Development speed and future of subsonic

[IbaIbaUrinCus]

Hi to all subsonic community here,

I wanna ask about subsonic development because it has speed of dead fish and looks like author of subsonic dont have needful time to give his own project some faster movement. And as is subsonic typical example of "one man show" I have concerns, that this project slowly dying.
I took time and read few pages of this forum and I see, that fans make their own modifications and addons which is good, but much better will be if author of subsonic take help from few skilled people around here and project will get some neeeeeeded progress.
For example....subsonic interface, is not up to todays requirements. Just looks on todays online music players interface... one for all ... http://www.rdio.com/features/ .
Dont get me wrong...I still like subsonic and I even paid for it(few years back)...to support author, but lack of progress get me really frustrated.
I thing that I will speak for many users here, when I say, that we expected much more from subsonic to be in this moment...

[bobjackiewicz]

What, exactly, are features you're interested in seeing? Providing a link to the rdio web site doesn't help much. Are you suggesting making Subsonic like rdio? If so, an app already exists: it's called rdio.

[alphawave7]

What, exactly, are features you're interested in seeing? Providing a link to the rdio web site doesn't help much. Are you suggesting making Subsonic like rdio? If so, an app already exists: it's called rdio.

I'd like to see ui refinement, and NAT traversal to make it far less 'fiddly' to install..those would be my own priorities.

EDIT: I'd love to see a SERVER written FOR Android, too.

[IbaIbaUrinCus]

1. I suggesting speed up things a little bit.
2. Make more modern interface...like this for example: http://www.zive.cz/bleskovky/novy-myspa ... fault.aspx
3. Optimalization for running subsonic on tomcat - allow using more resources and features which tomcat has.
4. More of last.fm integration.
..I will add more to the list later.
And no radio.

[GJ51]

What, exactly, are features you're interested in seeing? Providing a link to the rdio web site doesn't help much. Are you suggesting making Subsonic like rdio? If so, an app already exists: it's called rdio.

I'd like to see ui refinement, and NAT traversal to make it far less 'fiddly' to install..those would be my own priorities.

EDIT: I'd love to see a SERVER written FOR Android, too.

+1 for the NAT setup.

The two biggest problems with Subsonic that if fixed would make this take off like a rocket are the installation process and the database stability problems.

If installation was refined to a one click install and successful setup, with perhaps an express setup that accepts all defaults and an advanced setup that lets the user choose which port to use and any other variables that users want, that actually did the port forwarding properly and gave everyone a useable setup on the first go, I'll bet the user base would double within a couple months.

Combine that with a crash proof db that could auto recover from an improper shutdown and Subsonic would take off. In it's current form, the challenges of setup and the frequent 503 and java errors are keeping many potential users away from using SS. For the average user it's just too complicated to set up and maintain.

Add the ability to get to file shares without editing service credentials and you'd really have a winner.

I've always marveled how Skype can set itself up on just about any router in existence - I've never had anyone call and ask me to help with port forwarding to get their Skype install working - but then see how often this is a major obstacle for a new Subsonic user. Let's face it, in it's current form Subsonic is really only practical for an advanced user or someone with enough determination to wade through tons of tutorials and forum posts.

If Subsonic is to gain mainstream popularity, these issues must be fixed.

[hakko]

What GJ51 said plus a slick default web interface, that's not built on frames and tables.

[daneren2005]

It would make me happy if passwords weren't stored in plaintext in a non-encrypted database, and sent over the web in non-encrypted GET format.

[hakko]

It would make me happy if passwords weren't stored in plaintext in a non-encrypted database.

I've fixed that, waiting for Sindre to copy-paste it...

[GJ51]

Communication, consensus, and teamwork could make this a world class application.

I agree about the frames interface. I think the two most frustrating features of Subsonic that motivated me to move to Madsonic were the non-adjustable frames and the Main window display that would always reset to displaying only 10 albums when you logged in. Since then, of course, MS has added a ton of other great features that should also be considered for roll into SS. Ditto with the fine work done on Music Cabinet. Both forks have valuable improvements that I'd love to see get included in a way that's fair for everyone involved,

[Megamorf]

How can we as community help to share improvements between subsonic and its forks? This boils down to the developers, right?

