6 ms·

Very cute that there's a one click deployment using some semi-magic third party service, but it feels kinda disingenuous to not link to the repo that's doing th

Very cute that there's a one click deployment using some semi-magic third party service, but it feels kinda disingenuous to not link to the repo that's doing the actual heavy lifting.[] The repo submitted to HN is just a bunch of config files. [] https://github.com/FD-/RPiPlay https://github.com/FD-/RPiPlay

geenew 5y ago
The history of airplay he gives on that page under the 'AirPlay protocol versions' heading is worth a link all by itself.
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  There's so much technical debt and conflicting versioning with AirPlay it's unreal. It's amazing it works at all at this point. It's also why the developer documentation is awful.
martin_a 5y ago
Wow, what's even the actual work besides creating some wrapper config files with other names for the parameters?
- automato 5y ago
  When you need to create some software, I guess you start by writing your own OS first? This is how all OSS works - you build on top of other projects.
  - squeaky-clean 5y ago
    If you're not melting your own sand into silicon ingots and slicing them into wafers, are you even a real programmer?
  - hamburglar 5y ago
    I think what people are complaining about is the fact that the linked project is not the project that actually solves the problem stated in the title. This linked project did not enable “using a raspberry pi as an airplay server,” it just packaged someone’s project that already did that.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  Having someone smoothing over the out of box experience for a lot of OSS is of value to me. A lot of projects I undertake get bogged down or stymied by setup instructions that trivialize or one-line non-trivial tasks (e.g. setup OpenCV, configure a reverse proxy in Nginx, etc). A lot of this comes down to the fact that software moves quickly and instructions are written for a given piece of hardware on a specific version of a distro. One of the benefits of having a common platform like the Raspberry Pi or shipping Docker Images is that you can ship a MVP that anyone can easily setup like Hassio, Pi-Hole, or PiWebcam.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  The wrapper itself? Isn’t Unix philosophy to build up software from simpler components? The project is also quite prominently attributed.
  - martin_a 5y ago
    It seems like the original project is easy enough and does not need a wrapper. Building a wrapper this thin reminds me of the Hacktoberfest "contributions" to projects.
    - yoz-y 5y ago
      Maybe the problem with posting this instead of the original project is akin to posting a homebrew formula github repo instead of the actual tool. However many projects now use github as a way to have canonical paths to stuff so here we are. You need to host the wrappers somewhere right?
turtlebits 5y ago
There is a link at the bottom of the readme directly to RPiPlay.
- isoprophlex 5y ago
  Yeah, I saw that. My point is: considering the title of this submission, I'd rather see it linking to the people that actually built the software that does this airplay mirroring. As it stands, this is a submission of "a one click deployment of rpiplay to balenacloud" or something like that.
  - mbreese 5y ago
    Exactly. This is more interesting as an example of how to use the balenaCloud software to deploy code across a RPi fleet. It isn’t very exciting for an airplay server as that code is provided by rpiplay. It’s all about setting expectations. I saw this title and was excited because I thought there might be a new airplay server available (airplay 2 even). Then I saw what the project really was and I was disappointed.
websap 5y ago
This is the problem with open source, anytime someone tries to submit a finished solution - someone will come out of the woodwork and blame them for not attributing enough. In this case the link exists, but it isn't in the favorable order.
- MrStonedOne 5y ago
  That seems disingenuous don't you think. The only thing they added was a dependency on a closed source 3rd party """cloud""" service. This is basically the open source equivalent to blog spam and should be rightfully put down. And the post you're replying to isn't even trying to do that! Its just suggesting that hacker news would find more benefit out of the original repo over some closed source cloud bait made by an employee of said proprietary cloud service.
  - mehalter 5y ago
    This is a little aggressive. Sure, Balena offers a proprietary licensing to make money for their cloud software, but all of the technology is built with open source first. You can self host OpenBalena (the open source parts of Balena) and do your own deployments locally. I'm not sure if going after open source projects that can make money is the best way to promote open source software.
    - MrStonedOne 5y ago
      > I'm not sure if going after open source projects that can make money is the best way to promote open source software. but im not doing that. I'm going after open source projects that can make money (by building closed source infrastructure) taking other peoples open source projects and moneifying them into a new """open source""" project (where 99% of the meat is in closed source cloud infrastructure) as a way to piggy back off of the work of other people so that they can advertise on hacker news. Like, if the repo actually added something substantial and new to the project, that would be one thing. If this was an article that explained how to do the gluing/config work this github repo does, also, another thing. even if hosted/made by the cloud company. That at least appeals to the intellectual pursuit. But this is just some config files.
johnchristopher 5y ago
If open source maintainers or producers don't owe anything to their users then I don't see why people building projects with open source material/code should do more than the bare minimum required by the license. Are an open source license terms ignored here ?
dewey 5y ago
> Very cute that there's a one click deployment using some semi-magic third party service The author of the repository seems to work for that third party service so feels more like a proof of concept for deployments to that service.

geenew 5y ago

The history of airplay he gives on that page under the 'AirPlay protocol versions' heading is worth a link all by itself.

