its I am. Check my website. But I am also running out of steam (or maybe I am simply exhausted by the end-of-school-year syndrome, so everything appears to be grim to me :-), so to speak. I feel as if my efforts are on a larger scale practically pointless simply because the community is so fragmented that we have tons of redundant apps (see sound servers for example), out of which many of them are incomplete, other that work great do not have widespread use and/or purpose, and others are simply inefficient. For instance, I would love to see KDE drop the ugly artsd and use either Jackd or alsa's dmix plugin, but that is not going to happen because they believe that artsd is better (for whatever odd reason). Now for me to hack KDE to use jackd is simply too daunting a task (if not impossible), and yet to convince KDE developers to take that path has been tried in the past and has yielded even less promising results than the first option. If, only if we could do this small step of setting the platform-wide standards (and here I do not speak only in terms of audio), we would have OSX unified framework in Linux where it would make sense to make user-friendly tools that sit on top of that framework (regardless of its continuous development -- at least we would have one framework to deal with). As it is now, there is no sense of doing so when the underlying frameworks continuously change and/or compete making any kind of such tool obsolete overnight. At best one could keep on wasting time updating the user-friendly tool to keep up with the underlying changes, but that would detract efforts of many from bettering what is most important now -- a unified and powerful underlying framework. Yet, that is not what we're working on right now... Oh well, never mind. I am rambling away... Maybe I am simply impatient... I'll try to get some R&R this summer, then maybe my outlook on the whole enchilada will not look so grim :-)... Regards, Ico

On Sat, Jun 21, 2003 at 07:53:38PM -0400, Ivica Bukvic wrote: (cut) I noted a lot of Mac OS X projects making use of libsndfile already. The common Unix base is a huge step forward. Now there are 2 mainstream OSs with more or less the same semantics. :-) v

Thanks! This really helped me see straight again :-). However this brings up one interesting point/problem. Due to GPL nature of Linux software, many of our efforts will seamlessly bleed into OS X world since there are no restrictions as to which platform this software is run on, and Apple made an explicit move to target open-source developers and/or users by implementing Darwin and underlying almost-Unix system. To me this is a problem. Since, all our efforts and time will not lure more people to Linux. Rather, our software will (perhaps) become popular (pro-tools killer or whatever), but not necessarily on a Linux platform. In the end, we will not reap what we have sown. Users on the OS X will be theoretically able to run Ardour as much as we will, especially now that jackd has been ported to OS X. To me, this does not seem right. I would hence like to propose a new idea and you guys tell me what you think: Perhaps we should make a mended version of GPL that would have exact permissions like the original GPL license, but in addition would ask that the software cannot be run on top of proprietary OS. This way, we can make our software indigenous only to free/oss OS's and hence create unique benefits that come from using Linux (and other open-sourced OS's, obviously). Now, if we did this, then Linux in the long run would have a definite advantage. As it stands now, it is only a matter of time before all of the good linux audio software gets ported to (or ever worse, becomes fully compatible with) OS X and other proprietary OS's and then we end up putting all this effort into a community that in the end might not grow at all, while offering benefits to those who did not chip in any effort into the movement, nor do they understand the meaning behind it. This certainly could pose problems for anyone who plans to make a living in any shape or form associated with Linux and GPL'ed audio software (Paul?). What do you think? Ivica Ico Bukvic, composer & multimedia sculptor http://meowing.ccm.uc.edu/~ico [mailto:linux-audio-dev-

I guess I don't see it as a problem. Forcing people to use this or that software is exactly what GPL is AGAINST. Use whatever works for you. I guesss feel free to do it with your own software - I don't know that such a proviso is in my best interests..

better guess My point exactly :-). Just to add a bit onto this issue is that we could still support non-opensource systems, but they would need to purchase the software (see my other e-mail with the Trolltech as an example). Ico

On Sat, 21 Jun 2003 20:22:37 -0400 "Ivica Bukvic" <ico(a)fuse.net> wrote: I really don't see this as a problem. For my two libraries (libsndfile and libsamplerate) I'm glad to see them run on OSX. For GUI stuff, someone is going to have to either write a native GUI or suffer the VERY slow speed of X11 on top of the laready slow OSX. Erik -- +-----------------------------------------------------------+ Erik de Castro Lopo nospam(a)mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid) +-----------------------------------------------------------+ The Earth is around 70% water. Fish rule the seas. Humans are over 90% water. It's only a matter of time.

