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Spotify Releases a Linux-Only Client Library
f0rk writes "Spotify, a popular music streaming service, has just recently released libspotify. An official, binary-only, only for subscribers, library to 'enable and inspire you to build some really cool stuff.' The first release only has support for x86-32 Linux, the only major platform Spotify does not run on. It looks like the Spotify team is trying to be nice to the Linux community and hope someone will use their restricted binary-only library to write a Linux client."
"Spotify, a popular music streaming service, has just recently released libspotify. An official, binary-only, only for subscribers, library to 'enable and inspire you to build some really cool stuff.' The first release only have support for x86-32 Linux, the only major platform Spotify do not run on. It looks like the Spotify team is trying to be nice to the Linux community and hope some one will use there restricted binary-only library to write a Linux client."
Wow, that are some insanely tight proofreading they're, editors.
So to run this in windows I'm gonna have to use Wine on windows? Thats just massed up
ACME Foods has requested all christian children wear their free plastic novelty devils horns and tail found in every packet of Crunchy Choco Monkies white having breakfast.
ACME Marketing Droid "what it's free!! and children love it, I cant see what everyone is complaining about"
Yup, I've never heard of Spotify and I can't imagine why I'd be interested in this. But hey, I always love it with people release "binary only" libraries. They typically provide a nice big fat header file and a .so file. Sometimes they even strip the .so file, that's what I like to call "a challenge". Today I am not sufficiently bored to reverse engineer this crap, but I'm sure someone, who knows what Spotify is and actually gives a shit, will be. How hard something is to reverse engineer is determined by three things:
1) Armoring
2) Symbols
3) Relocation information
When it comes to Linux stuff, no-one ever does armoring, so we might as well not even think about that. All the interesting symbols for this library have come from the header file.. but ELF binaries leak lots of symbols, even when you strip them, so yeah, no problem there. Finally, relocation information, makes the so called "hard problem" of reverse engineering, separating code from data, pretty easy.. and .so files require you to provide them.
So I don't know why they bother. If there's secrets you're trying to hide from developers by not giving out source code, you're just failing.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Too bad it is not available in the United States; it looks like an interesting competitor to Slacker.
Toil is Stupid. Don't be Stupid.
In making the library binary, Spotify presumably desires to "protect" the music being streamed, some aspect of their service's technology, or both.
I find this curious. In terms of "protecting" the music, the cat is already out of the bag. Even if you can't crack the binary(and we know how long those usually last) pulling the music via virtual sound device or analog hole is trivial. Further, there are already (legal, accepted) music streaming services that don't do much at all in that direction. Pandora, for instance, dumps mp3s in a known temp directory. They don't have any ID3 tags; but that is their only defect. Given that, I'd be rather surprised if Spotify is legally against the wall here.
The protection of their methods/technologies/whatever argument seems equally odd. With most of these streaming services, the major value lies in a combination of having access to all the music and having(and doing useful things with) metadata concerning all the music. All that occurs on the server side of things. To the degree that anybody pays for expertise in compression and network transmission of music, they are paying for patent licences, not implementations(since there is at least one free implementation of any major codec in common use). Any UI expertise wouldn't be protected by closed sourcing the code, and wouldn't be relevant to a library like this in any case.
I can't think of any other good reasons. Access control for the service is, obviously, server-side, only an idiot would build a "trust the client" access control mechanism. The only thing I can think of is that they, like Adobe with Flash, want to make Spotify support free as in beer on the deskop; but make people pay for it on portables and such(hence the restriction to x86). Anybody have any ideas?
(Please note: I respect Spotify's right to release or not release whatever code of theirs they want, under whatever licence they want. That is their right. I find it odd, though, that they would go to the effort of supporting Linux; but do so in a way that precludes adding that support to any of the GPLed media player software, restricts support to a single platform, and generally complicates integration into distros and so forth.)
That would be amusing if it turned out to have significant GPL components and force them to release the source.
What is spotify anyway? Anyone ever heard of it? Other than the illiterate OP did anyone care? Slow day in slashdot editor land?
E
No, it's not life-or-death, but it IS AN EDITOR'S FUCKING JOB TO NOTICE AND FIX THINGS LIKE THIS.
The first release only have support for x86-32 Linux, the only major platform Spotify do not run on.
So, they'll support what it won't run on?
Linux is a major platform? Or do they mean that 32 bit Linux is major compared to 64 bit?
I even ran it through some translation software and I still don't know what they're trying to say.
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
Why would anyone use their geo-restricted binaries when open-source Despotify is out there?
