[Spirit FM] mikereidis:
Ten months, and I've been continuing to think about this for most of those 10 months.

I think it's too easy to assume that open sourcing will quickly bring other developers and provide solutions.

In many cases, people don't need my source code in order to find solutions. In not one single case among the many Audio Methods I support has anyone come to me with even part of the answer. I find and test the answers in the same way that anyone else can without access to my source. To find: reverse engineer the stock apps. To test: run my app and run tests from the command line; Use my ssd utility if it helps.

Same for the chip/API specific code. Even when my code is working more or less, nobody comes to me to says "This is how you fix that little glitch". They just say "We have a glitch, please fix it, we don't know how."

Yes, in time, eventually, if my code is open source, if I write sufficient documentation and tutorials, I will get help back from the more technical members of the community who aren't busy with other projects, or the mobile development day jobs which are now in high demand. But that IMO is a long term process that will be slow to bear fruit.

And there already ARE open source projects that interested developers can write to. One is the V4L API FM radio portion, in conjunction with ALSA or tiny ALSA. These are well recognised standards in Linux.

There's also the ST-Ericcson proposed standard Android FM API. If (when?) I open source at least parts of my code, at least a form of this proposed API may be best, even if it appears otherwise doomed. And my participation might even help un-doom it a little bit. If anything, this is how I might achieve your objective.

I don't want to create/document my own proprietary API, especially not when the standards or proposed standards above exist. But it takes time to support and document such APIs, never mind the ongoing commitments that this creates.

Some think that GUI improvements can be enabled by open sourcing so that GUI developers much more qualified than I can get involved. Yet the CM FM app is open source and I don't see anyone providing a better GUI for that app, other than some very small incremental improvements.

I can also look at the state of FM radio apps on PCs, particularly open source applications running on Linux. Those projects are pretty much dead; the best being several years old without even documentation updates.

Many people have asked for UI improvements, but most really don't seem to be able to describe exactly what they want. I guess they'll just "know it when they see it." IE, they have no more UI design skills than I do.

I've added UI features that allow customisations of colors, button styles, text sizes etc. All you have to do is go into Settings and enter values as I've documented upthread. It's not point and click easy, but MUCH easier than coding. And yet nobody has ever reported doing this.

At least 2 people have claimed to start customising my UI, which can be done without my source code and just by modifying the APK in reasonably well known ways. Both of those people have disappeared without showing anything, or even asking me questions.

I opened up a thread MUCH earlier this year to discuss the TI FM chip low level details. I dumped a huge amount of information in that thread, and nodody still has shown up to discuss it. From time to time somebody asks me to dump what I know about Broadcom chips, but nobody seems to have any substantial information to offer in return.