[mythtv-users] We should consider a commercial partnership

Marc Barrett mnealbarrett at cox.net
Sat Jun 23 18:07:44 UTC 2007


I think a lot of the people who are really afraid of the "sky falling" with the recent news
concerning zap2it need to relax. I am quite confident that the MythTV developers will come
up with a solution, and that it will work.

Unfortunately, I think what the MythTV developers will come up with, though it will work, will
be a short-term solution. I think we in the MythTV community should give serious
consideration to establishing a commercial partnership of some sort. I understand the
reluctance of open-source projects to form commercial partnerships, due to the fear of the
open-source ideal being diluted with commercial constraints. But it can work. For
example, the Linux Wine project is a successful commercial partnership with a company
called CodeWeavers. And one of the foundations of MythTV -- QT -- is itself an
open-source/commercial partnership.

Here is what I envision. MythTV is extremely rock-solid on the back-end. It just works, and
works extremely well, almost no matter what kind of hardware you through at it. If it has a
Linux driver and the hardware itself works, the MythTV back-end will use it with few (if any)
problems. Where MythTV has most of its weaknesses (and complaints) is with the
front-end. For example, I have found myself complaining a time or two about not being
able to successfully burn a show to DVD without something or other making the DVD
unwatchable on a standalone DVD player. (Motion 'fringes' or lack of A/V sync). What I
envision is a partnership with a company like SageTV to make their front-end work
seemlessly with the MythTV back-end. I know I would gladly pay for a good front-end if it
solved all the problems I've encountered with the MythTV front-end, even if it ran only on
Windows. We could continue to maintain our Linux-only open-source front-end, and a
commercial Windows front-end would be available for those people who would be willing
to pay for it. In return we could get a solid source of TV listings thrown in for the partnership.

(BTW, as a fringe benefit, it would solve our problem of lack of a good Windows front-end
for MythTV. The WinMyth project sucks, to be totally blunt about it)
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