[linux-audio-dev] [ANN] First public release of Lindrum v 0.5.1

[Jens M Andreasen]

On mån, 2004-03-01 at 19:53, Dave Griffiths wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Mar 2004 10:24:26 -0800, Tim Hockin wrote
> > On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 12:55:14PM -0500, Dave Robillard wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2004-03-01 at 07:07, guenter geiger wrote:
> > > > Lack of collaboration is one of the weaknesses of the free software
> > > > development (peculiarly enough it is considered one of its strenghts),
> > > > especially with audio software.
> > > 
> > > A weakness compared to what?  Proprietary software is /definitely/ not
> > > immune to this problem (in fact, I'd say it's far worse - there's no
> > > collaboration whatsoever).  Is is really a weakness of free software if
> > > non-free software has the same problem?
> > > 
> > > I don't hear people complaining about Steinberg and Emagic 'duplicating
> > > effort'.
> > 
> > How many OSS projects are aiming at similar goals?  Each one has one 
> > or two people on them.  If you put 5 or 6 people on one project, it 
> > would have a much better chance at competing with the big boys*.
> > 
> > (*) Assuming smart people who could find a common vision. ;)
> 

> The (most common) motivation for writing free software is for fun and
> interest, not thinking about the bigger picture from a users point of view, ie
> you dont really care how many other apps do the same thing as yours - as a
> developer you just want to write the app in your way and put your name on it :)
> 

I wholeheartely agree! I write my stuff for (uhmm?) Me!! I do not expect
anybody to have have any similar goals, but the source is there just in
case.

I use my own product though, so I try to make the UI as easy to deal
with as I can manage. (Otherwise I would be counterprodutive, no?)

If I have missed some abondoned project, then so what? How can that take
away my present joy of understanding what I am trying to accomplish? How
can that take away the joy from that abandoned project that I might
never have seen? And damned right yes, I stick my name on what I am
doing. There is blood in it, don't you know?

> Also large teams are not really the answer - often one or two people work much
> more effeciently due to communication overhead. I can't remember the stats,
> but you have to get to quite a large size before you get the advantage back
> (and have lots of red tape and boring procedures to follow)
> 

Large teams implies endless meetings and arrays of pointy haired bosses
without insight. In midi music you can observe the following pipeline
though:

  live performance/auto-composer
  arpeggiator/keyboardsplit(for whatever parameter)
  sequencer/tape/HD recording and timing
  postprocessing routing and mix

So at least eight people should be able work (according to your
measures) simultaniously on a full fledged fundamental midi system.

Therefore we can assume that there are eight little useful programmers:

ADD 8


Now we'd like some synths/samplers/vocoders as well to fill out the
empty spaces. If I had costumers I'd like to promise them to have at
least a choice of (say) 42 very different pitch-shaping machines (being
deliberately vague here ...)

Two persons on each "pitchshaper" (or just call it "synthesizer") times
fourtytwo adds upto eightyfour useful programmers:

ADD 84


Then we will just need a few guys to do postprocessnig, reverb beeing
one of the hardest part with a few teams calculated to fail ..

ADD 8


.. and of course also phasers/flangers/chorus/multple-delays and such
and such I haven't heard of ..

ADD 16

Did I mention distortion? No?

ADD 4

I now believe I need something like 116 talented and musical programmers
to pull this one off .. Which is not excactly a small company.

> The answer is to have common stuff like JACK and LADSPA - this seems to work
> really well, and share out the bits that appeal to different developers. 
> 
I
How many are we? A thousind?
Oh shit, you are right, we need Jack and friends
> dave
> 
> ................................. www.pawfal.org/nebogeo


sorry for beeing longwinded // Jens M Andreasen