MythTV Links Up with Program Guide Provider

Neil Campbell writes "As a long-time MythTV user, I found this announcement to be quite a surprise. A company by the name of TechnoVera has partnered with the founders of MythTV on an interesting project: A pay service for electronic program guide information rivaling that of Microsoft's Media Center. No more Zap2It surveys to continue using their free albeit basic service. The most important part of this is the fact that revenues from the service will be used to fund Open Source development; most notably MythTV. Registered Users will even have the opportunity to vote on feature enhancements that they would like to be incorporated into MythTV. I'm sure there will be some initial trepidation from the Linux community, but overall I think this should be considered progress. More attention and money for MythTV will result in a better product."

Comments

The java trap all over?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for good solutions for people willing to pay, but how will this affect the free (both meanings) solutions available?

I'm non-US, and right now we have a working, albeit not perfect, xmltv solution for getting listings. If the mythtv developers profit by forcing/coercing people to use the commercial service, what will keep them from removing or making the xmltv support unusable?

This is very similar to "the java trap" where free/open source software get dependencies to commercial/proprietary solutions and become unusable on a completely free system.

I'm a great fan of mythtv and all the work the developers have done, I just hope it continues to be a wonderful free alternative.