[LAU] an interesting free album

Ray Rashif schivmeister at gmail.com
Sat May 30 12:43:23 EDT 2009


I personally believe that using closed-source task-oriented (DAW in this
case) software isn't that much of a threat to freedom. It does have some
cons, but they're not as significant like say, mainstream software products
for the mass market that usually connect to the internet for one reason or
another, and are mostly indifferent to opinions from a certain userbase.
This is especially true for community-supplemented software like Renoise,
energyXT, and REAPER.

Just like open-source products, these applications have a tight following.
Feedback is often taken seriously and implemented as fast as possible. If
you take a look at their changelogs, it's apparent that a lot of the
features and bugfixes are results of feedback from users. REAPER's own JS
scripting provides a good and open way for anyone to extend functionality.

For most engineers, it's a deploy-once-and-use sort of thing. As such,
purchasing a license for a software is basically a one-time sacrifice of
freedom. As the code doesn't matter for most of us (at least during the
timespan we actually use the product for creating content and earning a
revenue), it's almost the same as GPL software when it comes to the
community aspect. The only difference is that the community here is
supplementary.

No company would mention Linux as even a remotely-supported creature if they
didn't care about the userbase.

As for other kinds of applications, I take it as a hardware investment. A
very good example is Guitar Rig. I bought it once and never updated it - it
still serves me well and it tags along with my outboard gear. I have a
number of VSTi plug-ins that I purchased some time ago, and they're still
functioning. Before being on a laptop full-time, I had a desktop DAW
alongside which wasn't given any chance to connect to the WWW. The entire
system is in fact just one big bundle of hardware and software, which in the
end is just hardware to me.
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