Spotify won’t open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process
Spotify will brick the hardware it released in 2022 this December.
@arstechnica imagine being the person that would rather brick a good piece of hardware than share their sourcecode because of licensing requirements. Damn spotify, that's crazy
@arstechnica but but but why didn’t they allow competing music services to run on it?
@delric @arstechnica probably because the services that run on the device are hard coded to IPs on Spotify servers. They'd have to scrub all the Spotify specific coding which could be a lot. Keep in mind that the device is purely for Spotify. This is why 10 seconds after I looked at it I totally dismissed it. S*** like this is designed to be e-waste.
@arstechnica@mastodon.social this shit is just evil man it shouldn't be legal
@arstechnica I hope they will also refund for carbon footprint and ewaste centers.
@vmiheer @arstechnica It would be criminal to generate that much ewaste all at once..
@arstechnica what is the point of bricking your hardware and not letting people open source it? What is gained by being massive pricks?
@arstechnica I hope we eventually get to see @jw running Compose UI on that thing