The never-ending, never completely working project

[TheHarbinger]

I've been (trying to) use Rockbox with my iPod mini 2nd generation since I got it for a gift almost two years ago.  Yes, I've successfully loaded it.  Yes, it * kind of * works.  By reading the forums I've gathered that the port is mostly complete, except for 'optimizations' that will increase the battery life to what it should be, support for other codecs (namely WMA which doesn't really work and which I wanted to use the software for), et cetera, et cetera.  A glance at other forums here tells me that the other existing ports have their own little problems here and there.  A 'stable' release was, I believe, supposed to be out last November.  The last 'stable' release was, by the site's own admission, a loing time ago and supported one type of player. Meanwhile I read that the project is being ported to other platforms.  

So the question comes to mind, and I think it's fair to ask: shouldn't the developers concentrate on getting a new, 'stable' release out that supports all the current platforms BEFORE taking on new ones...?

Now, right off the bat, I anticipate a couple of comments and I will address them right away...

If you want a stable release for your platform, then pitch in and help code one.  I'm not a coder, don't plan on being one, and don't have the time or patience to do it anyway.  I'm just a user who would (gladly) pay a sum ($20 perhaps?) for a finished product.

Don't complain if you can't or won't help.  As a user of the software, I'd think the developers would like some feedback.  I'm not trying to be a sm@rtass, just asking what seems to be an obvious question.  

It's a volunteer, open-source project.  What do you expect?  Well, I'd expect that more people would have iPods than most other players and that would drive development faster.  It's hard to believe that the current coders who have iPods are willing to put up with the niggling flaws that prevent the project from being great.

I've not been able to use the software as I wanted to because the port isn't complete, and today I took it off my iPod.  (I got tired of it booting into Rockbox when it was supposed to boot into the original firmware, and getting the button-press timing right was becoming too frustrating to deal with.)  I want to encourage the developers to keep up the good work--I read in the daily build reports that things are getting fixed, slowly but surely.  I want to reload the software, and eventually will, but not before a stable release.  I've also stopped recommending it to fellow iPod users.  It has promise, but it's just not there yet.  And I'm afraid that, if more platforms are adopted before the current ones are completed, Rockbox will end up as a package that is always almost complete, and that the developers have grown bored with and moved on to other things.

Discussion, comments?  No flames, please.  I've tried to be civil, and I'd like to see intelligent discourse as a result of this post.

Thanks for your time.

[Llorean]

The problem is that apparently the "most users own iPods" doesn't equate to "most developers own iPods" as you seem to assume it does.

The iPod port is far from "nearly done" as there are still a very large number of quirks for the PortalPlayer hardware. The release in November was not to include iPods, and I'd still say they're all a long ways from being near release status.

If you can magically produce datasheets for the PortalPlayer chipset, you might see some of the improvement you want, but wishing for something doesn't magically make it possible. Some research beforehand would have showed you that the biggest hindrance for iPods is lack of information.

So it boils down to:
1) There is a lack of information.
2) Most iPod users are like you: They want to be a user, and expect someone else to code it for them under the assumption that if there's a lot of them, there MUST be a lot of developers with iPods, something that really isn't necessarily true.
3) Developers scratch an itch. If it's working well enough for them to use daily on the player they personally own, they often wander off to some other itch that needs scratched.

In 100% seriousness, if you want to see it down, you HAVE to do it yourself. Feedback like "It's not done yet, hurry up guys" doesn't make things better. It stresses people and makes them less interested in working on the project as a whole. If you really believe it'll never get finished the way things are going not, what stops you from spending six months studying programming in your spare time, then working on it for six months? One year from now is a lot closer than "never."

[Febs]

It's a volunteer, open-source project.  What do you expect?  Well, I'd expect that more people would have iPods than most other players and that would drive development faster.

As a matter of fact, the addition of iPod platforms to the Rockbox family brought in very few new developers.  Lots of kids who want to play Doom, yes.  People who want to work on improving Rockbox, no.

