Slashdot Mirror
iCommune Retools Itself as Standalone Open Source App
Doctor Beavis writes "As noted previously, Apple ordered developer James Speth to return his iTunes software developer kit and to stop distributing the iCommune plug-in for iTunes. Today, CNET has a story with further details and developments. Speth said that he will honor Apple's request to stop distributing his software, but he will build the same features into a standalone application. The next version of iCommune will work with iTunes and potentially other digital music players and will use Rendezvous, Apple's implementation of a protocol for automatic discovery of network-connected devices. Speth also said that the new version will be Open Source under the GPL."
The iCommune page says it will not depend on any Apple proprietary interfaces or libraries, and it mentions CPAN. So does this mean it will be in Perl and usable with any kind of Unix?
but as we have leared with AIM, SMB, and plenty of other proprietary protocols, or even proprietary implementations of open protocols (think M$)... what happens when the protocol provider changes the rules?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Apple took a bunch of BSD code and other Open Source utilities and added a few layers on top and called it a genuine Apple product. They are now making millions of dollars a year.
Some little programmer comes along and tries to share music with fellow Apple users, and Apple sends their suit-clad lawyers after him, threatening to ruin him and take all he's got.
Hey Apple, do you only embrace Open Source when it involves your developers stealing code from other projects?
Ten bucks says Apple releases their own P2P audio sharing utility in like 2 weeks using this guy's old code.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Anybody working on one? If we can find a good way to add support to GNUstep, I bet we could port this app fairly easily. (If it's a Cocoa app, natch.)
I know because I used to hang work with his ex-roommate and hung out with them occasionally. He was always working on easy ways to share music over HTTP. I find it funny that they took away his developer kit, he probably gets it comped to him since he is an Apple employee. Hell of a nice guy and a great programmer to boot.
Dan Shahin
Hijinx Comics
The World's Greatest Comic Book Store!
to mail me, first remove the evil spam.
Yup, just started one a week or two ago, and just got it working today for the first time... still a long ways to go, but the code is designed to be super-simplistic C and embeddable into any OS app. You can check it out and the progress from my site or live view of the raw code.
I hope to have it start getting polished up in the next week, with some demo apps and utilities, make a project site for it, etc. Just jabber/email me at jer@jabber.org if your interested.
Originally, Apple demonstrated a version of iTunes that had the ability provided by iCommune built-in, and Jobs promised it around the January timeframe. If Apple is still planning to include that functionality in iTunes 3.1/4.0, then this may actually simply have been to keep them from having to deal with a mix of iCommune and iTunes advertising the same services and a bunch of confused users about why sharing halfway-worked, but not completely. On the other hand, if they've quit this, then I agree with you entirely.
why does he get an article for this.
the guy violates terms of agreement to iTools, is ordered to back off, decides to push his code into stand-alone functionality and gets more coverage as it seems he was "forced" to do this ?
what the hell does he get such coverage for? the app he made while cool is hardly worth all this attention. The app he's creating to be independant of iTools is no more special, and he is only doing what he was supposed to in the first place, write an app that doesnt violate the Terms Of Agreement he signed, and make it work as best as he can.
Of course the real issue is everyone wants to make apple look like the bad guy that forced this developer to rework his entire code base, and to withdraw an existing product from the market place only because apple legal had a hard-on for him. Come on, he was promoting illicit use of apple's freely distributed product. And he was specificly asked NOT to do that. He doesnt deserve all this undo attention.
--Enter The Sig--
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
I agree. I'm a big Mac fan and like to read Apple news, but this is hardly front page information. There is an Apple section for things like this. The front page Apple news ought to be the things that are interesting to people beyond the Mac community. I have to think that this news isn't even a big deal to most Mac users, themselves.
Oh well.