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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."

21 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Perfect editorial! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    "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.

    1. Re:Perfect editorial! by Mikkeles · · Score: 3, Funny

      'Wow, that are some insanely tight proofreading their, editors.'

      Fixed that for you.

      --
      Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
  2. wine? by meow27 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So to run this in windows I'm gonna have to use Wine on windows? Thats just massed up

    1. Re:wine? by Jurily · · Score: 2, Informative

      Cygwin did something like that.

    2. Re:wine? by Nazlfrag · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From their help page:

      On what platforms can I use Spotify?
              Mac OS X 10.4 or later and Windows XP or later. You can also run Spotify in Wine on Linux.

      So it looks like you can already run it in windows on Wine. Seriously though, at least they seem to be catering to us 1%, more than what most do. We should be thanking them for this token effort, keep applying pressure to open it sure but at least they bothered to test on wine and make a blob.

  3. Meanwhile by EEPROMS · · Score: 2, Informative

    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"

  4. Slashvertisement by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. 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.
    2. Re:Slashvertisement by walshy007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

      err.. that can and does happen, depending on licensing agreements, you can buy licenses to use some libraries in your product X, but if you then released source to your product AND proprietary library so you could compile it, company you bought it off would rip you to shreds.

      Prime example being punkbuster for q3, had to be removed for the source distribution because punkbuster library isn't owned by ID software but by some anti-cheating company

    3. Re:Slashvertisement by f0rk · · Score: 2, Interesting

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

  5. 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.)

  6. 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.

  7. Awesome-This will change the face of online music! by gavron · · Score: 2, Funny
    I'm SO excited! A binary-only blob is much better than nothing! It's like getting herpes instead of having no diseases anyway. Sure we'd rather have a-cure-for-herpes but hey, getting a quarter of that is better than nothing!

    What is spotify anyway? Anyone ever heard of it? Other than the illiterate OP did anyone care? Slow day in slashdot editor land?

    E

  8. English: Do you speak it? by 1u3hr · · Score: 2, Insightful
    ... 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...

    No, it's not life-or-death, but it IS AN EDITOR'S FUCKING JOB TO NOTICE AND FIX THINGS LIKE THIS.

  9. 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 xkcd150 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think this is Spotify's response to Despotify.

      When Despotify was released, they had a full office going "f*ck, our business is screwed".

      They could have gone the route of lawyers and trying to silence or stopping the project, but instead they just fixed the security issues that came up, and let the open source project be for a while.

      And now they release this. They're trying to reach out to the open source community, but their hands are tied because of where their money's coming from.

      Same reasons they have to put geographic restrictions on the music in the first place.

    2. 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.

  10. x86-only by ManiaX+Killerian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  11. Re:Why linux will never be mainstream. by koiransuklaa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I didn't get the same impression from the comments at all, so decided to look closer:

    You guys are all way too busy arguing about how the library is not GPL.

    "all"... I found no posts saying this. I did see two posts complaining about binary-only, but there are other possible reasons for that and.

    None of you have the right to dictate which license software you had no part in writing should be distributed.

    Again, finding it hard to locate the posts this refers to.

    You have to ... get over the illusion that the GPL somehow removes rights from the original author.

    Wow. where does this come from? I have no idea.

    I just love how so many of you automatically assume that they must have stolen GPL code in there.

    Zero, it seems. There was one guy who would find it funny if there was GPL code in there.

    For all the groupthink accusations you spouted, the only evidence of groupthink that I see here is your moderation: +5 for whining based on nothing at all?

  12. Spotify T & Cs by zmower · · Score: 2, Informative

    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!