Can Open Source Outdo the IPod?

CHaN_316 writes "Wired is running an article entitled, "Can Open Source Outdo the IPod?" Asking the open source community to help them compete with the iPod. From the article: 'Consumer electronics manufacturer Neuros Audio is tapping the open-source community to convert its upcoming portable media player from iPod road kill into a contender [...] To get the ball rolling, Neuros recently opened up the firmware code for its Neuros 442 portable media player, which is set to launch in January [...] Neuros' hardware design is complete, comprising a Texas Instruments dual-core digital signal processor, a 3.6-inch, 65,000-color TFT display and a 40-GB hard drive for recording video from a TV or home entertainment system. But the company has left a little something -- mostly user interface tweaks -- for the volunteers.' Is this a good idea or a mere publicity stunt?"

Comments

Yes

[Phroggy]

Is this a good idea or a mere publicity stunt?

Why can't it be both?

Re:Yes

[Jonny_eh]

What you refer to, is known in the philosophical community as a False Dichotomy.

Snip:

"The logical fallacy of false dilemma, which is also known as fallacy of the excluded middle, false dichotomy, either/or dilemma or bifurcation, involves a situation in which two alternative points of view are held to be the only options, when in reality there exist one or more alternate options which have not been considered."

Dupe!

[prof_peabody]

Was reported a couple of weeks ago:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/ 19/012249&tid=100

More useful links not included in summary:

http://www.theneuros.com/index.php/Category_Roadma p:Neuros_III

Re:PR

[Valafar]

I'd say that's a pretty poor guess. Neuros has a history of "open source" with their media players. A few years ago they released the source code for their Neuros Syncronization Manager NSM. Their first generation player was pretty crappy in terms of hardware (FM transmitter didn't work right, only had a USB 1.1 (ugh!) interface) and the NSM software was kind of bunk; However they've had firm-ware updates for a while that support OGG and it's pretty interesting that a company is actually make a portable media player that they are encouraging (and supporting!) geek to hack (sounds like material for MAKE). I think that's a pretty post-modern (and refreshing) idea in a world where we're constantly assaulted with legal threats, DRM, etc.

Don't be so quick to judge something based on a partial quote from a magazine article. Besides, he's technically right about open-source projects. Taking a look at source-forge there are at least 100 projects that are dead for every one that is active, whether they were started by "kids" or not.

Anyway... Look a little closer at the project; there's some interesting stuff going on there.

Re:Translation

[Vaevictis666]

This mostly applies to the Neuros 3 (their next-gen MP3 player) than the 442 (video player).

The plan from what I know as someone waiting for the Neuros3 to come out so I can purchase it, is that they're doing in-house development on it to a fully functional point and open-sourcing it and any libraries/middleware they can contractually release.

The "community" effort they're relying on to drive further adoption is for the extensions. It doesn't ship with Ogg or FLAC support natively, but someone out there is going to add it because they know how, and then it will become a selling feature. The developers who add this kind of thing will gravitate to it because it means they *can* get a portable Ogg player if they put the effort into it.

And yet, after all of this, Neuros (the company) isn't doing anything explicit for Ogg support or whatever. They're just creating a shell and letting people tinker with it. They do apply to your first criteria (Write it themselves, and open-source it.) for the basics, and then let the community push it and see how far they want to take the hardware.