6 Aug
2005
6 Aug
'05
3:58 p.m.
Dave Phillips wrote:
agreed. It's a commercial decision, not an artistic or technical one.
The potential customer threshold needs to be met first.
Brad Fuller wrote:
Of course my examples were commercial software for a reason - I wanted
to show capabilities and features not in linux audio apps that have been
nurtured through the years on the commercial side.
Yeah.. .I'm familiar with those - I've experimented with Csound but not
CM. I do use pd, if that's any consolation to you 8-)
pd offers me a large piece of features that reaktor does not and vice
versa. I'm also currently writing a plugin for portaudio-to-smalltalk
(squeak: http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak). This is not an audio
plugin, but a squeak plugin. Smalltalk offers MANY more opportunities in
programming than ANY other language -- for me anyway.
Ya see, I would love to be able to use all of these apps on Linux so I
wouldn't have to keep switching computers! It's as simple as that.
There are no apps like Acid, Reason, Kontakt,
Absynth, etc. on linux.
I'm not suggesting that there be Linux clones. I'm just trying to say
that Linux just doesn't have the application breadth of the other two
OSs.
From my POV it's just the opposite, but that's because I use sound and
music software with which you may have little or no familiarity (I'll
be happy if I'm wrong). Every piece of software you've mentioned so
far has been a commercial package, but some of the most powerful
software I use has no commercial counterparts. Much as the progams
you've mentioned are nice and all, none has the depth of Csound5 or
the compositional flexibility of Common Music, and I note that the
Windows versions of those programs are not nearly so well-developed as
their Linux versions. What we need is for NI or Waves or <fill in
here> to produce their
wares for Linux. (please don't throw anything at me.)
I don't think the competition will hurt FOSS but only encourage
better and better linux audio software -- free or for cost.
It's likely to happen, but it'll be a slow transition. And of course all the disadvantages that come with
commercial software
will arrive here too, e.g., odious licenses, closed-sources,
proprietary attitudes towards development, insensitivity to users,
updates only at the company's leisure, and of the complete
disappearance of support and even product when the company decides to
terminate. Well, you do get what you pay for, and what you pay for
includes all that crap.
Yes, and there are advantages too.
If you really look at it, support for FOSS is as good as commercial -
for different reasons. While, for the most part, FOSS authors love their
work and like to support users, feature updates and bugs fixes are
random. I'm not complaining.. just the way it is. All power to them!
I often see authors say that they'll fix the bugs when they can, or feel
like it, or not at all. A lot of potentially cool software has been
started and never gets out of pre-alpha. That's ok with me, again.. no
worries from me. I just want to state that FOSS support is just as bad
as commercial support.... uh... or just as good.
Of course, this varies from company to company on both sides of the
fence. Commercial software feature updates and maintenance releases are
at the mercy of their programming cycles. FOSS software often does not
adhere to these practices (there are exceptions.)
On the other hand, it's cool to see FOSS authors send an announcement
out to [linux-audio-announce] about their new features and bug fixes.
On the other hand, companies survive when they are competitive and
manage their business well. That usually means they produce products
that people want to use, maintain that software, and manage their
company reasonably well. This is the clear advantage to commercial audio
software today.
In any case, it's going to be fun to watch as things progress.
brad
--
Brad Fuller
(408) 799-6124
** Sonaural Audio Studios **
(408) 799-6123 West San Jose
(408) 799-6124 Cambrian
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