Could someone from Logitech management tell me why I should continue to do third party development for the Squeezebox platform ?

Lately it has felt like a struggle, there are basically no communication whatsoever with third party developers and enhancements that would encourage and ease third party development isn't prioritized or postponed to future releases. It feels like the support for third party development has gotten worse during the last 1-2 years and today I just saw that enhancement 14194 was postponed to a future release and other bugs that ease third party development has given low priority which probably means they will also soon be postponed to future releases. I'm not saying that this is incorrect priority from a business point of view, there are probably more critical bugs than these enhancements. Actually, there are ALWAYS going to be more important bugs than supporting third party developers if you don't really see any benefit having us here.

I understand that most of the developers at Logitech probably want third party developers to write plugins and applets, so this isn't your fault. I realize that you are probably just forced to work towards release dates that doesn't allow you to waste time doing things that encourage third party development. I also understand that it's not easy to prioritize because on one side you have requirements which needs to be implemented to beat the competition and on the other side you have third party developers that can develop killer features almost for free.

I'm seriously starting to think that it's not worth the frustration anymore, if Logitech doesn't wan't third party development why should I spend my spare time trying to force you to waste time on developers like me ?

I'm just mentioning bug 14194 as it was the last disappointment, this feeling is something that has grown during the last year or so.

I'm going to think this through for a week or so before I make a decision, but at the moment I'm starting to feel that this is the end of the road for me personally. I'm starting to think it might be the best solution both for me (who gets more spare time) and for Logitech (who can solely focus on their own functionality). The main reason this is a hard decision is that I know end users will be affected when they can't use my plugins and applets anymore. However, I'm sure Logitech eventually will take care of this and implement the necessary functionality required to satisfy most users who use my plugins today.

Yes, I realize I'm probably not going to get any response from Logitech management on this post but I felt it was a good idea to post this to at least let anyone that's interested know how I feel.

All my plugins and applets is available on Google Code, so if anyone is interested in taking over the maintanence, let me know and I'll consider giving you commit access.

Just to end this in a positive way. The Touch and Radio are the most exciting streaming devices I've seen, so really good work on these devices. If I decide to stop developing third party applets and plugins I still plan to continue being a happy Squeezebox user, as far as I know the new devices are better than anything else on the market.