[linux-audio-dev] open firmware: experiences?

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Subject: [linux-audio-dev] open firmware: experiences?
From: Joe Miklojcik (jmik_AT_nbcs.rutgers.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 29 2000 - 19:36:40 EEST


I am about to start talking to a company that makes ALTERNATE
MIDI controllers about opening their firmware, and I'm polling for
advice and experiences any of you have had. See if you can get into a
political MODE and help me with some ideas.

They don't sell a lot of units, but they really have a cool product. I
spent Thursday at a clinic they gave in NYC and from then until the
early morning hours playing one at a friend's studio. I had quickly
realized that the controller's brilliance came from three factors:

1) They had superior hardware. Most similar products use piezo
transducers as physical sensors. What I was playing used force sensing
resistors, which had basically eliminated false triggering altogether
and also gave many orders of magnitude more control dimensions (since
you could sustain pressure on the fsr to hold notes without a sustain
pedal, etc.).

2) They had been around for a while. The product has been in production
for basically a decade, and the host of little problems (how do you
mount it? how do you stop the power cord from coming loose? how do you
stop the front panel display from breaking when you hit it with a stick
by accident?) have been solved.

3) The firmware is feaure-rich. Too feature-rich, really. You can just
wander around in the user-program space and get really wild things
happening. Open sourceing the firmware would help iron this out a lot.

I have several questions for the LAD community. Actually, for the
open-source music community in general, so if you know a good place to
forward this message, please do.

1) How many of you would buy one of these percussion controller things
that you play with sticks (at about $900 a pop) if you could get the
firmware source? You'd probably still have to buy an eprom burner of
some sort to hack the stuff yourself, but if I tell these guys "I can
get you five orders if you open your source" they may be quite willing
to do it.

2) Are there precedents of other companies that own firmware opening it
and winning as a result? I've looked on opensource.net, but I couldn't
find anything that matched the situation these guys are in.

3) The scenario is: the little guy makes a hundred units and opens the
source to the firmware. They sell better than pokemon cards. Roland
wakes up and takes notice, makes a similar design with the same
firmware, and sells a thousand units. Roland has brand recognition
advantage, distribution and manufacturing advantage, capitol investment
advantage, and on and on. What do I tell them, or what strategy of
communication, do I take to stop the fears of this happening? I mean
I have some ideas, but I'm having a hard time making it all perfectly
clear in my own head.

I'll let you all know how things proceed. Thanks!


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