I'd be willing to support a major revamp with money, a 3-digit sum if people are willing to put effort into it. The community in general is interested in bringing this forward and every user will benefit from it. This is the essence of the OP's post and I second it.

Unfortunately I'm a systems engineer and no programmer which is why I'd rather fund this project than to botch something up in the source code.

[hakko]

As long as the developers share the code that they write (which everyone is bound to do), the community is fine. Then it all boils down to whether Sindre wants to incorporate the new code into his official releases. Nobody but him can make that decision. It also gives everyone the opportunity to run a fork and tweak it to fit themselves, if they're not happy with the official releases.

The community is only at risk if somebody doesn't release source code. That's when people get locked up and dependent on a single developer or a company that could stop releasing at any point in time. I really have to stress the importance of open source for the community - that's the guarantee that the project in general can move forward.

Users can also help out even without being devs - by answering questions on the forum, writing thought-trough bug reports, creating graphics etc. And by supporting other people who put their time into the project. It's important to give positive feedback every now and then - not only report bugs and ask for new features. (and to give donations where appropriate)

If you want to fund development, I think that you need to be clear about what you ask for. People have done that in the past, "I'll donate X $ to whoever fixes this bug / implements this feature". That could be a great incentive but I think that a detailed explanation on beforehand is crucial.

I also don't think it's necessarily bad if the forks move in different directions. I could definitely see a version of Subsonic that's only built for music and another one that's only built for streaming video for example. But I prefer specialized tools over half-hearted attempts to solve all problems at once.

[Megamorf]

Thanks for your constructive post hakko.

If you want to fund development, I think that you need to be clear about what you ask for. People have done that in the past, "I'll donate X $ to whoever fixes this bug / implements this feature". That could be a great incentive but I think that a detailed explanation on beforehand is crucial.

I haven't been able to check out Subsonic's development for almost a year. Could you give me a quick rundown of major events that have influenced Subsonic and its forks since then? You seem to be an active member and probably have a good understanding of the community.

From what I figured from skimming through the topics this evening Subsonic's users want a modern clean (probably html5-based) webinterface, better database stability and integrity as well as an easier setup routine that enables the average user to setup SS too. Is that right?

[hakko]

Subsonic 4.4 was released in Feb 2011
Subsonic 4.5 was released in Aug 2011
Subsonic 4.6 was released in Dec 2011
Subsonic 4.7 was released in Sep 2012

As you can see, official releases are currently less frequent. Subsonic 4.7 brought a lot of news, plus some changed behavior and bugs, not surprisingly. The new version didn't fit everyone and the new bugs and sparse updates made people more likely to look for tweaked versions that fulfilled their needs and feature requests, that weren't implemented in the official version.

MadEvil started releasing a forked version in Mar 2012, I released another fork in May 2012. The previously popular Supersonic fork seems to have died at about the same time.
MadEvil does an "Original Subsonic + extra goodies" version that is kept up to date with the official code base. I gave up on that pretty early and re-wrote a lot of core logic from scratch to make it more efficient and adapted for music only so mine is more give and take (add some new features, remove others).

The community has therefore become more diverse. The majority probably still run the official release but there's certainly an interest in the forks.

The most common request is probably an interface overhaul (to HTML5, leaving Flash behind). The most common error reports are related to the technical difficulty of getting everything running, with all the possible sources of errors (transcoding setup, a somewhat shaky default database, failed Java updates...) but it's rarely expressed as a feature request. The way Subsonic is designed (using Java as a language and using external programs for transcoding) will make it more difficult to setup than a native program with a one-click installer. It's hard to avoid without redesigning some major concepts.

But if you ask somebody using Subsonic mainly for music and somebody else using it for streaming video to a handheld device, you'll get very different answers on top priority feature requests. That's why I'm fine with going in different directions, I don't think it's worth maintaining a product that tries to do everything. But everyone wouldn't agree on that either...

Anyway I dare to say that the keyword is HTML5 no matter who you ask. That would be the most asked for update.