Res publica non dominetur
The application that uses this library probably can't be licensed GNU GPL right?
And then, is there a library for easy thunking from x86-64 to x86-32 under Linux? And also legally compatible?
It looks like the Spotify team is trying to be nice to the Linux community and hope some one will use there restricted binary-only library to write a Linux client.
It looks like the Spotify team is trying to be nice to the Linux community and hope some one will use there restricted binary-only library to write a Linux client.
It looks like the Spotify team is trying to be nice to the Linux community and hope some one will use there restricted binary-only library to write a Linux client.
It looks like the Spotify team is trying to be nice to the Linux community and hope some one will use there restricted binary-only library to write a Linux client.
It looks like the Spotify team is trying to be nice to the Linux community and hope some one will use there restricted binary-only library to write a Linux client.
is that you Bill ?
Do not feed the trolls.
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
I don't think so. Whoever it is is holding a chair over their head and he looks angry. ...
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
I'd rather cut off my penis with a rusty butter knife.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I would bet that the vast majority of you advocating or discussing the GPL have probably never written code that is in use by someone other than yourself if any code at all. Stop being such posers. You are great "fans" of linux and open source but would probably never lift a finger to help develop software.
If you expect people to take open source software seriously then you have to take copyright holder rights seriously and get over the illusion that the GPL somehow removes rights from the original author which it does not. No license can do that other than selling of the actual copyright to another party.
BTW. I just love how so many of you automatically assume that they must have stolen GPL code in there. Bloody hypocrites.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
This is getting bloody ridiculous. Everyone releases a piece of binary crap for 32bit linux and that's - OK, are you saying your code is so crappy you can't recompile it at least for x86_64 (which is starting to get comparable in size to the ix86 crowd). Heck, our stuff (which is about 300MB of source) got recompiled for x86_64 in 6 hours (took two-three compilations and some tweaking, the diff was less than 30k).
So, please, people that release binary stuff for Linux, etc., take a bit of time, compile for something else, or you'll start looking really bad.
I'd guess that a significant part of people in western Europe have heard about it, at least it seems to be sufficiently mainstream to get mentioned every now and then in (non-IT) newspapers. Elsewhere the answer is probably "not many", due to the geographical restrictions the service current has.
Personally, I think it's a quite nice music streaming service with a rather impressive set of available albums, even though running the client under Wine seems to occasionally crash my window manager (while it does restore the desktop pretty much immediately to the pre-crash state, it's still somewhat disconcerting).
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
It would not surprise me to see that when you mute and an advert is playing it pauses the advert, basically blocking playback until you have listened to the ad which was what their windows client did.
Or were you bugging their offices.
There's likely NO REASON not to release source. It's just that since they've gotten used to not having to, they think they are giving away their copyrights by producing source.
This is not true.
Copyright still stops you from making an unlicensed copy. It still stops you from making a derived work.
Releasing the source allows the public domain to be enriched when the copyright expires.
Which was why copyright was made.
Looked at their terms and conditions a while ago when it came up on a newsgroup I'm no longer subscribed to. Firstly, you become part of a P2P advertising network. Then they can change their T & Cs by altering their website and your continued use of their product means you've accepted their new terms. No, thankyou.
When I mentioned this on the newsgroup their answer was "But it's free". Hence why I'm no longer subscribed.
Binary only linux software? Pffft.
Sig pending!
I really don't mind the binary-only release of the API. Even though i believe that open-source is the best way to do software, i realize that Spotify is in a very sensitive position right now, and i'd rather hope for them to release the source at a later date. They are open-source advocates, and as long as they continue down that path, i'm willing to turn a blind eye.
The real issue here is the platform-restriction. I don't know if the spotify-team or the music industry is to blame for this, but the explicit ban of mobile spotify-applications is just bad marketing. Especially since the third-party applications are subscriber-only, and the spotify-team has explicitly stated that they need to maximize the number of subscribers to be successful in the long run.
Important stuff
This seems like an easy path for failure.
1. Consumer Level closed source products have never really sold well for Linux. Business/Enterprise level software is a different story.
2. Close Source Libraries cut the development of GNU software. Linux Development has a much higher level of GNU only developers. Finding good close source developers to make a client for you for Linux is a bit more difficult, especially for free.
3. Close Source Developers would probably be concerned about legal recourse if their app outsells Spotify. Or if they are going to make a Free as in Beer or Mostly Free as in speech (Open Source with links to closed source libraries) and their app is that much better then their app.
4. Linux Developers tend to really Stink at front end work. I think they would be happier if Spotify released the Front End and the Linux developers make a compatible back end.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.