An American company is working on the development of a new open source software which may prove to be a competitor to Apple’s iTunes, with the advantage of being compatible with various music sites and web services. software digital music developed by Pioners of the Inevitable is called Songbird and uses the same technology underlying that of the browser Firefox, called XML User Interface Language, or XUL.
This option allows you to create different settings for software, ensuring that different music services and programmers write their own plug-ins, adding features or creating direct access to a specific music library.
According to information released by C | Net, and confirmed on the company’s website, the first preview technology will be available in early 2006, after an unsuccessful effort to show the first results later this year.
The company that develops the software sees this opening strategy as its main asset in relation to potentially competing solutions. «We like Apple and we even appreciate the fact that it has broken barriers in terms of user experience, but it is inevitable that the market architecture will change when it is mature,» says Rob Lord, founder of the company to justify his belief in potential of an alternative to iTunes that makes a difference by its compatibility with various sources.
Experts consulted by the publication show some reservations about the need to introduce in such a competitive market and with such a varied set of players to invest, a new option. However, it is also admitted that, like other projects open source, Sondbird gains critical mass, first among the community open source and then in a wider circle. For now the support of the Mozilla Foundation is guaranteed, which is said to be attentive to developments.
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