From: Chris Holt <amiga2k_at_cox.net>
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 09:13:35 -0500

----- Original Message -----
From: "langhaarrocker" <phil_at_x-phobie.de>
To: <rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se>
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 5:36 AM
Subject: Re: Archos plans to ship Rockbox with Jukebox Studio


> On Wed, 11 Dec 2002 10:31:18 -0800 (PST), E Doc <doc6502_at_yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Archos also may have a long-term strategy in mind. It's expensive doing
R&D
> >for different OS-es for several products. Been there, done that. If
Rockbox
> >gains widespread user acceptance, then Archos may put their own OS
development
> >efforts into "fix bugs only" mode.
>
> That's something that bothers me slighly. Imagine Jukeboxes were
> shipped with Rockbox. Will the programmers of the original firmware be
> sacked? Why should Archos pay them? They can sell Jukboxes anyway.
> Might Rockbox destroy jobs? Does Rockbox endanger the future of little
> sweet innocent programmers children?
>
> Phil

There is at least one developer on the RioWorld forum, and from what I have
gathered in his posts, in house firmware developers simply move on to the
next product, with a period of overlap for bug fixes. For example,
programmer works on the Rio 600/800 firmware project, then starts working
bug fixes for that and laying the groundwork for the S35/S50 players, (2
projects) eventually graduates to full time work on the new player firmware
until the "next big thing" comes down the development pipeline.

That's SonicBlue, of course, and dosen't speak to how Archos does things,
but if Archos is doing some sort of contracted thing and the programmers
accept a poor contract, or don't get a contract because their work is
inferior, I don't see why anyone in this community should lose sleep over
it. I don't see them selling products with no firmware at all. If the
firmware developers are in-house, then odds are they are doing the sort of
thing I described above.

Chris
Received on 2002-12-12