(I got tired of it booting into Rockbox when it was supposed to boot into the original firmware, and getting the button-press timing right was becoming too frustrating to deal with.)

You might want to read this:  http://download.rockbox.org/manual/rockbox-ipodmini2g/rockbox-buildch3.html#x5-240003.1.3

[saratoga]

(namely WMA which doesn't really work and which I wanted to use the software for), et cetera, et cetera.  

How does WMA not work?

[AlexP]

Developers develop what they want to develop.  We have very few devs with iPods, and the lack of information makes it a very hard port.

I am completely happy with the port on H140 and gigabeat.

Incidently, do you know how much a skilled developer would expect to be paid to do the kind of work involved in rockbox?  I'll give you a clue - A LOT.  With the lack of documentation available, it is many many hours work.  Whilst donations are always welcome, $20 is going to employ someone for a few minutes.

This kind of post makes me angry.  People work on what they find find fun.  We would all LOVE all the ports to be perfect, but it isn't that easy.  Without the documentation, trying to fix the problem is like searching for a needle in a haystack.  I don't know about you, but that isn't my idea of fun.

[nls]

If you want a stable release for your platform, then pitch in and help code one.  I'm not a coder, don't plan on being one, and don't have the time or patience to do it anyway.  I'm just a user who would (gladly) pay a sum ($20 perhaps?) for a finished product.

Rockbox is a project that people work on in their free time as a hobby, we do not produce any kind of "product". And peope temd to do what they think is fun when they play with their hobby, and wht they think is fun is rarely what the "users" think they should do...

EDIT: also btw there is an old saying, "software is never finished, it's abandoned" that answers part of your question.

[TheHarbinger]

(namely WMA which doesn't really work and which I wanted to use the software for), et cetera, et cetera.  

How does WMA not work?

Saratoga--

I last tried loading WMAs into Rockbox in May, in anticipation for a trip.  I tried several dozen files; all would play in media player, Quicktime, Winamp...no problem.  Some files under Rockbox would show only partial data on the display, some none at all.  None of the files would play.  The on-screen display would indicate the file was playing sometimes, sometimes the display would be totally frozen.  I ended up transcoding about 800 files over a week's time into MP3s just so the player would play them.  In consulting the forum, I found several threads about WMAs, and one poster was pointed to a thread that talked about the WMA portion of the software.  THe statement was that, I believe, only one bitrate was supported and that playback was choppy.

[Llorean]

Please don't make statements about something "not working" based on a several month old version of the software, then.

Have you tried WMA this month? This week? Today? In fact, I'd like to see where you found discussion of any sort of WMA support, since as far as I know Rockbox had no built-in WMA code back then.

In all honesty, it seems that were you to critique a project, you should be doing so based on the current status, rather than the status from several months ago. While I'm aware we have problems, you might want to point out the current ones.

[saratoga]

I last tried loading WMAs into Rockbox in May, in anticipation for a trip.

Well, since I (or maybe it was linuxstb since I didn't have SVN access) added the WMA decoder on 3 July 2007, I'm guessing you had some trouble.

I tried several dozen files; all would play in media player, Quicktime, Winamp...no problem.  Some files under Rockbox would show only partial data on the display, some none at all.  None of the files would play.  The on-screen display would indicate the file was playing sometimes, sometimes the display would be totally frozen.

What happened when you tried a build that included WMA support?

In consulting the forum, I found several threads about WMAs, and one poster was pointed to a thread that talked about the WMA portion of the software.  THe statement was that, I believe, only one bitrate was supported and that playback was choppy.

Theres no way you found that in this forum.

[Job Van Dam]

Just to lighten the mood and bring some positive energy in here I just want to say:

I love my Gigabeat and the Rockbox firmware on it. At this point in our relationship I firmly believe I would take a bullet(s) for my DAP. I even named him, Funny Mikey.
Thank you to all the developers.

Thank you from Canada.

