Frequently Asked Questions about Bentokit Project


What is the benefit of the Project?

For too long the sector has relied upon the genius of a few individuals who – through no fault of their own – pour a large amount of their time into one or more successful projects that become stagnant once that individual loses interest or lacks the time to maintain it. The sector has experienced this with broadcast hardware and software multiple times, and the loss of these pillars of community broadcasting means a loss of support.

By shifting the knowledgebase and the permission to modify software online, the community at large is able to maintain control of their software, with anyone able to pick up where others left off. So the benefits are that:

  • The software is free of charge and free to modify
  • The software is capable of running on entirely free software platforms
  • The Project is owned by the community broadcast sector
  • The direction of development is determined by the community
  • Unique situations can be adapted to
  • The software has Australian support, and could lead to multiple support technicians in each state

The more stations that adopt the software, the more support will be available, and the more new capabilities for the community broadcasting sector.


The software is broken. What do I do?

See the Triage/Bugs page here.

What does "open source" mean?

In the context of software, open source is the principle of promoting access to the software ‘source code’ with relaxed or non-existent intellectual property restrictions. This allows many stations or independent technicians to modify the software for their own unique purposes, and to collaboratively contribute their modifications or creations to the Bentokit Project as a whole. The Bentokit software is released under a GNU Public Licence (or GPL for short), meaning any copies or adaptations made by stations are also bound by the same GPL licensing scheme.

For more information about GPL licencing, please check out the GNU Project FAQ.

If it is free, what is stopping Generic Evil Conglomerate Ltd. from charging me for their addons?

All Bentokit software is released under a GNU Public Licence (or GPL for short), meaning any copies or adaptations made by stations or other organisations are also bound by the same GPL licensing scheme. This means that if Generic Evil Conglomerate Ltd. make changes to the software and then market it back to the Bentokit community, they have to provide the source code for free. However they may charge for support, just as any other technologist or station in the community could.

For more information about GPL licencing, please check out the GNU Project FAQ.

If I make modifications to the software, am I obliged to provide a copy back to the community?

In short, no. the GPL licence allows you to make modifications to the software for private use, that you may just use internally at your organisation. However, in keeping with the share-and-share-alike mentality of the Bentokit Project, it would be nice for you to give those changes back to the rest of the community; however large or small the modifications are.

The reasoning behind this is every organisation is different, with unique needs and circumstances. However the changes you make might be of immense value to a handful of other organisations, and would save them developing those modifications themselves. Alternatively, they may improve upon your modifications, helping you out in the longterm.

For more information about GPL licencing, please check out the GNU Project FAQ.

Will Retromod work with the playout software I currently use in the studios?

At this stage Retromod will not work out-of-the-box (so to speak) with any other playout client, but you could probably make it work. As Retromod is open source, you are allowed to modify the code as much as you want. This means that there is a good chance you could mold the software around a proprietry playout client to interface the two. Playout applications generally work by one or both of two mthods: (1) media files; and (2) some form of a database. Providing that the database method isn't some secret propriety format, you can get Retromod to dump out the files and information in the right way for the playout software to read it. Why bother? Well then you can take full advantage of the suite of tools that Retromod has to offer without having to retrain all your presenters.

Flywire is too basic for our needs. Do I have to use it to use Retromod?

No, it's completely up to you whether you want to use Flywire or not. Retromod is a very flexible and powerful bit of software, and it would be a shame not to use it because you are already happy with your playout client. So there are three things you can do:

  1. Use Retromod for communications, membership management or your own purposes, but don't use its playout functions
  2. Couple Retromod with your existing playout software (and hopefully contribute back the modifications you made to achieve this, so others can take advantage of your changes). See Will Retromod work with the playout software I currently use in the studios?.
  3. Develop new functionality for Flywire to meet your needs (and hopefully contribute back the modifications you made to achieve this, so others can take advantage of your changes)