[LAU] Proposal: OpenDAWS (long)

[Nick Copeland]

By your own remarks there are already issues with the specification that may 
require modifications and optimisations for an open system, such as Linux 
for example, so you recognise the possiblity that changes would be required. 
Those changes would have to be raised through the consortium via a paying 
member as the consortium does not accept requests from outside of their cosy 
liittle circle. Should the community to accept that requirement?

You state that you do not understand my objections? They are simple, I stand 
on the side of open source, open standards, and general implementation 
without fees, demands, legal recourses or other futher liabilities, and as 
yet this organisation posts documents refering to the liabilities of those 
who implement their specification.

If you do decide to accept this standard then I hope that minimally you can 
get your friends at the BBC and related organisations to accept removing 
their demands for royalties of the applications implementing their XML 
specification. I would prefer that were linux to adopt such a standard that 
it were released under GPL for those who wish to adopt rather than for those 
who might be able to simply via some form of dispensation from a commercial 
organisation.

If Linux cannot accept their so called standard due to the nature of its 
licensing then perhaps work is still needed on an open standard since the 
body of work represents a requirement. The proposal of the original posting 
was such an open document.

On the other hand, if you only want your application to accept those demands 
then by all means implement it, but then also refrain from even suggesting 
to the open source community that such an open standard already exists when 
evidently that is not the case, as you did in your rather terse submit. 
Strangely enough, your promotion of this consortium amost seemed targetted 
at preventing the implementation of an open and hence competitive 
alternative, and that seems strangely close to business practices of several 
frowned upon companies.

n.

>From: Paul Davis <paul at linuxaudiosystems.com>
>Reply-To: paul at linuxaudiosystems.com,A list for linux audio users 
><linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org>
>To: A list for linux audio users <linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org>
>Subject: Re: [LAU] Proposal: OpenDAWS (long)
>Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:05:58 -0400
>
>On Wed, 2007-06-06 at 18:21 +0200, Nick Copeland wrote:
> > It seems a bit sad that any Linux advocate should be backing this 
>operation,
> > it would cost about $1500 per year to get access to any kind of support 
>for
> > the SDK or advice on best practices and cosiderably more if you really 
>want
> > to participate. You could stump up $175 per year yourself to propose 
>changes
> > as long as you can find somebody paying the full price or more to back 
>you.
> > It is a commercial directive not an open movement. From a perspective of
> > Linux audio it is already a pain that the Midi Manufacturers Association
> > want cash for their specifications.
> >
> > So is the argument for this specification will be 'the professional
> > applications will be using it' hence it becomes the standard?
> >
> > The whole specification is delivered outside of a GPL, products using 
>its
> > specifications are expected to pay royalty licensing and as such should 
>not
> > be advocated as a part of any open source movement.
> >
> > The proposal here was for an open format, not a closed consortium 
>format,
> > the difference may be subtle and is apparantly lost on some people.
>
>I'm not entirely sure what your objections are. I have the whole AAF
>spec in front of me, downloaded for free. The BBC has been pushing AAF
>towards more and more open sub-standards over the years, including its
>soon-to-be-released adoption of XML rather than a totally ugly AAF-only
>format for the file itself. There is no licensing fee, no license, no
>patents. I am almost wondering if you are looking at the same thing I
>am. I've gotten excellent support from the main members of the steering
>committee, who happen to work for the BBC and are quite involved in its
>open source work (Dirac and more).
>
>I am not going to spend time on supporting a "new" (i.e. LA-specific)
>interchange format when the vast majority of ardour users need
>interchange with proprietary applications, several of which already
>support AAF (not AAF-XML, yet). It has the industry more than a decade
>to get the rather pitiful state of affairs that AAF represents already,
>and I don't hold out hope of any magic bullets. There is a lot of
>collective wisdom that went into its design, even though it does smack
>of design-by-committee.
>
>IMO, the real problems with AAF as it currently stands is its horrendous
>complexity and its inability to be filesystem neutral.
>
>--p
>
>
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>Linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org
>http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user

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