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XMMS2 Vision

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Erik Massop edited this page Nov 4, 2017 · 1 revision

This page contains discussion about a certain issue or technical concept - feel free to edit and add comments. Once the issue has been resolved and/or the relevant details have been worked out, the comments and discussion will be moved to the talk page and this page will be finalised.

XMMS2 Community Vision (DRAFT!)

This document should outline the collective vision of the XMMS2 community. Currently this is a draft that has not been passed through the collective feedback from the community. Please contribute directly to this page or to the Discussion page so that this document can mirror our collective vision for this music player and community.

Version 4 - Version 2 and Version 3 mixed

  • XMMS2 should be a kick-ass audio player and organizer - Video will never be supported in XMMS2. We believe that audio is organized and played fundamentally different from video and we should acknowledge that by leaving the video playing part out of XMMS2.
  • XMMS2 is free - XMMS2 is free in many ways:
    • The freedom to get the application and source - The source and the application will always be available for free, to both use and change.
    • The freedom to organize and play your audio as you like - XMMS2 should be flexible enough to handle many different ways to organize and play audio. XMMS2 should not lock you in to our way of thinking.
    • The freedom to extend XMMS2 your way - The client library and clients should be available for all different toolkits and gui frameworks, XMMS2 shouldn't tell you what to you use.
    • The freedom to run XMMS2 wherever your want - XMMS2 should be portable enough to be able to run on all different types of applications and Operating Systems. Again, you are free to choose.
  • XMMS2 stands for high fidelity and quality - XMMS2 aims to be the player for audiophiles and people that are passionate about their audio. XMMS2 will never compromise the quality of the sound and support all relevant standards associated with HiFi.
  • The XMMS2 community should be encourage innovation and experimentation - Our community should be driven by innovation and experimentation. Developers and users should ask themself: "Can I get XMMS2 running on that?", "Can I organize my music this way?" etc. It should be fun, stimulating and educational.

Version 3 - The Four Freedoms alternative

One alternative that came forward in the last iteration was to just specify the four freedoms of XMMS2. This is a pretty clean version that is described below.

  • The freedom to get the application and source

The source and the application will always be available for free, to both use and change.

  • The freedom to organize and play your audio as you like

XMMS2 should be flexible enough to handle many different ways to organize and play audio. XMMS2 should not lock you in to our way of thinking.

  • The freedom to extend XMMS2 your way

The client library and clients should be available for all different toolkits and gui frameworks, XMMS2 shouldn't tell you what to you use.

  • The freedom to run XMMS2 wherever your want

XMMS2 should be portable enough to be able to run on all different types of applications and Operating Systems. Again, you are free to choose.

Version 2 - Based on the feedback

  • XMMS2 should be a kick-ass audio player and organizer

Video will never be supported in XMMS2. We believe that audio is organized and played fundamentally different from video and we should acknowledge that by leaving the video playing part out of XMMS2.

  • XMMS2 should be the ultimate freedom player

XMMS2 aim is to not strange your usage patterns. Whatever your idea of playing, organizing and developing should be supported by our framework. Freedom also means that the source code should be open source licensed, we believe that open source leads to innovation and we want to be a part of that innovation. Freedom can also mean that you should be able to use XMMS2 on the platform / device of your choice.

  • XMMS2 stands for high fidelity and quality

XMMS2 aims to be the player for audiophiles and people that are passionate about their music. XMMS2 will never compromise the quality of the sound and support all relevant standards associated with HiFi.

  • The XMMS2 community should be encourage innovation and experimentation

Our community should be driven by innovation and experimentation. Developers and users should ask themself: "Can I get XMMS2 running on that?", "Can I organize my music this way?" etc. It should be fun and stimulating.

Version 1

  • XMMS2 should be a kick-ass music player

Video will never be supported in XMMS2. We believe that music is handled and played fundamentally different from video and we should acknowledge that by leaving the video playing part out of XMMS2.

  • XMMS2 should facilitate playing and organizing of your music

And really nothing more. This is our core functionality.

  • XMMS2 should never be limited to a specific toolkit or programming language

While the core of XMMS2 will always remain in C the clients and service clients could and should be written in any choice of programming language or frameworks.

  • XMMS2 will be the choice for audiophiles

XMMS2 will never compromise the quality of the sound and support all relevant standards associated with HiFi.

  • XMMS2 users cares about music and are passionate about quality

This is our target audience, every design choice should have this in mind.

  • XMMS2 will always stay free (as speech and beer)

The community believes that free and open source software leads to innovation, we want to be a part of that innovation.

  • The XMMS2 community should be a fun place to spend your free-time

It should not feel like a second job, but be stimulating and fun!

  • X in XMMS2 is for cross platform

Portability matters.

  • Embeddedfriendliness

XMMS2 should work on smaller devices (but not compete with rockbox on tiny devices). A headless xmms2 server actually IS sexy, especially if there are clients available for "all" platforms.

