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Wiki > Main > RockboxFAQ > NoDo

FAQ - Features we will not implement


What is this NoDo document?

This is a list of feature requests we get repeatedly that we simply won't do on any line of players. View it as the opposite of a ToDo! The Archos Players have additional NoDos, see ArchosNoDo.


Features we will not implement on any line of players


Implementing the ability to playback DRM-protected files

Firstly, this would be extremely difficult to implement legally - Rockbox is not legal entity as such, and therefore is unable to enter into license agreements with providers of DRM technology.

Secondly, Rockbox is open source, which would mean that any DRM technology we incorporated into our codebase would suddenly become visible to the whole world, completely defeating its purpose. Remember, DRM achieves part of it's security through obscurity, and publishing the keys necessary to decrypt DRM crippled media would essentially render it useless.

Finally, the members of the Rockbox community don't like DRM, and we see no reason to encourage its use by allowing our firmware to read it.

Support other filesystems than FAT (like NTFS, HFS or ext2/3/4)!

Adding support for more filesystems will take away valuable RAM for unnecessary features. While flashing the ROM allows a custom bootloader to be installed, and in many players' cases this allows the possibility of various filesystems to be used, FAT32 is openly supported in most/all desktop operating systems and adding a second (or more) filesystem will cost all Rockbox users who don't use that filesystem, and only benefit the subset who do. We will however consider additional file systems when they are required to support a player adequately (e.g. a device whose bootloader cannot use FAT).

Please note that support for newer FAT variants (e.g. exFAT) is considered a long-term goal.

You can partition your player with additional partitions, just make sure the first one is FAT32 and then make the other ones whatever file system you want. Just don't expect Rockbox to understand them.

An Advanced Settings setting to hide Advanced Settings

If people really want to have a simple menu, this should be implemented using a configurable menu.

Wifi

At the time of this writing, only one device with a rockbox port is known to have the necessary hardware for wifi.

This only has three use cases:

  • File transfer to the device
  • Automatic updates or in-system theme browsing/download
  • Working with sort of (commercial?) streaming audio service.

Simply getting to the point where we can send/receive arbitrary data to an arbitrary host over a wifi connection represents a decent amount of work, but each of these use-cases would require writing additional software on top of that, both for rockbox itself but possibly client or server software that has to run on elsewhere.

See also

  • ArchosNoDo, describing NoDos for the Archos platform which is limited by its hardware decoder.
  • DoItRight, describing items that aren't NoDos but haven't been done (yet) for specific reasons.


CategoryFAQ: Features we will not implement

r35 - 05 Apr 2025 - 21:28:58 - UnknownUser


Parents: RockboxFAQ
Copyright © by the contributing authors.