The iPod's reign of tyranny may be coming to an end, as Neuros announces plans to create an open source mp3 player. As was expected the open source movement continues to grow -- Babak Nivi reported on open source hardware not too long ago as well, which is another sign that the iPod may be in trouble.

Questions: can anyone make money off this? And is this even something that people will want and benefit from?

Answers: Yes and yes. Participants in the digital music field that make money off content -- i.e. Napster, Yahoo Music, Rhapsody -- are incentivized to commoditize Apple's offering and steal the digital music market from them. While techies will probably be the only ones to embrace this early on, once open source innovation allows for really cool things that everyone wants -- an mp3 player that can access the web and send files to other mp3 players -- it could easily go mainstream.

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