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Spotify Releases a Linux-Only Client Library

Posted by timothy on from the you-and-you-and-definitely-not-you dept.

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."

7 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder why... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.)

  2. Time to run 'strings' and look for GPL by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That would be amusing if it turned out to have significant GPL components and force them to release the source.

    1. Re:Time to run 'strings' and look for GPL by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 2, Interesting

      But it is a requirement to stop violating the GPL. I was rather hoping they'd turn out to be in serious violation, just to serve them right for this "we'll let you do the open work, and benefit from it, but keep our guts closed". NVidia does this with OpenGL in their drivers, and it really bothers me. And Spotify could conceivably be using their own code from scratch, or more likely be working from a BSD licensed original code base: I'm not saying they need be in violation of anything. It would simply be fun, and ironic, and help force them to play the open source or free software game properly, if it turned out they were in GPL violation. This "we'll just publish a binary blob" thing is too common.

      The FSF likes the GPL for powerful, historical reasons: it prevents the tragedy of the commons that happened with UNIX some time ago, and look at what's been created successfully and protected from proprietization of various sorts with it. The FSF likes it because it _works_, as effective legal akido using the proprietary secret software's creator's own rules against them.

  3. Despotify by lixee · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why would anyone use their geo-restricted binaries when open-source Despotify is out there?

    --
    Res publica non dominetur
    1. Re:Despotify by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Mod parent up.

      Spotify and Despotify have had lots of talks and they told Despotify that they like open source but can't release the source.
      This is the next best thing.

  4. Re:Slashvertisement by QuantumG · · Score: 2, Interesting

    they may use licensed code which they can't release.

    Yes, because often you can release code in binary form that you're not allowed to release in source form. That happens, umm, never.

    Or they may be using unlicensed code and don't want to be caught.

    Which is fail for the exact same reasons.

    Or the code quality may be shit.

    I almost guarantee it is.. but that will be evidenced by the binary also.

    Or maybe it sends back interesting things.

    That might be one of those secrets that I was alluding to, yes. It's pretty obvious that such a thing will be discovered in just as short an amount of time as it would in source code and be much more interesting due to the fact that they tried to hide it.

    Yep, lots of stupid reasons not to release the source code.

    There, fixed that for ya.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  5. Re:Slashvertisement by f0rk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They stream there music in OGG Vorbis, and no DRM is involved.