[linux-audio-user] Anyone able to run Csound in Linux in real-time?

Brian Redfern bredfern at calarts.edu
Tue Mar 18 20:18:00 EST 2003


Its not true that its totally old, new opcodes get added all the time,
there's almost twice as many opcodes for instruments now (with a whole
bunch of new physical modelling instruments added) as there were in '95. I
would use pd for doing realtime stuff, what I like Csound for is genrating
really whacked out synthesis that would be impossible (even on really good
hardware) to generate in realtime. 

The biggest problem with csound is the fact that its very hard to build
under a standard redhat 8.0 setup, I don't think you have the same problem
using say debian potatoe, but it seems like the csound developers are
using a really old linux distro for development, the
"unnofficial" version builds very easily on redhat 8.0, but its no longer
supported, so I think csound would definitely improve if it could be dual
liscensed like mysql where you can get a gpl copy to use the code for
free, but if you want to build a commercial product to sell with csound
embedded, then you pay MIT a fee (like you do when you create a product
with mysql embbedded). 

http://www.brianredfern.org

On Tue, 18 Mar 2003, Frank Barknecht wrote:

> Hallo,
> Dave Phillips hat gesagt: // Dave Phillips wrote:
> 
> > Frank, as you can see, this license prohibits *any* redistribution
> > unless specifically contracted via MIT. 
> 
> I didn't understand it this way, but it seems to be even worse than I
> thought...
> 
> > However, Rick Boulanger recently met with Barry Vercoe to ask
> > specifically about a change in the license. Apparently Barry is
> > sympathetic but he may not have the real power to change it, i.e., it
> > might be more MIT's decision than his (as you can see above, Barry does
> > not hold the copyright, it belongs to MIT). At any rate, Rick spoke with
> > Barry a few weeks ago and nothing of substance has been reported yet.
> > Rick is a good fellow, I know he wants to help resolve this rather
> > important issue, but don't hold your breath waiting for a change. 
> 
> Yes, this license discussion is so old but it is also so sad. MIT
> could make available a good software, but they need to face the fact,
> that it is several *decades* old. I see no way they could make any
> money from such an "old-fashioned" software, and also Csound is *only*
> still useful today because of the work, non-MIT people like j. ffitch
> are doing for it. 
> 
> So MIT isn't just holding back a piece of software they own, but a
> whole community, that they don't own, but they behave like the did.
> There lies the real tragic of the whole affair and that is the point,
> why every 6 months or so an important developer is leaving the Csound
> community. 
> 
> I really hope, Dr. Boulanger can persuade the MIT to make Csound open
> source. I learned a lot from the Csound book, but I'm forced to use
> this knowledge in Pd now. (Which I would have done anyway, I guess ;)
> 
> ciao
> -- 
>  Frank Barknecht                               _ ______footils.org__
> 




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