Andrea Glorioso wrote: or just provide a sort of standardized link list, so that all other participants of the webring can be seen at a glance from each of the sites. perhaps we could have two sections: free community sites and commercial sites. linuxaudio.org could sit in between (this might even be reflected in the layout of the webring footer) as it happens, i'm a big fan of the lad icon, and we have worked a while to make it known to the public. it's the LAD logo, but everybody is invited to use it to "show their affiliation with the LAD community". maybe we should broaden the concept to "linux audio community". anyway, it's not up to me to decide. frank neumann has the copyright (the "affiliation" wording is his), and i would like to see it discussed on LAD. i would like to see all parts of the community (LAD, linuxaudio.org, younameit) share a common logo to generate some "corporate identity" both for the members of the communities and visitors, without each part implicitly having to endorse everything the other does. <braindump> in the same move, i like andrea's offer of subdomains a lot. in my personal view, something like the following would be perfect: linuxaudio.org (to become a portal with links to all the sub-domains) consortium.linuxaudio.org (what is now linuxaudio.org) lists.linuxaudio.org (what is now the administrative part of the lad page) community.linuxaudio.org (news about meetings and events, maybe a user-driven news portal in the future) software.linuxaudio.org (dave's site) documentation.linuxaudio.org (all the stuff from patrick's site, alsa-wiki, presentation material, press coverage, and whatever useful remains after cleaning up the lad page) alsa.linuxaudio.org (a link to the alsa site) jack.linuxaudio.org (a link to jackit.sf.net) ladspa.linuxaudio.org (a link to ladspa.org and plugin.org.uk) i don't really care whether these are subdomains or directories, but i would love to see all the major linux audio sites (that relate to more than one project or, such as jack, provide an infrastructure of sorts) collected here and maybe share some common looks. don't get me wrong, i'm not intending to force anybody in, or annihilate people's private efforts. it's just a "would be nifty" scenario to have everybody under one roof, and it has the nice side-effect of alleviating the remaining paranoia against linuxaudio.org :-D </braindump> i'm prepared to move the lad page over to linuxaudio.org if people don't vote against it. -- "I never use EQ, never, never, never. I previously used to use mic positioning but I've even given up on that too." - Jezar on http://www.audiomelody.com Jörn Nettingsmeier Kurfürstenstr 49, 45138 Essen, Germany http://spunk.dnsalias.org (my server) http://www.linuxaudiodev.org (Linux Audio Developers)

"Jack O'Quin" &lt;joq(a)io.com&gt; writes: Technically speaking there is not much difference. I'm personally fond of subdomains for purely stylistic reasons, however. bye, andrea

Paul Winkler &lt;pw_lists(a)slinkp.com&gt; writes: What were/are the exact requirements of such an application? We had been thinking of doing something similar inside AGNULA but if there is interest for LA, we can as well contribute. :) bye, andrea

Paul Winkler &lt;pw_lists(a)slinkp.com&gt; writes: Paul, did the server wake up? I'm curious to see the current state of affairs (so that we can direct people who visit the "applications" page at www.agnula.org to this site :) and of course help where we can). bye, andrea

Greetings: I want to add here that Paul's project certainly has my blessings. We all know how badly the site needs redesigned, and Paul is aware that I'm not going to put the time into learning a better content management system. I'd like to, but my time is severely limited and I have to be doing other things. IIRC, we also discerned that one of the first tasks would be the establishment of a backend database from the existing links and categories (which I would like to see redefined too). The URLs would need culled and organized: I don't think this would be a terribly difficult first step, maybe a good Perl script can do it ? Is PW not a Perlmeister ?? ;) At any rate, if anyone else wants to redefine the Linux soundapps pages, please contact me about it. This message is simply to state that PW and I have corresponded about such a development, that there is a historical context to his quoted remarks, and that I support the effort. Best regards, dp PS: I released a new edition a couple of days ago. Too busy/lazy to announce it... Paul Winkler wrote:

