On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 12:55:14PM -0500, Dave
Robillard wrote:
On Mon, 2004-03-01 at 07:07, guenter geiger
wrote:
Lack of collaboration is one of the weaknesses of
the free software
development (peculiarly enough it is considered one of its strenghts),
especially with audio software.
A weakness compared to what? Proprietary software is /definitely/ not
immune to this problem (in fact, I'd say it's far worse - there's no
collaboration whatsoever). Is is really a weakness of free software if
non-free software has the same problem?
I don't hear people complaining about Steinberg and Emagic 'duplicating
effort'.
How many OSS projects are aiming at similar goals? Each one has one
or two people on them. If you put 5 or 6 people on one project, it
would have a much better chance at competing with the big boys*.
(*) Assuming smart people who could find a common vision. ;)
The (most common) motivation for writing free software is for fun and
interest, not thinking about the bigger picture from a users point of view, ie
you dont really care how many other apps do the same thing as yours - as a
developer you just want to write the app in your way and put your name on it :)
Also large teams are not really the answer - often one or two people work much
more effeciently due to communication overhead. I can't remember the stats,
but you have to get to quite a large size before you get the advantage back
(and have lots of red tape and boring procedures to follow)
The answer is to have common stuff like JACK and LADSPA - this seems to work
really well, and share out the bits that appeal to different developers.
dave
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