Mindwipe 5y ago
There's so much technical debt and conflicting versioning with AirPlay it's unreal. It's amazing it works at all at this point. It's also why the developer documentation is awful.

martin_a 5y ago

Wow, what's even the actual work besides creating some wrapper config files with other names for the parameters?

automato 5y ago
When you need to create some software, I guess you start by writing your own OS first? This is how all OSS works - you build on top of other projects.
- squeaky-clean 5y ago
  If you're not melting your own sand into silicon ingots and slicing them into wafers, are you even a real programmer?
- hamburglar 5y ago
  I think what people are complaining about is the fact that the linked project is not the project that actually solves the problem stated in the title. This linked project did not enable “using a raspberry pi as an airplay server,” it just packaged someone’s project that already did that.
cptskippy 5y ago
Having someone smoothing over the out of box experience for a lot of OSS is of value to me. A lot of projects I undertake get bogged down or stymied by setup instructions that trivialize or one-line non-trivial tasks (e.g. setup OpenCV, configure a reverse proxy in Nginx, etc). A lot of this comes down to the fact that software moves quickly and instructions are written for a given piece of hardware on a specific version of a distro. One of the benefits of having a common platform like the Raspberry Pi or shipping Docker Images is that you can ship a MVP that anyone can easily setup like Hassio, Pi-Hole, or PiWebcam.
yoz-y 5y ago
The wrapper itself? Isn’t Unix philosophy to build up software from simpler components? The project is also quite prominently attributed.
- martin_a 5y ago
  It seems like the original project is easy enough and does not need a wrapper. Building a wrapper this thin reminds me of the Hacktoberfest "contributions" to projects.
  - yoz-y 5y ago
    Maybe the problem with posting this instead of the original project is akin to posting a homebrew formula github repo instead of the actual tool. However many projects now use github as a way to have canonical paths to stuff so here we are. You need to host the wrappers somewhere right?

turtlebits 5y ago

There is a link at the bottom of the readme directly to RPiPlay.

isoprophlex 5y ago
Yeah, I saw that. My point is: considering the title of this submission, I'd rather see it linking to the people that actually built the software that does this airplay mirroring. As it stands, this is a submission of "a one click deployment of rpiplay to balenacloud" or something like that.
- mbreese 5y ago
  Exactly. This is more interesting as an example of how to use the balenaCloud software to deploy code across a RPi fleet. It isn’t very exciting for an airplay server as that code is provided by rpiplay. It’s all about setting expectations. I saw this title and was excited because I thought there might be a new airplay server available (airplay 2 even). Then I saw what the project really was and I was disappointed.

websap 5y ago

This is the problem with open source, anytime someone tries to submit a finished solution - someone will come out of the woodwork and blame them for not attributing enough. In this case the link exists, but it isn't in the favorable order.

MrStonedOne 5y ago
That seems disingenuous don't you think. The only thing they added was a dependency on a closed source 3rd party """cloud""" service. This is basically the open source equivalent to blog spam and should be rightfully put down. And the post you're replying to isn't even trying to do that! Its just suggesting that hacker news would find more benefit out of the original repo over some closed source cloud bait made by an employee of said proprietary cloud service.
- mehalter 5y ago
  This is a little aggressive. Sure, Balena offers a proprietary licensing to make money for their cloud software, but all of the technology is built with open source first. You can self host OpenBalena (the open source parts of Balena) and do your own deployments locally. I'm not sure if going after open source projects that can make money is the best way to promote open source software.
  - MrStonedOne 5y ago
    > I'm not sure if going after open source projects that can make money is the best way to promote open source software. but im not doing that. I'm going after open source projects that can make money (by building closed source infrastructure) taking other peoples open source projects and moneifying them into a new """open source""" project (where 99% of the meat is in closed source cloud infrastructure) as a way to piggy back off of the work of other people so that they can advertise on hacker news. Like, if the repo actually added something substantial and new to the project, that would be one thing. If this was an article that explained how to do the gluing/config work this github repo does, also, another thing. even if hosted/made by the cloud company. That at least appeals to the intellectual pursuit. But this is just some config files.

johnchristopher 5y ago

If open source maintainers or producers don't owe anything to their users then I don't see why people building projects with open source material/code should do more than the bare minimum required by the license. Are an open source license terms ignored here ?

dewey 5y ago

> Very cute that there's a one click deployment using some semi-magic third party service The author of the repository seems to work for that third party service so feels more like a proof of concept for deployments to that service.