21 Sep
2003
21 Sep
'03
5:01 p.m.
On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 10:13, Rick Taylor wrote:
And there's the Avid/Softimage/SGI/IRIX connection... I'm sure it wouldn't
be any big deal.
{I just ran across an ad for Discreet's Smoke 6 for linux, by the way.}
Mark Knecht <markknecht(a)comcast.net>
wrote:
To a small extent, me too. They have an OS X version. They could release
a straight Linux version if they wanted to, I'm sure. Pro Tools
(sorry it was a non-Linux answer!)
It surprises me that they've not ported to linux yet. You can't
really run their software without their hardware,
they have something of a UNIX heritage, if they were to open
source the software it would do them wonders as pr/advertisement,
it would give them the benefits of linux developers and get them
as firmly entrenched in the linux world as they are everywhere else.
Linux, as a business architecture, is so totally screwed up that I don't
understand how it's supposed to work anymore. When you make hardware you
have to compile drivers. In the Linux world (today anyway) this means
releasing source. DigiDesign doesn't release source, so there's no real way to support all the different distributions and
hardware
configurations that exist. There's probably also a risk that if they
were able to release only a small part that would be compiled on a
target system that someone would hijack it and figure out how to make
Pro Tools work with other hardware, thus undercutting DigiDesign's real
business model which is selling hardware with software to support it.
Probably, but... they could do that anyway. And... The free '98 version
doesn't seem to have hurt them. They could always release a "common" and
an "elite" version. Linux people are pretty good about copyrights. They'd
get their bugs fixed... linux would get a real boost.
I think the Linux architecture (or what little of it I
understand) makes
this difficult and unlikely to ever happen.
Probably the way things are headed anyway.
{Same for Creamware.}
Actually, I think most people look at DigiDesign incorrectly from a
business perspective. They are really a hardware company. They make
their money selling hardware, not software. If they depended on making
money selling software, they'd be no different from Steinberg, etc., so
they relay on their own hardware to differentiate themselves from the
rest of the pack. {{Linux
strikes me as being vastly more suited to industrial scale
applications than anything else. Lower latency, more stability, it's
open source and it's free.}}
Seeing as movie folk and major 3d apps are already running on linux
it really seems that there's a need there.
Oh, I agree. Pro Tools on Linux would be a great app on a great
platform. DigiDesign would benefit greatly, if they could manage the
security of their source, and if their plug-in manufacturer's would play
ball. Unfortunately, the 001/002/RTAS plugin support has been bad,
except for Waves. The advantage for Pro Tools in Linux would come if
they would embrace LADSPA.