On Sat, 21 Jun 2003 22:16:52 -0400 "Ivica Bukvic" <ico(a)fuse.net> wrote: Well people using libsndfile means that there are less people rolling their own buggy implementations. This eventually means that libsndfile has to handle fewer broken files due to someone else's buggy implementation. But th emain reason is that most audio software requires a GUI. Any program that is Linux based will have an X11 GUI (at least to start with). On OSX that GUI will always be slower that the Linux version. On mailing lists for this software people will be told again and again that the performance on Linux is better and sooner or later will want to try the real thing. Erik -- +-----------------------------------------------------------+ Erik de Castro Lopo nospam(a)mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid) +-----------------------------------------------------------+ Everything that I've learned about computers I have boiled down into three principles: PC/Windows: You think it won't work, and it won't. Macintosh: You think it will work, but it won't. Unix: You think it won't work, but if you find the right guru, you can make it work.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Le 22 Juin 2003 07:28, Ivica Bukvic a écrit : So basically, you want to restrict the use of a software to a specific type of operating system? Like M$ does? This is against the idea of free software. I never heard of a free software license that restricts the use of a software to a specific type of operating system, computer of peripheral. Adding this restriction to the GPL and use double licensing would not make it better, it would make it non-free. Read the GPL. Here's an excerpt: "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope." So GNU/Linux users are elitists because they can use command line tools? You sound like a typical elitist Mac user... ;-) - -- Marc

On Sun, Jun 22, 2003 at 01:46:30PM -0400, Ivica Bukvic wrote: one theme that permeates much opensource software is user empowerment. freedom from silly obstacles like per-seat licensing or artificial technical limits by design or stupidity. because of this, i'd much rather work with opensource software like gcc or apache, etc than their closed counterparts even before considering price. but this plan does not empower the user. it penalizes the wrong people (the users) for a marginal effect if any on the company. if it were your goal to make free software more popular (and admittedly this isn't my goal), it would make sense to make lots of free software available to people on OS X and XP who may not otherwise come in contact with it. so maybe they'll say, "hey, i got this software for free and it's neat....i wonder what else is out there like it?" you don't put a 'no gurls allowed' sign on your clubhouse and then complain about how no hot chicks ever show up. (ohhh that was probably offensive, but i think it's a fantastic metaphor ... for something). if nothing else think of the children: just because the school system makes a deal with apple or MS does that mean those kids don't deserve free software or deserve to make music if their school can't afford 5 or 10 copies off logic? are they just little closed source satans in the making waiting in dark places to monopolize your precious bodily fluids[1]? this could actually mean a substantive even life altering change by giving them the chance to play with your audio programs. (and if anyone wants to start a company that gives away free audio software and sells hardware, lesson plans, training, and support to k-12 (and especially economically disadvantaged) schools to create hands on music classes count me in. you would probably be eaten alive by good press). i will take my hyperbole and go home now. rob [1] dr. strangelove reference just in case you were wondering. ---- Robert Melby Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!gt4255a Internet: async(a)cc.gatech.edu LocalWords: empowerment

Do we want to _become_ what our "competition" is? I don't think so. I don't like pushy tactics. We are (by some measure) successsfull because we are not like the "competition". [just to keep banging on a bad analogy :-] My guess is that they would go to the one that is "cool" (whatever is cool at the moment). If the one that is not free is the one where the "cool" crowd hangs out, they will pay. And you will have a free but empty clubhouse (well, not really empty, a few geeks will be there talking about cool software... and yes, I would end up there as well :-). Of course it might also happen that the cool clubhouse is the one that is free, but don't take that as a given. Anyway, I don't think acceptance of the os will ever come from twisting arms. Users will use the os that meets their need. Actually, most users will use the os that comes with the machine they bought. Tying the use of a free cool app to running it in the free operating system so that users will switch will not work (I think). If the os they use does not come with the coolest tools (BTW, their idea of cool may be different from ours), and they are not available in "free" versions because of licensing issues they will just not use them and will use whatever else is available (free or not). -- Fernando