On Sat, Jan 31, 2004 at 05:14:12 -0500, Dave Phillips wrote: RDF! (rdf, rdf, rdf, ...) http://www.w3.org/RDF/ Full disclosure: You may want to take this with a pinch of salt due to favourite hammer syndrome; I currently justify my existence by developing a large-scale (GPL'd of course) RDF server. Good points: * this is exactly the kind of thing RDF is designed for * nice query syntax (like SQL but better) * very fashionable * interoperability (metadata can be used, and partly understood, by other tools because RDF has inherent semantics) Bad points: * RDF/XML syntax is horrific (but you hardly ever deal with it) * not famialiar to people who know LAMP systems * a bit more resource intensive than PHP+MySQL * RDF tools not as mature as relational databases You wouldn't want to use RDF for things like user comments and reviews, but its ideal for metadata-y things. I could help by providing things like web form -> RDF/XML CGI scripts and RDF knowledge-base hosting for betas. - Steve

On Sun, Feb 01, 2004 at 12:05:18 +0100, Andreas Kuckartz wrote: IIUC RDF (certainly RDF+OWL) can do everything that topic maps can, is more expressive and is much more widely used. G. Moore, 2001, "RDF and TopicMaps: An Exercise in Convergence" In Proc. XML Europe 2001, Berlin. http://www.gca.org/papers/xmleurope2001/papers/html/s23-3.html - Steve

On Sat, Jan 31, 2004 at 11:42:38 +0000, Dave Griffiths wrote: Mmm, yeah, I really likw that layout. Easy on the eyes. - Steve

On Sun, Feb 01, 2004 at 02:10:02 +0100, Frank Barknecht wrote: RDF servers tend to be databases underneath anyway (mines built on mysql) for speed and persistence reasons. You might be confusing RSS and RDF, RSS uses one RDF schema (and quite a popular one) but you generally use others in addition for domain specific things (like application and person metadata in this case). - Steve

On Saturday 31 January 2004 21:35, Paul Winkler wrote: ObPlug: Our putative Linux Musician site is aiming to do exactly this kind of thing. Not a WIKI (because it is edited) but a place where people can post app links, reviews, tutorials etc. I'm not suggesting it's there to replace anything (before the flames come on) just augmenting what's already there and aimed squarely at the user/musician: http://www.linuxmusician.com R

On 2/1/2004, "Steve Harris" &lt;S.W.Harris(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk&gt; wrote: Hmm.. what about just getting an RSS feed together driven by various sites? R

Joern Nettingsmeier wrote: this is the logo with the tape reel? i like this very much... the only problem i have is with the use of the word LAD - there are a few female linux audio users and developers *gasp!* and its quite aggressive to be confronted with the word LAD, especially given its meaning in UK society... i find it off-putting.... just my 2p m~ -- They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. --Benjamin Franklin |\ _,,,---,,_ ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ HTTP 503: Too Busy |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' '---''(_/--' `-'\_) fL .::. www.iriXx.org .::. www.copyleftmedia.org.uk .::.

Joern Nettingsmeier &lt;nettings(a)folkwang-hochschule.de&gt; writes: It must be said that LAD - in the sense of "Linux Audio Developers" - puts all the attention to the developers. Whilst I do believe this latter are of the utmost importance to spreading Libre Software into the audio domain, we shouldn't forget that the task will need many other competences besides coding - even more so when you think that these competences are exactly those Libre Software projects always have difficulties attracting: technical writers, graphic artists, event organizers, and so on and so forth. While I personally would prefer the term "Linux" to be replaced by "GNU/Linux", this argument has been already discussed and - although not fully convinced by the reasons given - I can live with using the name of a kernel as representative of an entire OS. :) I would suggest building our effort around the LA (which is the italian name for the `A' note, in case anybody cares :) acronym, and recognize LAD (and developers) as a central - but not the only - resource we need and want to work with. bye, andrea

