PRODUCT RETIREMENT

[musoware]

I'm intending to retire Muso and other products early next year. I've stopped accepting new purchases already. I'll continue to support it via support@musoware for another year or two and thereafter via a new gmail address to be confirmed later. You'll still get automatic updates to Muso (for bugfixes) if you installed via the standard setup but in a year or two I'll close down the sites including this forum and mailboxes, after which I'll find a new place to put any bugfix builds for you. I'll also make a build so it's not restricted by a licence key.

There are pirated versions of it all over the internet, and I'm finding I rarely have any time to support official users, plus the upkeep of these products and sites are barely paid for by their sales, so regrettably they will have to be retired.

[Ed Howarth]

That's sad, and completely understandable. It's still a great piece of software, and as long as it continues to work as it has done for quite a few years, I will be happy.
I must confess I looked at Roon a bit back and wondered what all the fuss was about.
Cheers, and thanks.

[DuLac]

That's sad, and completely understandable. It's still a great piece of software, and as long as it continues to work as it has done for quite a few years, I will be happy.
I must confess I looked at Roon a bit back and wondered what all the fuss was about.
Cheers, and thanks.

Totally agree with Ed Howarth. I use muso all the time on a daily basis and intend to continue using it. Thanks for everything.

[MDE]

I'm sorry to hear that, although I quite understand. It is still one of the best (if not the best) products of its type.
As it is very reliable, hopefully it will go on working for a good while without any problems.
I'm wondering if there are ways that it could be given a 'second life' through any or all of:

• Making the source code and any related documentation freely available as open source (looks like you are planning this at some point anyway)

• Providing an export of the forum posts, for reference purposes

• Maybe providing ad-hoc support to anyone wishing to provide ongoing support

Personally, while I have some coding skills, they are not brilliant and are limited to Python or the PHP/HTML/JS world, whereas I recall the code is in ASP.NET. I'm not sure I want to convert it to PHP, but there is an outside chance.
Also, I might be able to just host some text files (helps and old forum posts) at https://music.highmossergate.co.uk/

[musoware]

Thanks Mark. I just renewed the musoware.com site for another year, so nothing will disappear for at least that long - we might be able to move this PHPBB forum (and the Wiki) to your site before it does, if you'd be willing to host them.

I don't really want to go the open source route as I'm sure I'd end up being pulled into that, and I don't really have the time or energy (I'm getting on a bit now). I'd maybe sell the source code to some company who could see some commercial opportunity with it, I've never tried to really market it aggressively so not sure how well it might do with a proper team behind it. I'm open to offers anyway. It's written in windows forms .NET by the way, not ASP.NET, so rewriting in php (to be fully web based?) would be a huge undertaking I reckon.

For long time users like yourself I'll stay in touch through my personal mail, and can still do bug fixes even after dropping the musoware.com site. Though as you said it's pretty robust now so I'm not sure there will be many bugs going forward.

[teodorom]

For sure there will be a time when Muso will be no more able to "talk" to HQPlayer. At that moment I shall cry.
Muso is quite perfect for my needs.
Yes, it could be improved (it still has some memory leak that I overcome using Muso, remotely connected to HQPlayer, from my main computer) and it should be not impossible to use the Qobuz API's to build a good interface from it to HQPLayer.
Thanks anyway.

[yorknh]

Seeing this I'm both happy and sad. I've been using Muso for a LONG time and with the exception of occasionally have to enquire about a new license to move to a newer computer, it's been the perfect solution for use with LMS. I'm considering moving my install to a new computer and feared that support had ended some time ago, so knowing there's some basic support for a bit longer is a relief.

It sucks that people would distribute software written by one guy, especially since it was so reasonably priced to begin with.

I do hope that when you decide to truly cut support that you make an unlicensed build for the sole reason I've already mentioned. LMS and MUSO are still the best combo for distributed music playing from a local library and I expect to be using it for years to come.

Thanks for a great piece of software!

[musoware]

Thanks @yorknh. First thing I did was to create an unlicensed version which will/should run forever, I sent details out to all registered users but it seems my list of those users is incomplete. I'll PM you the details.

Any other licenced user requiring details of the unlicensed version please PM me.