[mythtv] Paid for Plugin dev?

[Mr. Demeanour]

Isaac Richards wrote:
> On Friday 17 April 2009 1:14:20 pm Erich Nachbar wrote:
>> Chris,
>>
>> Thanks for your reply!
>>
>> Whenever I talk to my Tivo friends they rave about its recommendation
>> service and with MythTV cutting out the commercials (love this feature!) I
>> feel that sometimes it is hard to know what interesting stuff is coming
>> out.
>>
>> My background is highly scalable web apps & distributed computing and I
>> have computed recommendations in the past, so I can take care of the
>> backend-side of things fairly quickly.
>>
>> However I would need someone who is writing a plugin that would allow
>> people to interact with the system and to provide their activity stream to
>> me, so I can compute recommendations based on what similar people have
>> watched.
>>
>> I looked at the desired feature list and it seemed like something people
>> are looking for. So if there is interest, I can pull some more
>> requirements, wireframes together for the bidding process.
> 
> This has come up before (and it would be a nice feature to have), so I'll just 
> start out by saying that for such a plugin to be accepted into the main myth 
> source, the server side will need to be:
>  a) open source
>  b) run on mythtv.org

While I appreciate the intent behind this remark, I think there is
actually a certain amount of implicit conflict between those two
requirements.

i) If it's open-source, then presumably anyone can run it on their own
server. Would there be some attempt to prevent this? How might that
be possible?

ii) What about the client software? Could that not be pointed at any
server the user chose?

It's at odds with the principles of open source to try to control or
restrict the use people make of software.

I suppose the devs might simply reject patches that made it possible to
(e.g.) configure which server the client pointed at; so that a
third-party server might only be practical for those who were willing to
compile the code themselves. But having the solitary recommendations
server under the control of the devs isn't necessarily A Good Thing;
devs have shown in the past that they feel under some pressure from the
entertainment industry.

-- 
MrD.