[linux-audio-dev] Evolutionary Development, was: [ANN] First public release of Lindrum v 0.5.1

[Robert Jonsson]

Hi,

> I looked into hydrogen code. To learn. I looked into lot of little projects
> code. Dead projects. To learn. And IMHO they're not useless. Maybe my
> project will be dead at the end of the year. But then i made my experience
> and still can join hydrogen or other projects.
>

I agree with you and I don't think that you, or anybody else spend their times 
badly if they start new projects, on the contrary, the more the merrier! :)

The main requirement when you are about to create something is motivation. If 
you don't have that and start poking at something you will sooner or later 
run out of steam, unless you have an iron will. 
This might be the case if someone tells you which project project to start on, 
it'll work for a while, but then it's quite probable that you would lose 
interest.

I've always argued that if you zoom out and look at Open Source development 
from a distance it is evolutionary. Apps appear and die away all the time, 
only the ones with good life force will continue to strive.
This life force can be made of many things. 
For example: if the app interests a lot of people and they have found common 
ground in developing it together, or the app has a very stubborn lone 
developer that just won't give up. 
Both these kinds of apps will continue to live and possibly grow into 
something huge.
Whereas some apps are started out of a need/interest but didn't attract any 
immediate attention and the developer lost interest, they will sooner or 
later die away. There is nothing wrong with that.

This does also imply that open source development on a large scale is a rather 
slow process (not that any software development is fast), and we that are now 
participating in Linux Audio are working in (my opinion anyway) a very young 
development arena so diversity (or lack of direction if you will) is only 
natural at this instance in time. The more specialized projects that attract 
lots of developers _will_ come (there already exist a good bunch).

Of course the analogy isn't perfect, (or we would have to wait millions of 
years :-D) with clever management we can increase the speed and skip a few 
iterations. Which is how I for instance would describe the success of Jack.

My point is though that you can't force people into doing what they do not 
have any immediate interest in, their time is better spent making a larger 
base of developers overall, who knows, perhaps it's _their_ app that got it 
_right_. Not the possible predecessor.
And even if their app fail, they would have learned something that they can 
later make use of, and the code would still be available as evidence that 
there once was a project in that vein. Even if the code in itself could not 
be reused it might serve as inspiration for others to start something.

Sorry for being long winding,
Robert