I used to run Google Ads on the site, but it became a whack-a-mole with malware links / fake download buttons. What's worse, I was making actual money from the bad ads, as the income clearly went down as I blocked them. I'd rather spend my time on something more productive than this, hence the move to dBpoweramp ads.

Significant parts of my code - specifically, things that you may find useful in your own projects - are open source. Latest foobar2000 SDK contains libPPUI with complete implementation of various widgets, playlist view code, etc. License permits free reuse with no credit.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

Re: What motivates Peter Pawlowski?

Reply #2 –
Thank you for replying. I tried not to be inflammatory in my post but I think I could have been more balanced in the "The only conclusion I can make" part - I'm sorry for that.

It's interesting to understand your work with dBpoweramp and how having the freeware of foobar2000 disseminated might act as a test bench.

I'm no open source zealot. Certainly, malware could be written and released/bundled under an open source model in a big app.

Thank you for making foobar2000.

Re: What motivates Peter Pawlowski?

Reply #3 –
Heya,
this is great to hear!
Quote from: Peter on
If I'm unable to continue the project or find someone to take over, all of foobar2000 will be opensourced.

One thought re:
Quote from: hexradnor on
There's no obvious donation system.
I, and probably many others too, wanted to donate in the past, as I have been using foobar for a long time, and would not want to miss it. For that, and as an appreciation of the work being done here and offered for free - in these times of all sorts of donations systems (patreon for continuous, and I've made good experiences with https://payhip.com/ for one-off donations that are easy to set up) - I can only encourage this step, to offer a (more obvious) donation system too ;)
But no worries if no interest / too much hassle / paying fees to odd middlemen is off putting... it was just a thought as I see/saw requests for how to donate pop up occasionally when I check the forums here.

All the bestest.
c.

Re: What motivates Peter Pawlowski?

Reply #4 –
... and the main reason why I do this is-

I need a music player and since 2002 I do not tolerate players that I did not make myself.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

Re: What motivates Peter Pawlowski?

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Peter on
About running 'beneficial' code - for your information, I used to get cool offers for bundling adware about once a week, they were all ignored.
THANKS GOD FOR THAT!!!