[linux-audio-dev] Re: The Image (usablity) problem from a Musicians point of view

[John Lazzaro]

> Lea Anthony <stonekeeper at stonekeeper.freeserve.co.uk> writes
>
> Wishing for people to write native apps for a system with no market is
> like wishing Windows would die. It might happen, but it's not bloody
> likely.

However, if you port a novel Linux application to Windows or OS X,
the users on those platforms are quite happy to add the free tool
to their workflow if it helps them do their work better. This is
how the GNU project got its start, after all -- free, usable software
that ran on popular commercial UNIX platforms. Sfront has taken
this route -- most of my users are non-Linux users now. 

I think there's a migration path to Linux that could be based on
this strategy -- if the free software community comes up with a 
set of audio content-creation tools that Windows or OS X users 
are willing to use as a complete workflow, the case for switching
over to Linux to run the workflow more efficiently (or to avoid
OS license upgrade fees, etc) is easier to make. Certainly on the
CLI side, many people started out at Cygwin users to run emacs
and gcc and TeX under Windows, and then decided to add a dual-boot
option for Linux to get "the real thing."

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John Lazzaro -- Research Specialist -- CS Division -- EECS -- UC Berkeley
lazzaro [at] cs [dot] berkeley [dot] edu     www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro
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