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Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 5:04 pm
by kot
I wish, it were, but can't find the download link. I'd rather recompile the JARs (which may allow using Java environments other than Sun's), and would also like to be able to post patches some times, rather than mere wishes...

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 5:07 pm
by zip
It's closed source ATM. If you'd really like to post patches you can do that after decompiling the jars - I already had a few like this. I want to be in control of the app design and won't allow free commits to the repo.

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 5:13 pm
by kot
zip wrote:I want to be in control of the app design and won't allow free commits to the repo.

Heavens, no, I'm not asking for a commit privilege -- not even read-only access to the repository, if you aren't comfortable providing that.

Just for the source of the releases to be made downloadable next to the binaries: serviio-0.5.tar.xz (without the 3rd-party JARs, preferably).

Even if you have commercial plans for Serviio, you may still want to publish the source-code (license may or may not need updating). But if you don't, then you certainly should make it readable...

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 9:59 am
by patters
Isn't the danger that guys start building forks all over the place and then dilute the impact of what Zip is creating? Kind of like what happened to PS3MS after Shagrath the author went awol. Or that it starts getting all political which changes get merged and so on. Everyone's got strong opinions about Audio Visual stuff so I suspect it could become tough to manage (time consuming really).

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 11:00 am
by Illico
I agree, that's the reason why I no longer use PS3 Media Server (too many patch).

But if you only want to read the source code to understand and eventually help Zip for debugging, you can use tools to decompile jar files.

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 5:01 pm
by kot
patters wrote:Kind of like what happened to PS3MS after Shagrath the author went awol (emphasis mine).

As long as Zip is working on Serviio, I doubt, there will be serious forks. There are tons of open-source projects and -- however opinionated some of the participants are -- the forks are relatively rare. It takes a fairly unique combination of skills to not only code, but keep all aspects of a project (releases, web-site, support) going...

And should Zip ever lose interest, well, then a forked project is definitely better, than a dead one...

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 5:03 pm
by zip
kot wrote:And should Zip ever lose interest, well, then a forked project is definitely better, than a dead one...

If this happens I'll make it open source, no worries :-)

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 4:19 pm
by kot
zip wrote:If this happens I'll make it open source, no worries :-)

You may not even be reachable by then... Either due to loss of interest,or -- we are all mortal -- worse.

At least, you should give a few trusted people access to Serviio source... There is a good reason, big customers insist, their software-suppliers use code-escrow -- if the supplier should disappear for whatever reason, the customer will have the option to take the maintenance of the code on themselves.

I'm not claiming you owe it to your users (who don't pay you a penny), but some responsibility certainly exists...

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 9:31 pm
by kot
I'm about to add the port of Serviio to the FreeBSD ports collection.

By default, this will cause FreeBSD to begin mirroring both the "source" tarball and the resulting package tarball on its vast network of mirrors and on every release CD and DVD.

From reading the LICENSE.txt, none of these seems to be a problem, but if any is, I'll need to mark the port appropriately as "restricted"... Please, advise.

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 10:25 pm
by zip
How did you get the source? I assume by decompiling. Licence says:

c. You may not decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or modify the Software,
unless this is strictly for personal use or to debug such modifications.


So you can decompile for your own use, but cannot distribute it.

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 5:44 am
by kot
zip wrote:How did you get the source?

I did not. Note, that I put the "source" in quotes -- in this case it is just what you put up for download yourself. My port will extract your files and install them into the locations appropriate for a BSD system.

But some organizations object even to this -- verbatim mirroring of what they put for download themselves... Hence my question...

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 12:25 pm
by zip
As long as nobody's selling it as a part of BSD distribution it's ok.

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 2:30 pm
by kot
zip wrote:As long as nobody's selling it as a part of BSD distribution it's ok.

The CD and DVD media containing FreeBSD releases is sold... I'll mark the port as NO_CDROM, if that's a problem.

Any other limitations from this list, that should be on? Thanks!

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 11:17 am
by mate
kot wrote:
patters wrote:Kind of like what happened to PS3MS after Shagrath the author went awol (emphasis mine).

As long as Zip is working on Serviio, I doubt, there will be serious forks. There are tons of open-source projects and -- however opinionated some of the participants are -- the forks are relatively rare. It takes a fairly unique combination of skills to not only code, but keep all aspects of a project (releases, web-site, support) going...

And should Zip ever lose interest, well, then a forked project is definitely better, than a dead one...

If sources were available at GitHub, anybody could create their own GitHub fork of the code, then encourage Zip to include their changes into the core by Pull requests. Like sending in patches, but much nicer, since everyone can see the work being done and comment on the suggested changes.

As an example, you can look at this Pull request for Hibernate.
In this way, everyone can work on the code and everyone can "fork" - but there are no forked releases of for example Hibernate as to my knowledge.

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 1:07 pm
by Illico
mate wrote:If sources were available at GitHub, anybody could create their own GitHub fork of the code, then encourage Zip to include their changes into the core by Pull requests. Like sending in patches, but much nicer, since everyone can see the work being done and comment on the suggested changes.

As an example, you can look at this Pull request for Hibernate.
In this way, everyone can work on the code and everyone can "fork" - but there are no forked releases of for example Hibernate as to my knowledge.


PS3 Media Server use such community code. That become 'un vrai bordel" (in french) with multiple build version, with special patch and others...
From my point of view, I preferred the Serviio/Zip strategy, more stable, more clear.
"This does not prevent you from making hacks on your side and propose Zip to include it in the official soft."

Re: Is Serviio source code available?

PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 8:39 pm
by kairoh
Illico wrote:"This does not prevent you from making hacks on your side and propose Zip to include it in the official soft."

Tested & approved : I've done it several times ;)
I agree the project should not go open source for the same reason.
But I wish zip open it to some other committers as private repository...