Joern Nettingsmeier &lt;nettings(a)folkwang-hochschule.de&gt; writes: Yep - I personally prefer the implementation I described, but conceptually Joern's version is practically the same. I fail to understand how the distinction could be made. As long as the produced software is Libre Software, the produced documentation is licensed under either the GNU FDL (for technical documentation) or under a Creative Commons license (Attribution, Attribution/ShareAlike are my proposed choices) the distinction between "commercial" and "non commercial" becomes, IMHO, unuseful and *could* become unflexible. If the lead developer of a supposedly non commercial Libre Software project is hired for consulting on that particular piece of software s/he's been working on, does that turn the project into a commercial one? That's just a little example of situations that can and will arise while Libre Software becomes more popular in the audio domain. On the other hand, focusing on Libre Software (while not problem-free, of course) has a clearer characterization. After all, there is a reason why Libre Software licenses explicitly allow for commercial usage. We could mark "Libre" web sites with a clear icon or a tangible sign, so that people know what is Libre and what is not. If the distinction I'm proposing is fine with you, we should of course (and with "we" I mean a probably larger audience than this list, although pinpointing the most problematic point right now can help focusing the larger discussion later on) discuss on what can be considered "Libre" or not. Did you order your <fill in with your preferred stimulating drug here> supply? :) That would make sense to me. Sure. That's not so easy, I fear. It can be made doable providing a very clear set of rules to abide to (and discussing them, of course). Just to be clear, in this moment it's more of a proposal I will do to other consortium's members. I'm not the owner of the linuxaudio.org domain - the owner is Daniel James at the moment, although I suppose it will be passed on to the Consortium as soon as the latter is formed. Said that, as I already wrote, I will propose this subdomain project to the Consortium and vote for it. I'm not sure I understood what do you mean for "relating to more than one project". As for the common looks, it would be nice, but I'm not sure this can easily happen without major manpower (and some nice diplomatic skills). I'd personally love it - but I'd like first to see the Consortium legal status, wrt its nature and its statute, to be clearly defined first. This is to avoid any incomprehension (i.e. any humanly avoidable and understandable uncomprehension, we neither can nor should worry about the rest). bye, andrea

Joern Nettingsmeier &lt;nettings(a)folkwang-hochschule.de&gt; writes: Yes, it's probably better. I still think that, as long as a real distinction between Libre and non-Libre Software is maintained, most problems related to being commercial or not are quite secondary on the long run. A Libre Software project tends to be "honest" by its very nature. It's hard to spread outright lies about a product when its source code is available and some hundred persons look at it (and usually try to do things the original developers couldn't even think about - I receive reports on AGNULA/DeMuDi that really leave me perplexed sometimes :). That's fine - I love dreams, we would go nowhere without them. ;) I think that would be a good thing to have. Be prepared for some *long* discussion, however. It could make sense to draft a proposal and reserve a slot during the 2nd LAD conference for presenting it (as well as on the relevant mailing lists, of course), what do you think? Are you going to open it? :) I understand - and agree. Agreed. I'd like to have a clearer understanding of what the legal situation of the Consortium is (or is planned to be). I do understand that Daniel James is *very* busy preparing the booth at the Sounds Expo 2004, so we might as well stop making noise and wait for some answers before going on (I'm not trying to pressure Daniel or anybody else, I just believe in making small steps and fixing bugs/problems when they arise - the legal status of the Consortium in all of this discussion is, if not a bug, at least a point of uncertainty I'd like to see resolved as soon as possible). bye, andrea

I suggest the Board, when formed, starts from the existing policy statement: http://linuxaudio.org/en/policy.html I think all the clauses are reasonable, but from now on that will be for the Board to decide. It was me! If the policy is clear, then there's no room for FUD. Perhaps it's because I have some background as an editor, and have always written very short pieces myself. In the days of the 'blue pencil' used by newspaper editors, it was said that a really good editor could condense a full page of text into just a handful of the most important words. I think there should be a linuxaudio.org meeting there anyway - I envisaged a sort of 'round table'. I put the idea to Matthias Nagorni already, who liked the idea and said he would put it to Frank Neumann. I am planning to be there - at the moment I'm trying to get magazine interest in the conference to a) increase publicity and b) help pay for the trip, but there have been no firm commitments from editors so far. Cheers Daniel

Not as yet. Cheers Daniel