[linux-audio-dev] Re: linuxaudio.org

[Chris Cannam]

On Wednesday 14 Jan 2004 9:48 pm, Marek Peteraj wrote:
> I'm sorry to say that, but you were about to destroy the importance
> of LAD with your ignorance.

I hadn't intended to join this thread, but this kind of talk is 
ridiculous.

As far as I can see, Daniel has had an idea for something, polled a 
few familiar names to see if there would be any interest, found that 
there might be, taken the initiative in talking to a number of 
industry contacts, created a provisional website and prepared to 
announce the consortium project.  This is surely the moral equivalent 
of the way practically any successful free software project starts 
up: by producing some decent code for people to work from and 
releasing it, rather than creating half a dozen web forums and 
spending hours on IRC discussing what colour the logo should be and 
whether drop shadows are cool or a bit last century.

Now Daniel has his own agenda, and you have yours, and others here 
have their own, and they're different enough for you to be arguing 
about them now.  So, the world of Linux audio developers is not one 
with a nice uniform viewpoint that's somehow encapsulated in this 
mailing list.  Doesn't that suggest that if this were to be debated 
here endlessly before anything could be done, nothing would be done? 
Surely the lesson from any successful free software project is that 
you have to have a kernel of a worthwhile implementation before you 
throw your idea open to ridicule.  If the people who are actually 
trying to do work in and with and around this consortium perceive, as 
the project runs, that Daniel is too autocratic or the consortium in 
general is being too ineffectual or the balance of power is wrong, 
then it will change or it will fail.  Personally I think he has a 
good idea and he's going about it in a reasonable, if hurried, way.  
There's room for discussion, but at this stage I think an energetic 
attempt to do more-or-less the right thing is much better than 
nothing.

Now of course I'm biased because I work on Rosegarden and Rosegarden 
is represented in the members list.  And Rosegarden is an enterprise 
with a commercial eye, just like Ardour and some of the other free 
software audio projects that we all love so much.  So I knew about 
this before it turned up on here.  But it's a brief, informal 
acquaintance, and I think anyone who looks at this and thinks there's 
a big cabal making strange legal promises to each other is wrong.

I can entirely understand people feeling frustrated that they didn't 
know about this, but it is true that it's at a very early stage, and 
that sort of thing always happens no matter what you do.  For 
example, one reason there were no Rosegarden developers at the first 
ZKM meeting was that it was only announced on LAD, and none of the 
Rosegarden developers were subscribed to LAD at the time, and I 
remember some misplaced frustration that nobody had bothered to tell 
us about it.  Daniel may not have contacted LAD about his idea, but 
at least he contacted many of the people on the projects that he knew 
about directly.  I have two points here: it's wrong to think of LAD 
as the one distinct voice of the community because it's a very 
self-selecting group; and being resentful is counterproductive and 
churlish, because nobody is trying to get at you in the first place.  
Fix the mistakes, don't moan about them.


Chris