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Rockbox Developers Talk Open Source Firmware

Posted by timothy on from the be-thankful-for-their-hobby dept.

angry tapir writes "I recently caught up with some of the key developers of Rockbox: An open source firmware replacement for the stock firmware shipped on MP3 players. The project, which has been active for over a decade, currently supports products from more than half a dozen manufacturers, including Apple, Arhcos, iRiver and Toshiba. It involves extensive reverse engineering to figure out how the devices' stock firmwares operate, as well as the challenge of developing for greatly varied targets. You can read the interview here (or the full Q&As with the project's founder and some of the developers involved in it)."

3 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. OSS Rocks! by Digital+Vomit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A friend of mine has a cheap mp3 player that he bought a couple of years ago. He flashed it with Rockbox and has had his battery life more than quadrupled!

    I don't know why companies are so loathe to take advantage of free software like Rockbox and, instead, insist on writing their own, lousy firmware. There are people out there who will do it better, and for free!

    Just imagine how much better things could be if closed source software were outlawed...

    --
    Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
    1. Re:OSS Rocks! by ByOhTek · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My first comment was going to be "because nobody but a major geek wants an MP3 player with a UI that looks that bad."

      But I hadn't seen the UI in a few years. I looked on Google and found some screenshots. Damn it looks nice now.

      Anyway, there is still the answer that "the companies want to control it". With the flexibility available from Rockbox, it would be much harder to control the user environment, which would make end user support much more difficult.

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
  2. Re:MP3 Players... by pugugly · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Poor, badly implemented playback with small storage and a lousy interface.
    Want Ogg? Flac? Decent Headphones? Good organization via tags?
    I would be a bit surprised if the iPhone didn't have quite a lot of that (Don't know, Don't much care). But your basic dumbphone doesn't.
    My MP3 player does very good on most of it - and with Rockbox installed has excellent results with all of it it plus the geek cred of playing Midi.

    Really, any good MP3 player ought to play Midi - {G}.

    Pug

    --
    An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media