From https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life:

> Open-source options for the community

> We’re making our technical specifications available so that independent developers can create their own SoundTouch-compatible tools and features. The documentation is available here: SoundTouch API Documentation (https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/...).

AFAIK, the soundtouch web API was already accessible via some bose developer portal. It doesn't seem like they are open sourcing anything. This API just allows you to make basic requests to do things like change volume on the speaker.

To support the smart features of the SoundTouch speakers, we would the soundtouch user management service. Speakers connect to this very frequently and its where refresh tokens for music services and presets are stored. The speaker firmware itself has lots of source code, including the bit to handle music services and playback. There is an abstraction layer for music service APIs. There is a process on the speaker that reaches out to a music service registry, which is an index of bose music service adapters. Each of these adapters essentially proxies a music service like tunein, spotify, and even the "stream a custom station" feature.

If bose open-sourced the speaker firmware, we could make a firmware build which talks to a 3rd party user management service, and reaches out to a 3rd party music service registry. Then we could add and maintain music service playback for the community. But there is no open sourcing of any actual code here and this soundtouch web api cannot change the URLs on the existing firmware of the user management service or the music service registry.

So to my eye this story seems misleading and just some PR nonsense. It's a little frustrating reading all of the "great job, Bose!" comments here like anything was actually done... Disclaimer: I used to work at Bose.