nofix wrote:Duane, correct me if I'm wrong, but without the Flash Player and Control Panel, wouldn't that leave the Chumby in an unusable state?
Well, if we go away, the Flash Player doesn't magically disappear from the product, since it's built into the firmware. It's a perfectly functional Flash Lite 3 player, and there's nothing about it that's tied in any way to chumby.com.
There's also a full, complete Control Panel built into the device, just a few versions back form the one that's downloaded. You can launch it and point it to an entirely different server besides chumby.com if you like, just use:
chumbyflashplayer.x -i /usr/widgets/controlpanel.swf -dbaseURL=http://ip.of.main.site -dwidgetsURL=http://where.widgets.come.from
You could also simply create a hosts file redirecting the chumby.com domains. Of course, any alternative server would have to understand the XML-based protocols that the Control Panel uses - as pointed out elsewhere, they're pretty simple and straightforward. Chances are, however, that an alternative service would implement a different protocol.
In order to host the existing widgets, the operator of this alternative service would have to get explicit permission from the authors of the widgets to redistribute them.