The case for reviving Firefly

[politicorific]

The development for firefly has been silent for nearly 2 years. During that time, significant events have taken place that demand new interest in reviving this project. Chief among these are the developments of the iphone jailbreaking scene and now recent deciphering of the apple DACP standard. It’s almost unthinkable that firefly and the iphone are not currently working in harmony.

http://jsharkey.org/blog/2009/06/21/itunes-dacp-pairing-hash-is-broken/

http://jinxidoru.blogspot.com/2009/06/itunes-remote-pairing-code.html

This development opens up the possibility of firefly becoming compatible with more devices – the apple tv and ipod touch in particular. What other features could also be added? Greater video support? XMBC compatibility? Home theater devices? Cell phones?

Yet, this project rested on the shoulders of a single individual for too long and has disappeared. This forum is overrun with spam. I myself am not an experienced programmer, but for anyone reading right now, looking for a project or a way to get involved and experienced with linux – this is the perfect project to pick up. Help is needed – although I must admit I have no idea where to begin to gather support.

If you’re reading this and just have a feature request or an idea of implementing something, post here. If you’re a firefly enthusiast and bemoan the lack of structured leadership of this project, post here. I can’t be the only one despairing over not having total control of my media. Anyone with me?

[stretch]

“Stickied” so it stays above the SPAM.

To the few people who highlight spam within legitimate threads. Thanks. It makes finding & deleting spam easier.

[cboxall]

I am very interested in getting the project going again and look forward to a challenge developing for Linux/Mac/Windows platforms. How do we get started? Is the original developer still around and willing to meet. Let me know – you can send email to me personally. I have over 20 years experience developing software applications using a variety of tools and languages. I use the Firefly server on a Linux machine for Mac/Windows and a Roku client.

[stretch]

The PM function on this forum is disabled.

Ron has not visited the forum for a very long time.

Source code is available here

[EVILRipper]

Ye, I hope we can get firefly’s development from the ground again. I recently graduated as Bachelor on software engineering, but started a new education this week to become Master.
Therefore I have little time to help, but I would love to. I guess we’ll have to determine a focus as to what point we should improve firefly.
For example, as said in this topic, we could focus on supporting as many devices as possible, attracting a bigger variety of people.
Or, for example, we could aim to get firefly to support video.

I have managed to use the transcoding script to transcode nearly any video using ffmpeg to flv format, which can be streamed to an embedded flv player.
I wrote a php script which lists and parses all video’s from firefly, creating a list of video’s, making firefly able to stream video’s to the browser.

Also, if we get uPnP working, I bet a lot more people would be interested aswell. Maybe even include DLNA support, if that is possible. (not sure what it is :))

Therefore, firefly’s possibilities are unlimited. It could really be so much more.

[Anonymous]

I am an experienced project manager, and willing to help get together a group of software developers who want to take this project forward as it does not seem to be an active project anymore.

I note some of you on here are anxious to move this forward so would love to help get a new project rolling with the help of Ron so that we can bring this great piece of software up with the latest including iphone apps, server features, etc etc etc.

Let me know..

Andrew

[stretch]

@andrew40 wrote:

I am an experienced project manager, and willing to help get together a group of software developers who want to take this project forward as it does not seem to be an active project anymore.

I note some of you on here are anxious to move this forward so would love to help get a new project rolling with the help of Ron so that we can bring this great piece of software up with the latest including iphone apps, server features, etc etc etc.

Let me know..

Andrew

Well, I think you just put your hand up to get things moving again. Only problem is how exactly are we to let you know?
Sorry if I’m a little abrupt. I appear to be the only one trying to keep them spam under control & the volume is significant 👿

I’ll gladly put in spare time but unfortunately, i don’t know how to write software.
As it stands right now, I’m considering ignoring this forum. The spam volume exceeds legitimate posts by a factor of 100 at the very least.
I just wish i could ban the repeat visit spammers

[Anonymous]

Simplest thing would be to start a new project, move the forum to a platform that can control the spam, mount the source code in an svn repository like GIT and get some decent programmers contributing to this great piece of software..

[stretch]

Source code is currently in Sourceforge under the old project name.
As for the rest. I have no idea where to start so if you want to start a new project then by all means go for it

Fizze made me a forum moderator simply because i was reporting huge volumes of the stuff.

If you get a new project going, I’d like to help out with the wiki & as a forum moderator.

[EVILRipper]

Correct. I’d agree that would be the first step: move to a place where we have full control.
Guess we’d have to start a forum elsewhere where we can arrange our own anti-spam control, as I believe the current active users do not have the power to do that.

Then, from there, keep contact active and try to assemble a team of people willing to contribute in any way possible.
Think of forum moderator, keeping wiki up to date, sorting feature requests, etc.
Maybe even divide tasks if we have multiple coders who are willing to contribute.

For now I mostly agree with andrew. Do we have full control over sourceforge or is it still under Ron’s power?
Who feels responsible enough to take the first step? :>

[Author]

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