[LAU] bitwig announcement

Thomas Vecchione seablaede at gmail.com
Sun Jan 15 22:25:12 UTC 2012


On Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 1:27 PM, Alan Russell <ajrussellaudio at gmail.com>wrote:

> Also, let's not kid ourselves on - Bitwig is not a Linux app, it is a
> cross-platform app that happens to support Linux. No one is going to
> install Ubuntu just to run Bitwig. It's not going to bring anyone over
> to Linux, neither did Renoise or energyXT, both cross-platform
> closed-source commercial apps on Linux. It's just going to be
> available to those who want to run it on Linux, because they make
> music on Linux already. Take it from a recent convert - we Win/Mac
> users aren't stupid, we know that Linux is all about the FLOSS. It's
> stuff unique to Linux like JACK that is going to bring users over, not
> the stuff that we can install anyway.
>
>
Going to pick on you, but you are far from the only person to have these
thoughts(Including me not to long ago)...

Since when does Platform/OS==SoftwareRunningOnPlatform/OS?

If you are referring to the ecosystem that includes the community, then I
would argue that includes far more than just Linux as a platform.  If you
are referring to the OS, then it shouldn't make any difference what other
OSes this software runs on or doesn't.

In other words, what makes any software 'Linux Software' by your
definition?  Is it that it is Open Source?  Open Source is far more than
just Linux.  Is it that it runs on Linux?  Well Bitwig apparently runs on
Linux (Supposedly) as do many other closed source programs.

Linux is far more than just audio software in general.  Audio Software is
also far more than what you will find on Linux.  I am on Linux because I
prefer it as a platform to run my software on.  I was running Ardour and
Mixbus on OS X full time for many years (And before that on Linux as well)
but have switched back to Linux not because of the individual software on
Linux, but because of the platform.  Believe me it literally cost me
thousands to do so in lost plugins etc.  Appropriate tools to do what I get
paid to do professionally and make my living off of is what forced me onto
OS X .  And indeed for some things i am still forced to use OS X or even a
VM of Windows, System Design Modeling and Prediction, DSP
programming(Speaker processing, etc.), System Tuning, etc. all still don't
have the needed tools available on Linux to match what I need to do and the
speed I need to do it in in order to continue being paid.  But for audio
production work, the tools are now at a point on Linux that I feel I can
come back and even after having lost some plugins that have no replacement
on Linux natively, lost access to hardware, and other tools, still
accomplish my work in at least a comparable amount of time to allow me to
continue to work and get paid.

Does this mean I don't care about open source?  Not at all, if I didn't I
would probably have stayed on OS X with Logic, DP, PT, or one of the many
other solutions.  This is entirely to point out that Linux as the Platform,
Open Source as the Ecosystem, and Software as the Tools are three
completely different topics, and should be treated as such.  As a result I
am probably on the same side as Alexandre and see this coming to Linux not
as a bad thing that will destroy the ecosystem.  Just that the ecosystem
will change.  How?  Who knows, but we will find out.

       Seablade
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