Is Joost holding the Linux client until it release a Set-top box by the end of 2007
hyperdistribution has pointed me to an audio interview of Mark Pesce given to ABC Radio Australia about Joost.
In the interview Mark spoke of things he eard from inside Joost regarding hard work being done on a future Joost set-top box. It would be the kind of box you connect to your TV and to the internet to access content on Joost.
Joost see it as very important to remove the PC barrier and allow a much better living room integration via a little appliance beside your TV. Who would want a bulky and noisy PC in the living room just to watch Joost? Not me. I would much prefer a DVD sized box instead!
Is it possible that the set-top box development be the reason Joost has not yet released a Linux client? Let see. An intel Mac client is already available… but no Linux beta client. Discussion with Joost people revealed that there is actually a working Linux Joost client… Some of Joost back end servers actually run Ubuntu Linux! So why not the client? (Note that source at Joost has not confirmed that the Linux client was on par with it’s Mac/Windows cousins… but one would think it is).
The reason might be this: releasing a Linux client in the wild might steal Joost set-top box thunder. Imagine Linux Hackers (in the true sense of hackers) possibly building a set-top box around the Linux client and other multimedia applications before Joost release theirs… this would be bad news.
I think this is (OK, might be ;-0) why.
Discuss this in our forum.
I don’t know if “stealing the thunder” is really the reason we haven’t seen a Linux Joost client. Most people who are and will use Joost will be on the light-to-low end of computer tech; they won’t care much about Joost on Linux. I reckon that the team is focusing their development work on Windows and OSX because that’s where the eyeballs are. Sure, people have Linux boxen – and I, for one, would love to see a MythTV module that integrated with Joost (MythJoost, anyone?), but I doubt they’ll give it too much mind-share before the 1.0 release.
Why would this be a valid reason for sitting on a Linux version? What’s to keep someone from creating a set top box with Windows or Mac? Someone’s probably already running Joost on an Apple TV box somewhere.
Someone is already running it on AppleTV. And it was reported here!
My guess is that Joost did not anticipated the Apple TV hack
This is probably all “conspiracy theory” but it is fun speculating about it! Those poor Linux souls are desperately hoping for a Linux client 
I’m all for the conspiracy ideas
Also, to get the investment needed to make Joost attractive there is probably some tough alliances which must be made. However, I’m quite sure the Joost technology is easy to reverse engineer. How about giving me an invitation so I can get hacking? 
Joost need to make one associate with a producer of set-top box, type who uses Davinci processor from Texas instrument. If this happen, Joost starts to be a complete TV by Internet, one IPTV