On Sun, Sep 21, 2003 at 10:35:22 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
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.
What NVidia do is they have a core binary dirver (cross platform)
and the linux interface part of it is "open source", for some value of
open. This works well, and though I'd rather have propper Free Software
drivers the NVIDIA drivers have been very relaible on the whole, the
installation easy and the support from the developers has been good too.
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.
Hmm... the TDM DSP chips are as much a part of the hardware platform as
the i/o hardware. IIUC it gives the devleopers copy protection and digi
plugins that cant be used without thier hardware.
- Steve