Discussion

Less is more. I suggest we try to combine these:

  • XMMS2 should be a kick-ass music player
  • XMMS2 should facilitate playing and organizing of your music

And these: (they are saying same thing, no?)

  • XMMS2 will be the choice for audiophiles
  • XMMS2 users cares about music and are passionate about quality

These are pretty similar too:

  • X in XMMS2 is for cross platform
  • Embeddedfriendliness

Anders Waldenborg 21:33, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I would extend "The XMMS2 community should be a fun place to spend your free-time" to say that the whole XMMS2 community of both developers and users is based on the notion of fun and passion about development and music, which leads back to "XMMS2 users cares about music and are passionate about quality". This targets us as a project who deeply cares about power-users (I could say "satisfy the most demanding users", rather than "satisfy most of the users"). I don't see that necessarily as elitism, but perfectionism in a slightly niche market (possibly similar to that of Foobar2k?).

Somewhat orthogonally, I'd also like to emphasize the focus on satisfying a whole variety of users, all with specific tastes in interfaces, usage patterns, etc. Again, it leads back to "XMMS2 should never be limited to a specific toolkit or programming language" and "X in XMMS2 is for cross platform", and I'd sum it up as respect of the freedom of choice, or tolerance for the differences in people.

Both these properties stimulate experimentation, in terms of how to build the best music player. I'm not sure it should explicitly be included, but it is tied to the "fun" component of development too I believe.

If I tried to condense things even more, that would give a few key points like:

  • play and organize music
  • fun/passion
  • freedom (of choice)
  • experimentation/innovation
  • quality/high expectations

(not sure how to formulate the last nicely)

Theefer 23:07, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I think, going off of what theefer said, that Freedom is one of our most important values. XMMS2 is free, as software should be, and provides a freedom of choice to build the most perfect interface humanely possibe.

Alesbl 23:07, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes! Freedom is the keyword here.

Also I think we should go s/music/audio/.

Anders Gustafsson 06:07, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd really prefer if the document talked about XMMS2 being "free software" rather than "open source".

Tilman 20:55, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

"Ultimate freedom player" reads a bit strange to me. I still think jukebox fits.

I agree with tilman regarding free/open source. XMMS2 is free software, but "open source" does not necessarily mean free.

AnthonyG 21:20, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I love the four freedoms, but in it I think we lost two things: The first is the emphasis on audio-quality, and the second is the significance of open-source/free software as a mechanism for innovation.

Alesbl 23:41, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Eleusis 16:28, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

As much as I like the four freedoms for Free Software, I agree with eleusis and I don't think they make for a good XMMS2 vision. They are too generic and "obvious", and they don't emphasize a clear orientation on our part; they loosely underline points we value, but they steal the attention from what really matters.

I also agree that the name XMMS2 is used for several different things, mainly a music player "framework" and a music player ("client"). Yet it's probably hard to make the distinction without confusing people, so perhaps we should decide to make it clear that the vision is that of the "XMMS2 community" (who builds a music player using the framework). The fact that we talk about different things might explain the various visions people have been pushing forward IMHO.

The user/dev distinction is also worth noting (I tried to merge both in my previous comment).

However I disagree with eleusis' opinion that education should be a main value; it might be a side-effect of valuing experimentation, new approaches and fun participation, but not a core goal per se. "Excellence" is also hard to define in my opinion.

As danderson noted, "freedom player" sounds like "freedom fries", which is significantly lame. I also think the Vision v3 lacks several important aspects of the vision that were in previous versions, so here is another take, playing on XMMS2 as a Free Demanding Music/Audio Player:

  • Free - Open development and wide support of technical choices, so that XMMS2 isn't limited by user preferences (= freedom)
    • FOSS license and developement
    • No technical restrictions:
      • formats
      • devices
      • platforms
      • languages
      • toolkits
      • interfaces
  • Demanding (Quality) - High expectations in terms of audio and code from users and devs (could also be High-Quality, Awesome, Kick-ass, etc)
    • Sound, hi-fi standards
    • Code, API, abstractions
  • Music/Audio - Focus on one type of media and cover it well (let the grammar nazis choose between music and audio)
    • Only audio (not video, images or whatever)
    • Exploit music specificities
  • Player (Fun & Passion) - Discover new ways to play, think, experiment and enjoy music and music players; "best" project for music lovers and music player geeks, rather than trying to please "the masses"
    • Of users for music
    • Of developers for music players

Note that I left out the idea of organisation of the music, which I'm very fond of, but it probably belongs more to the vision of a specific player, rather than the XMMS2 community in general.

Theefer 01:31, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Version 4 is a bit verbose, but it contains all I'd expect from our Vision. Anybody else wants to add or suggest something?

Theefer 22:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

An innovative tool for audiophiles and their music.

regalia 01:20, 30 November 2010

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