Re: Common music database?

[Sriram Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>]

On Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 11:56:10PM +0200, Milosz Derezynski wrote:
> libmpris is a library that implements the protocol as described on:
> 
> http://bmpx.beep-media-player.org/site/MPRIS_Interfacing_Specification

Ah I see.  It's just a thin wrapper around DBus so that you can just
use the library and not have to deal with dbus at all.  I understand.

> About GNOME+DaveMcCabe:
> 
> I discussed that with DaveMcCabeonline on IRC, and he wanted to make a spec
> out of it.
> Now, yes, of course it's all volunteer work and whatever, but i really just
> think that Dave doesn't give
> a nickel about it by now (the discussion i'm referring to is at least 2
> months past, if not even somewhat longer),
> so in that case (and actually in any other case given the long period of
> time), he could drop us a note here
> on what the status of this is.

Well, you know, just do the spec yourself.  Why wait for someoen else?
I suspect that if you came up with a spec, and then posted it to an
appropriate GNOME mailing list (or maybe even the DBus list) you'll
get appropriate comments about it.

> It's just that as long as we don't know if there is some "official" work
> going on from GNOME's side (yeah, it might end up being not dependent
> on GNOME or focused on GNOME, please let's save us this discussion, you know
> what i mean anyay), we are sort of "hanging in thin air",

As far as I'm concerned there is no such thing as "official" anything
as far as effort goes.  To be considered something official you
have the obligations to follow the GNOME release cycle and your
stuff should be on the GNOME CVS server so that people are able to
translate the PO files.

After that it comes down to the quality of your code and whether
it's well architected and that it's something that GNOME want
to include in the developer platform.  "Personalities" control the
process as far as that they've proven they can write good code
and can architect programs well so they tend to be given more slack
than newbies.

Consider that Jamie here is writing Tracker which is somewhat like
Beagle, another indexer which is a lot more popular.  That's not
going to stop him from pursuing his goal of trying to make it
official. :-)


> as we don't know whether we can just proceed and make up our own spec here,
> or if Dave Mccabe will bust out of his cave
> in a few weeks proclaiming that he has the standard now and then we're faced
> with 2 standards that are up against each other and have to
> be evaluated........... well i'll save my words and just say ONE word
> instead: COMMUNICATION!

Well it's only a spec, that means you guys get together and figure
out which parts are importand and which are not.

> Dave, f*cking COMMUNICATE with us! This is important stuff, MAN!!

heh. :-)  I'm not sure Dave reads this mailing list. :-)

sri

> 
> On 4/17/06, Sriram Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 09:16:20PM +0200, Milosz Derezynski wrote:
> > > My reason for bringing this into attention has multiple reasons:
> > >
> > > Number 1:
> > > ------------------
> > >
> > > Dave (McCabe), what's the status of your progress of the derived spec
> > based
> > > on MPRIS?
> >
> > This is the first I've heard of this.  Or maybe I didn't read your
> > previous
> > posts carefully enough.
> >
> > > If i may speak frankly, just because "you're GNOME", you can't just go
> > and
> > > say/think "well, when_ever_ we release
> > > our spec, people will have to follow that anyway, since we're GNOME, and
> > the
> > > BMP guys are just someone". Maybe
> > > that's unfair and doing you unjustice and you're simply not having time
> > for
> > > this, but would you in _that_ case just give
> > > us a small one liner note that this is the fact so someone else can work
> > on
> > > this?
> >
> > Well, obviously most of this stuff is volunteer so it's likely
> > whenever he's about to do it.  But I don't think anybody is doing
> > anything dictatorial here.  It's not a spec unless the major music
> > players like banshee, rhythmbox, and others decide to approve
> > the spec.
> >
> > We look at people who use the db as "ISV"'s who want to be able to
> > create a music player in GNOME.  So I don't think we should approach
> > things as GNOME centric attitude and I don't think that's what is
> > happening here..
> >
> > > It's close to trivially simple for players/apps to implement the
> > server-side
> > > part using libmpris without removing their own protocol, as well as for
> > > clients to implement that instead of various specific interfaces.
> > >
> >
> > Can you explain what libmpris is?
> >
> > sri
> >

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