Re: [LAD] Specification issues in open systems

From: Fons Adriaensen <fons@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Sun Sep 28 2008 - 00:44:44 EEST

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 10:39:32PM +0200, Paul Davis wrote:

> Fons, you know I broadly agree with you, but a substantial fraction of
> the world's software instrument developers appear to feel otherwise. I
> can't think of a single major "out-of-the-box" software instrument for
> windows or OS X that hasn't been implemented as a plugin.

On of the reasons being that on Windows or OSX in their
official incarnations there is nothing like Jack. A single
app on those systems is completely isolated. That is not
the case in Linux.

> i haven't heard a single commercial developer complain about being
> forced to do things as a plugin, only about the details of it.

Well, a 'rich' plugin standard has to provide almost
everything that the operating system provides: audio,
midi, GUI, network,... So why not use the system as
your host ? All it takes is a good session manager.

Existing plugin standards on Linux have been used to
to implement a number of quite different things:

A. Effects, general audio processing tools.
B. Soft-synth modules, as in AMS or Om.
C. Complete instruments.

The requirments for each of these are quite different.
It's somewhat naive to expect that a *simple* plugin
standard could support all of those in an optimal way.
Also a host that would support all of these would be
multi-headed monster.

LV2 started off in the right way, but in the usual
attempt to make things as simple as possible for the
uneducated user, what resulted was too minimal to
support anything but the simplest use cases. Porting
Aeolus to LV2 would require a number of absolutely
non-trivial extensions, Jconv would require a lot
more, etc. So if I wanted to port any of these I'd
also have to write the host. If that host has to be
useful for anything else than being a shell to my own
apps it should also include all extensions needed
by all other plugins. And a sequencer. And an audio
recorder. And in the end neither Aeolus nor Jconv
would work in Rosegarden or any other host, unless
those authors would include my extensions as well.
And I bet a 10 bottles of Amarone they will not.

Finally, users 'expect' things. Yes.
They also expect, at the age of 20, a house and garden
and swimming pool, two cars, a 50" TV, a fixed job,
two three-week holidays in a sunny place, free health
care and a pension. All for free and without any effort
from their side.

You can build entire belief systems on this, and even
a market, but we've seen during the last weeks what is
the result of doing that.

As a writer of software that you provide for free,
the most stupid thing you can do is to be market-
driven. You just waste your time and degrade the
quality of your work.
 
Ciao,

-- 
FA
Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica
Parma, Italia
Wie der Mond heute Nacht aussieht !
Ist es nicht ein seltsames Bild ?
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Received on Sun Sep 28 04:15:02 2008

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