On Sun, Jun 22, 2003 at 05:52:47PM -0400, Ivica Bukvic wrote: that sounds suspiciously like a marginal effect. i know the open group certifies os's as unix, who certifies them as unix-like? does that mean they would be unix-like-like if they couldn't get unix-like certification? (and really, they can (and will) claim whatever they like). it has only been very recently that software from one unix could even be run on another without porting (recompiled or not) and only because of bend-over-backwards-to-make-it-work solutions like autotools. unix as a class was (and is) defined as much by its mutual incompatibilities as anything else. luckily we have mac os <= 9 and windows to say "well it's not one of those". why the preoccupation with operating systems? why stop there when greed and avarice so clearly motivates intel and amd and the other major chip manufacturers? why should we allow them to support intel and amd *and* use our software? once we solve that problem what is next on the agenda? this would be a fantastic ploy: get everyone to depend on some app and then when they least suspect have the next version of the software include a license that requires one of the following: be a good country, stop war, stop hunger, buy you an icecream sandwhich, or a hojillion bucks (in small bills near the trashcan). what is the purpose of converting everyone to Linux (or any other oss OS)? is it for their own good? for our good? or because you know once they *understand*, they will be part of the revolution too, and then we could really stick it to ms and apple? how does that help linux? linux doesn't in general need more users, it needs more participants (ie coders, etc). because they want a unix-like environment? are you sure it's all the software they need? is it free or free as long as you run the stuff we say you have to and whatever else we care to think up ? it clearly doesn't. but to summarize: it's a bad idea. it's morally and ethically questionable (within my value system). i would not help or promote projects that adopted this license. if i wanted to use it, it would encourage me to write a workalike that is free (for my value of free). but certainly you are free to license your work as you see fit. rob ---- Robert Melby Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!gt4255a Internet: async(a)cc.gatech.edu

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Le 22 Juin 2003 13:46, Ivica Bukvic a écrit : Guess what: your derived license would be incompatible with the GPL or any OSI license. You don't understand what free software is. Including free software within closed source software is wrong, but allowing free software to run on any platform is good, as long as the source code is released. The restrictions imposed by the GPL are meant to make sure that derived works are released with the source code. M$ and Apple always included free softwares in their operating systems, but they often (always in the case of M$) "forgot" to release the source code of their modifications. What they're doing is wrong, but the free software community would be stupid to play their game by restricting usage of free software to free operating systems. Are you stating that I'm elitist because I use command line tools? I never agreed with gui users that believe their tools are easier and better for ordinary people. These tools are sometimes so complicated and badly designed that the only reasonable command to use is "quit". As much as you think they should use a gui because you believe they can't use anything else, I think ordinary people should use free command line tools because they can. Text is not elitist, and it's still the easiest and most powerful intellectual technology. Have you ever tried to reduce a bunch of images (let's say 10000) with Photoshop? It's much easier and efficient with the ImageMagick command line tools. Am I elitist because I use a better (and free) tool which happens to be text based? I may be part of an elite, but I'm not requiring anybody to use the same free tools as me. Even M$ uses ImageMagick in their Office suite, but they charge a fortune to include this free tool in a closed source product. That's wrong, and that's why I believe ordinary people should learn to use free tools the "elite" way. I don't care about Linux. I care about free software. I don't care if the Linux kernel runs on proprietary hardware, like I don't care if a free software runs on top of a proprietary OS. I'd much prefer that everything, from the silicon chip to the gui tools were made entirely free, but since I must choose, I prefer that free software be allowed to run on top of non-free software. The free software movement is not purist, it's trying to make this world better by rational and ethical means. Hopefully, at some point, most of the computing chain will be free, including the hardware. - -- Marc