[Vortex]

I don't know about the iPod port but as a Sansa user I am very happy with Rockbox.

Only a few months ago, Rockbox was completely unusable on the Sansa but the development has made amazing progress in very little time. And all that progress was achieved through voluntary work!

Rockbox on the Sansa has reached a status where it has by far surpassed the stock firmware. There currently aren't any features that I dearly miss. In fact, Rockbox is more feature-complete than many audio players for PCs which often don't offer features like cue-sheet support.

Rockbox on the Sansa is also very stable. Since the screen melting bug has been fixed I never had Rockbox crash during normal music playback.

And peope temd to do what they think is fun when they play with their hobby, and wht they think is fun is rarely what the "users" think they should do...

Actually I'm very happy with the course of development, since msot of the time the devs focus on the important things, which is primarily making music playback as comfortable and bug-free as possible.

Thank you to all the developers.

Thank you from Canada.

And thank you from Germany.

[soap]

I'm just a user who would (gladly) pay a sum ($20 perhaps?) for a finished product.

EDIT:  Don't mean to sound pissy, but...

But, we're not users in the traditional sense.
We're lucky guests who get to play with somebody else's toy.
Never forget that.  Rockbox is not an attempt to satisfy your needs or wants.  Rockbox is the pet-project of a small number of people who are willing to share their toy with you.

[LambdaCalculus]

I don't know what problems TheHarbringer is having, or what monkey is crawling around in his butt. I personally think that the Rockbox project is an amazing piece of work.

I started using Rockbox back in December of last year. I had received an iPod nano 2nd Gen for Xmas, and I quickly took it to the Apple Store in New York to exchange it for a 30GB iPod video, with the simple intention of Rockboxing it, as I had found out about the project about 3 months prior.

Since then, I've watched Rockbox grow and evolve. I've used it virtually every single time for music, and I've almost never booted into the Apple firmware for any reason why. I remember seeing the introduction of the new menu system. I remember the addition of the NSF and SPC codecs. I remember seeing MPEGplayer play audio for the first time. I remember the debut of the Sansa port, the Gigabeat F/X port, and the iAUDIO M5 port.

I think what sums it up best is a quote I remember from one game developer: "Software is a Process, not a Thing." Software grows and evolves as people work on it. This is especially true of open source software. Open source software, as Llorean, BigBambi, nls, Febs, and saratoga have put it in one way or another, is an itch that developers scratch. It is also something that developers share with their fellow users.

If you want to read more about how these projects work, look for these books, and read them:

1) The Mythical Man-Month, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. (ISBN 0-201-83595-9)
2) The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond (ISBN 0-596-00108-8)
3) Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary, Linus Torvalds (ISBN 0-06-662072-4)

On a personal stance, I think Rockbox is one of the greatest open source projects out there, and I think these guys are doing some amazing work.

[yueonyrl]

When I first owned my Sansa E280 I didn't know the existence of Rockbox, but ever since I encountered it I have discarded the original software. Back then the Rockbox for Sansa only had crippled functionality in regards to the original built-in hardware capability, but within a couple of weeks the Rockbox had become fully fledged. And I can think of no function that is lacking.

Simply for the sake of Rockbox, I subsequently bought another Snasa E250 and two Toshiba Gigabeat F60. And I must say for these two types of player Rockbox is basically almost complete in functionality and far superior to each original software. If I could give the scores for the software and functionality of these two types of player (excluding built-in hardware limitations, for example, no FM and no recording for Gigabeat) I would provide:

    Sansa:      Original 82;    Rockbox 98
    Gigabeat:   Original 50;    Rockbox 98

The "2 points less than 100" reflects the fact that there is no perfect program -- but, that is amazingly awesome!

I would like to express my thanks to all the developers and pay my attribute to the spirit of open source software. And this is from Taiwan.

[Chronon]

In fact, the success of Rockbox on the Gigabeat has illustrated to me how important open hardware is to the open software movement.  I will seek to purchase devices that use open hardware as much as possible.