[linux-audio-dev] KEYBOARDS: Linux is not suited for audio applications ...

[Chris Cannam]

On Saturday 06 September 2003 12:58, Paul Davis wrote:
> everyone wanting their own project, so you have myself, werner (muse)
> and richard brown (rosegarden)

Bown, not Brown.

> all working on our own sequencer/daw
> apps rather than together on a single program.

Mostly I think that's inevitable and not a bad thing.  Richard isn't the 
only core Rosegarden developer -- there are three of us -- and the 
project has a quite different focus from Ardour.  It's not at all clear 
that any of us would be working on Ardour even if it were practical to 
do so and we were not working on Rosegarden.  I'm sure the reverse is 
also true.  And I would be surprised if these two projects really 
compete with one another at all in practice.

Of course, the relationship is somewhat lopsided -- we get to use 
technology you've developed (such as JACK) but Rosegarden has never 
really contributed anything reusable back to the pool of common code.  
That's not ideal, but again, it's not surprising -- Rosegarden is very 
much about GUI, it has little in the nature of truly interesting core 
technology.

The similarity between Rosegarden and MusE is another matter, but even 
then they have quite different personalities.  People tend to prefer 
one or the other immediately, and not necessarily just on the basis of 
features.  So long as there is no more diversity than on other 
platforms and so long as the projects are cooperative where necessary, 
I think things should be fine.

So no, I don't think there's a problem now.  But there probably will be 
in the future, as projects continue to become more diverse.  If the 
fact that the code is available isn't enough to entice people to 
contribute to existing projects, then sure, we will start to see 
applications dying off as they reach 80-90% complete (the stage at 
which the core developers are happy to use them but nobody else is), 
and other new projects springing up, and nothing ever really being 
usable.  Several applications (Brahms, Jazz, Denemo, a handful of MIDI 
sequencers) have already appeared to fade when at reasonably advanced 
stages, and it's probably only because none of them had yet become 
truly competitive with shrinkwrap programs on other platforms and 
because other projects were already beginning to offer more that we've 
been prepared to accept their disappearance as normal.


Chris