On Sun, Jun 22, 2003 at 11:25:58PM -0400, Ivica Bukvic wrote: i wouldn't mind this being free-audio-dev list. although i think it would lose some of the technical focus on the particular intricacies of developing audio systems on linux. (to a large extent alsa and jack have made many of the issues moot. we are really down to which release is best for scheduling and how the whole permission/capability issue sucks, and in all truth abandoning linux for drawin would probably cure those :D). if i remember my history correctly there was a boy and his pc and an ftp and some other folks who were bored. and *then* the corporations came. i didn't really notice a huge amount of change in the speed of development before and after companies came into the picture (mostly because their focus was on things i don't use, and progress in audio on linux has been glacial as ever (i feel). though jack seemed a huge move forward). linux was here before the money and it will be here when the money's gone. and then something better will come along and linux will be assigned to the scap heap. don't get too attached, it only makes one inflexible. but to answer the original question, if history is a guide, i guess the taxpayers of finland will fund the development. fair enough. i think if you're not a developer, free software doesn't make a lot of sense with respect to why it's good and what you gain (unless the product is outright better). for a developer, you gain a lot; you can basically do anything you want (and are capable of), but when you are just a lowly user, it might appear that you are merely trading one master for another. instead of being subject to the whim of a company that doesn't listen, you are at the whim of developers who often times don't listen and tell you that you whine too much and should start pulling your own weight. (and yeah that's a caricature of the actual situation). i would love to see wider adoption, but for a user coming from logic, pt, cubase, and whatall, right now, it doesn't make sense. it makes sense as a philosophical move or for technological freedom, or for curiousity's sake, but i honestly don't see it making sense in terms of productivity. heck, for most folks, switching sequencers is a huge investment in time and effort. so we are back at the original question: what do you do to drive wider adoption? if you assume what i'm saying two paragraphs up is in some way accurate, then it makes sense that you should make software so good that it will make people want to switch (and once they switch to the audio software and are happy, motivating a switch to linux is easy). how do you fund it? convince redhat that audio is the next big industry for linux to take on and get them to hire all of us. or keep regular jobs to pay the bills. or go to school and con your advisor or your prefered funding agency into giving you money to do it (or something near enough to it: e.g. ask DARPA for a grant to develop a system that kills puppies *while* making music...DARPA is all about the puppy killing). or start a company and attempt to find funding for it (vc or by starting really small and getting bigger). or start a company to do something else entirely and then funnel some money into moving into the audio application space. or convince someone (nat. endowment for the humanties/arts, education dept., lots of national governments with money out there) that the linuxmusic-for-schools idea i mentioned before is such a great idea that they should grant a relatively small amount of money up front for you to develop an application suite which will pay huge dividends later. or sell cookies. or start an audio effects house to do sound and music for movies and then develop custom tools for doing that. start a music hardware company building linux based gear and develop custom tools. i mean if one were super motivated, one could just start a company, build a product, and then sell it and support. easy no? (no). by the way what is your particular research bent/area? it seems like that would in the short term be the easiest and most likely way of doing it (ie grants to fund development of a foundation and set of applications which have much greater flexibility and appeal to more users (than say Csound, et.al.) might without the high cost and inflexibility of proprietary solutions). rob ---- Robert Melby Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!gt4255a Internet: async(a)cc.gatech.edu

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Le 22 Juin 2003 23:25, Ivica Bukvic a écrit : So, after all this discussion, do you agree that your proposal would not help free software? That the GNU/Linux platform is not a end in itself? Thank you. That's exactly what I'm doing here. Politics. Not business to protect free platforms against non-free platforms by forging a non-free software license. I don't get it. What _attitude_? I have no problem hurting the fragile feelings of proprietary software users. I'm not trying to sell them anything, except the idea that they should use free software whenever possible. If I'm not successful, then other free software users might be. But I promess I'll study the "Linux advocacy howto". We can talk about your software and your experience if you prefer. I like your work. I'm a GNU/Linux user, but I don't care about Linux, I care about using free software. I might decide to use another free platform or I might be forced to work on a proprietary platform for a couple of minutes per week. In any case, I want to use as much free software possible, not exclusively on top of GNU/Linux. The GPL is very well done, and since Stallman is defending a strong idea, he looks like a religious leader, but he's quite pragmatic. He's also human, and gets angry sometimes. Oh well. The free software movement is not purist in the sense that it's trying to bring free software to this world, not by forcing people to use free software, but by promoting and protect the use of free software. Those who believe in free software like RedHat, IBM, Suse, some universities and governments... By enthusiatic developers with enough money to survive. 10 years ago, I was eager to buy a Mac with their promised Unix like operating system built on top of a Mach micro-kernel. Apple finally delivered something good, 6 years after I switched to GNU/Linux. Now it's too late because the GNU/Linux platform is good enough and a much better choice because it is (mostly) free, except for some graphic cards drivers (nVidia, ATI and Matrox are very bad these days). I hope you'll succeed. I quit my job in a university because as a super-technician I was forced to help art students use proprietary software. One teacher even laugh at me because my free alternatives were not as shiny as his $10000 workstation filled with expensive proprietary software. Fancy computers and obedient students are only toys for teachers like him. Musicians rarely care about their liberty. You should not expect the music industry, even your academic circle, to strongly embrace the free software movement. You might be forced to use proprietary tools, so in this case you better want free software to run on any computer. - -- Marc

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Le 23 Juin 2003 13:44, Ivica Bukvic a écrit : That's wonderful, as long as they don't close the source or impose restrictions or it's usage. :-) - -- Marc

On Sunday, June 22, 2003, at 10:46 AM, Ivica Bukvic wrote: It is important to note some of Apple's contributions to the open source community besides darwin. Several compiler and debugger engineers that I worked with at Cygnus Solutions before it was bought by Red Hat now work at Apple. These people work full time on gcc and gdb and all contributions go back to these projects. Optimizations and improvements for the PPC architecture in gcc and gdb benefits Linux on that platform as much as Apple. The html rendering engine of Apple's Safari browser is based on Konquerer, and the improvements Apple made are being contributed back to the project. So where do you draw the line? Companies that don't contribute to open source? Companies that sell anything proprietary (which would eliminate Red Hat, check the licensing on some of their high end products). And if you want to punish M$, nothing is more powerful than the GPL. That license terrifies them. The beauty of the GPL is that it is blind like justice. Free means always and forever free. Thomas

On Monday 23 June 2003 13:59, Ivica Bukvic wrote: Personally, I'm not sure I care. The whole reason I originally got into this Linux thing was to stretch my mind while having some fun. If others find my efforts useful for solving their own challenges, that's terrific. If some third party chooses to "make money off my sweat", well, they're welcome to it. Making money was not my primary goal anyway. Just my $.02 Cheers! |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Salem Radio Labs | | Voice: 1-(540)-341-2880 | 87 Lee Highway, Suite 11 | | FAX: 1-(540)-341-7176 | Warrenton, VA 20188 | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | All progress is based upon a universal innate desire of every organism | | to live beyond its income. | | -- Samuel Butler | | "Notebooks" | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------|

On Mon, 2003-06-23 at 10:59, Ivica Bukvic wrote: I think the chain is somewhat longer (for the kernel): *bsd* (don't remember which one - mach kernel) -> NeXTstep (initially only m68k, proprietary hardware) -> NEXTSTEP (i386, ordinary pc's + sparc + hp + m68k) -> OpenStep (i386/m68k - don't remember when the others got dropped) -> Rhapsody (sp?) [NeXT is bought by Apple - or was this before Rhapsody?] -> Darwin -- Fernando

Ivica Bukvic wrote: i don't like this idea. free with strings attached is not free. * it's against the spririt of the GPL. i remember somebody cooking up a licence that basically allowed everything except for military use. my first thought was, cool, give those rambo guys the finger (even if it won't make a difference). but after a while, i fould that even though personally i despise each and every military operation that has happened over the last 15 years, i might not always be right, and i might not always be able to check the facts. so how can i forbid something i don't know enough about ? (as a more pragmatic point, it makes using the code horribly complicated and you won't get your stuff into debian :) * if linux can't make it on its own, then let it DIE DIE DIE. we are doing very good. linux is powerful, and it's enormous fun. linux audio is progressing at a pace to make you dizzy. "success" in free software is not mesaured in terms of "market penetration". if it's good and fun in a niche, so be it, if it's going to be world domination, fine too :) your proposal seems to me to be a "vendor lock-in" scheme for free systems. if linux can't beat os x, if os x can do everything linux can and better, then either linux must improve or die. (for those who don't care whether their os is free software - those who do will stick with linux or xBSD anyway, so what's the point.) of course i see your intention to give linux audio more momentum for the benefit of all the users, but i think your proposal is not a good idea. not to mention license fiddling is a can of worms that is very likely to fragment the community. however strange and thick-headed the guy may be, there certainly is some wisdom in RMS and the GPL behind all the stubbornness. it's good they're there, and it's good you can trust the kids out there to cry treason and treachery whenever someone comes up with some new scheme of freedom :) best, jörn -- All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. -- Charter of the United Nations, Article 2.4 Jörn Nettingsmeier Kurfürstenstr 49, 45138 Essen, Germany http://spunk.dnsalias.org (my server) http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/ (Linux Audio Developers)