Re: [LAD] Experience driven design and Linux Audio

On Thu, October 2, 2014 7:44 pm, Neil C Smith wrote: I've seen those reports too. They are optimistic but potential growth is not the same thing as actually growing. It's more likely to be corporate buyers replacing existing stock. The current situation is the consumer desktop PC market when it comes to audio/multimedia has been decimated by mobile. The Linux Audio Market is currently doing best in embedded hardware. If we want to consider Android as a Linux OS then Linux Audio is doing the best that it has been for years with many companies that have nothing to do with LAD making a business out of their Android applications. The corporate market is still there as a potential battle ground and will probably never go away but getting Linux Audio into the corporate market is a very tough slog. Even at companies where they have massive investments in Linux infrastructure and embedded hardware they are still using OSX for multimedia production and M$ for general purpose administration. It's almost impossible to convince an established Digital Media department that Linux is an appropriate platform for their team members. Firstly there is a massive lack of expertise and training. For example, It is very rare to see a job ad for a multimedia position that uses open source technology. The Blender community is making some headway in the training aspect of the problem but it is slow going. Nearly every "professional" multimedia person working in corporate space uses those other tools and platforms without question. To change that will require getting into the heads of corporate managers so they make decisions based on a different set of goals. It's a tough sell. It will also require students to choose Open Source over proprietary and that is also a hard nut to crack because the proprietary companies offer incentives to the HoD's that open source can't match. Will Linux Desktop professional or consumer multimedia ever become a growth market? I am not convinced that putting additional effort into usability is the key to cracking it. IMO there are other issues that need to be resolved first. Getting a couple more big names in on the game will be useful too. I recall Native-Instruments were on the fence a couple of years back. They needed more convincing at the time. Maybe they have an update about their assessment of the current market? Has anyone here actually tried selling *any* kind of app on the Ubuntu App Store? Does anyone have actual data about the amount of people out there who use LAD tools? the past 4 years I am not seeing significant growth or decline month on month. One could spin it that we have seen overall growth because it is unlikely that a lot of the same people would return to the LAU-Guide on a regular basis. That suggests that there is a reasonable sized potentially untapped market out there of at least 100k. Who are these mysterious people and will they spend any money? If I had tracking tags on the site I might be able to provide more details but I don't. Until someone nails a mega successful app/model with Linux the other companies waiting in the wings will continue to dip their toes. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd