Re: [Banshee-List] What can I do to get into the project? I'm purchasing an iPhone...

[Aaron Bockover <abockover novell com>]

Jim,

<novell-hat>
I am speaking officially from Novell when I say we are not going to
pursue supporting the iPhone/iPod Touch at this time. While I certainly
encourage any efforts to provide compatibility, we cannot justify the
resources to directly undertake such an effort.

At Novell, Gabriel and myself are the only two people working on
Banshee, and neither of us are full-time at this point. We add up to
maybe 1.2 people. An undertaking like proper iPhone support would
require at least one full time person. 

The undertaking also is not just about getting it to work once, rather
about continually reverse engineering at every update Apple produces -
and there will be many with changes made simply to break third parties.
They have employed this practice for years, and it's only going to get
worse.
</novell-hat>

<personal-hat>
Personally, it's incredibly frustrating and saddening that Apple is so
litigious and invoked the DMCA on you. They do not have a legal case
though (of course, IANAL), as I'm sure you are aware. There's a specific
clause in the DMCA that negates the other clauses for the specific case
of interoperability. 

It is for this reason that we even started working on iPod support many
years ago, and continued when Apple introduced "Hash 58" - the original
iTunesDB hashing [1]. 

If we were concerned about the DMCA holding up here, we would not have
invested the resources in iPod support, and we certainly would not have
distributed the code in our distributions.

Nothing has changed regarding the DMCA with the iPhone and its myriad of
ridiculous obfuscations and encryption layers. The difference is that
it's technically much more difficult to deal with, and will likely
change more rapidly to keep competitors on the constant task of reverse
engineering.

However, your actions in taking down the information are understandable
since it's unlikely that you could ever fight Apple on your own. So
there's a part of me that would like to see Apple invoke the DMCA on
Novell... but even then I'm unsure of what our course of action would
be. I'm just an engineer.

The best thing that can happen right now is a collective body like the
EU taking action against Apple for non-compete/monopolistic practices,
like they did against Microsoft. A company of Novell's size likely can't
or won't directly take on the issue unfortunately. A class action suite
is really what is in order if it's not going to be handled in the EU.

Worrisome and unacceptable it may be, but it's reality. If we do not
encourage people to try alternatives to Apple, we risk losing that 30%.
And it's an important 30%.

That being said, I encourage any efforts to break the iPhone and allow
compatibility. We'd love to include working code in Banshee, and I'm
always available to test and provide guidance where needed.
</personal-hat>

Apologies if this mail is grim - I do greatly respect the efforts of all
working to break this beast - but we have to budget our constrained
resources for areas where they are most effective.

Best,
Aaron

[1]
http://anonsvn.mono-project.com/viewvc/trunk/ipod-sharp/src/Hash58.cs?view=markup


On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 22:14 -0600, Eric Schultz wrote:
> Jim,
> 
> Currently the main project to decrypt the iPhone database @
> http://bluwiki.com/go/Ipodhash has been taken down due to legal pressure
> from Apple. Apple does not legitimately have a case but it is putting a
> damper on the decryption project. The IpodHash wiki pages are available from
> various sources, including wikileaks so you can still get the information if
> you're interested. Please get involved! Encryption is not my forte but
> having 3rd party access to the Ipod/Iphone is hugely important so if you're
> interested please investigate it.
> 
> I don't know how much Aaron is speaking officially for Novell when he
> suggests alternatives to the iPhone but his comments are worrisome. If
> Novell wants to make Banshee a first class music player and Linux a
> legitimate choice for consumers, then there needs to be 3rd party support
> for the new iPod/iPhones. Novell needs to put their weight behind an effort,
> technical and/or legal, to get 3rd party access from Apple. Without 3rd
> party support, 70% of new MP3 players WON'T work with Banshee. That's simply
> unacceptable.
> 
> Eric
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: banshee-list-bounces gnome org [mailto:banshee-list-bounces gnome org]
> On Behalf Of Aaron Bockover
> Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 3:33 PM
> To: banshee-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: [Banshee-List] What can I do to get into the project? I'm
> purchasing an iPhone...
> 
> You should probably research the iPhone first. You'll realize that it's
> nothing like a traditional iPod, you can't work with it at all unless
> you crack/jailbreak it, and there's no exposed filesystem.
> 
> There is some project trying to crack the insanely encrypted,
> obfuscated, and proprietary protocols that are used on the device, but
> it's not making much progress, and likely won't be something we'd roll
> into the project anyway.
> 
> If you really care about being able to use a device with Banshee, I'd
> look into alternatives to the iPhone. I for one can vouch for the
> Android/T-Mobile G1. I have one, and added very specific and integrated
> support for it for the 1.4.1 release. There is a model now out that is
> not bound to T-Mobile either.
> 
> --Aaron
> 
> 
> On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 20:46 -0800, jimmio92 wrote:
> > Hello all,
> > What can I do to get into the project? I'm purchasing an iPhone this week
> > for myself, and was wondering if I could work either on a plugin that'd
> add
> > support for the iPhone or work on the actually core program to add support
> > for it. It'd all be semi-slapped together as of now, because I have no
> > experience programming using any of the audio-oriented libraries Banshee
> > does... but it shouldn't be much more than placing the files in the
> correct
> > place and then updating the iTunes database file, just as it is with the
> > current/last-gen iPods. I was thinking upon activation of the plugin, a
> > Ringtone section could be added... .m4r with a time of less than 30
> seconds
> > is an mpeg4 audio ringtone file supported by the iPhone, and automatically
> > add them to that section.
> > 
> > Any of this sound do-able? I should probably tell everyone ahead of time
> I'm
> > only 16, but I really want to get involved in a project, especially one
> that
> > allows the use of the iPhone with an awesome audio app like Banshee.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Jim
> 
> _______________________________________________
> banshee-list mailing list
> banshee-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/banshee-list
> 
> _______________________________________________
> banshee-list mailing list
> banshee-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/banshee-list