[Gap-dev-discuss] Cynthiune on GAP

[Sebastian Reitenbach]

Hi,

yes, I know, we should first concentrate on getting other releases out, before 
going on with new stuff, but read on ;)

a year or two ago, I was looking at cynthiune [1], the "free and romantic music 
player for GNUstep and Mac OS X"
I did not got it to work. Over the weekend, and up to Today, I spent some time, 
to make it work. The only thing not
yet really working is the connection to MusicBrainz. The API must have changed 
in the past 6 years since the last
Cynthiune release. Other stuff seems to work fairly well. I'll look into the 
MusicBrainz API, but since its C++, it will
take me a while, since my C++ knowledge is next to nothing.
But what I got to work already was creating an OpenBSD Sndio audio output 
Bundle, so no need to use OSS, Esound
or aRts audio output bundles on OpenBSD. Getting audio output to use Sndio is 
an important step into getting an 
audio related port into the OpenBSD ports tree, I contacted Wolfgang Sourdeau, 
the original author of Cynthiune (he is now working on SOPE/SOGo), asking 
whether there is still development, and I could push my patches upstream.
See below the message I sent him, and the answer I got. The answer in short: 
like the others I asked, he stopped 
working on Cynthiune long time ago, but he is glad to have Cynthiune hosted on 
GAP, and not only that,
he also asked to get an account for the GAP source repository to maybe even 
work on it from time to time.

I'd take care about importing the last Cynthiune release, and creating a page 
for it on the Website. The license is GPLv2 right now, but I think Wolfgang is 
fine if we switch to GPLv2 or later, i.e. GPLv3.
I'd explain what he needs to do to get an account on the CVS, and I'd also 
recommend him to subscribe to this mailing list.
Someone else then just need to enable his account.

Any comments/objections.

cheers,
Sebastian

[1] http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Cynthiune


=== Begin message to Wolfgang ===
Hi Wolfgang,

in the last couple of days I was looking into getting your Cynthiune 0.9.5 to 
work on OpenBSD. The most weird problem is to get the MusicBrainz
connection to work. The library API you used at the time, seems to be 
completely different than it is now, and even worse, its weird C++.
But I think it just needs some time to also get this problem solved.
However, since I'm on OpenBSD, I successfully added a sndio output backend, 
i.e. OSS (but way much better ;) for OpenBSD. I'm just listening to it (:

Now, since Cynthiune development seems to be stalled since version 0.9.5, I 
wonder whether there is still a chance you are developing it?
In the case you do not develop anymore on Cynthiune, then I'd like to offer to 
give Cynthiune a new home on GAP [1], the GNUstep application project.
We have done so in the last year with a couple of other abandoned applications, 
like the games from Marko Riedele, or Zipper, or MPDCon.
We were reviewing the code, making sure it "just works" with recent GNUstep, 
and putting them into a new life.

We on GAP would try to give our best, follow the spirit you describe in 
Cynthiunes README:
>From a programmatic point-of-view, I have decided to write a program that is
released only when considered bug-free. The free software community lacks,
IMnsHO, a sense of quality that makes its programs nearly useless to
lambda users. Not only is it useless, but I think it also gives free software
a bad reputation.

Cynthiune would get an own page on GAP, and for sure, you'd get your credits 
for the initial development of such a nice application.

On GAP, Cynthiune would be in good company with other GNUstep applications, and 
would get some love not only from me, but also from
more developers, and its attention from more users.
In case you are fine with us, giving Cynthiune a new home on GAP, we would like 
to release Cynthiune under GPLv3, if possible.
Only you as the original author can relicense the code, right now as it seems 
its just GPLv2 (without the any later version clause)

cheers,
Sebastian

[1] http://gap.nongnu.org

=== End message to Wolfgang ===

=== Begin answer from Wolfgang ===
Hi Sebastian,


Actually, I am glad that you suggest this as I have no longer any time
to work on that app.

Regarding MusicBrainz and a couple of other things, the debian package
maintainers did perform a few fixes here and there for problems like
that. Here is the list of changes:
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/c/cynthiune.app/cynthiune.app_0.9.5-13.1/changelog

The MusicBrains bugreport is here:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=656604

It seems to not have been fixed yet.

I made have a couple of changes that I started a few years ago, which
were more complex than intended and that I finally abandonned. If I can
have access to the GAP repository for that app, I could still work on it
from time to time.


Cheers!


Wolfgang

=== End answer from Wolfgang ===