Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] Pro Audio Software RANT!!!
From: Kai Vehmanen (kai.vehmanen_AT_wakkanet.fi)
Date: Sun Jan 27 2002 - 04:41:02 EET
On Sat, 26 Jan 2002, Linium wrote:
>> One aspect I think is good to note are the motives behind writing free
>> software. As for myself, my own need for an multitrack recording app has
>> been the main driving force behind ecasound. Nowadays it does just what I
> But you say that the motives behind writing free software is the personal
> need of the author.
No, no. I said it's good to note the motives. As I can't speak for others,
I gave one of my motives as an example. And it's certainly a motive I
believe many other audio app authors have, but certainly not the only one!
Maybe the author wants to sell a product built around the free-sw
component, learn a new programming language, become famous, etc, etc...
but there's always something. If not, the project won't become a success.
> It is very important to understand that at one point a project has to find
> its user-base. Because if not, it won't be a living project anymore.
[...]
> So a big Cubase-like thing or Ecasound can both be widely used, what imports
> is that at one point it turns to be the project of people using it and not
> the simple author's toy.
You are taking my argument way too literally. I think "simple author's
toys" are not worth discussing here. If you release your project to the
public (as free software), you do it for a reason. If you are not making
an app that people will use, you will not get the benefits of free-sw
development model. And in the end you lose, even if your primary motive
was making an app for your own use. Without the active userbase, ecasound
certainly wouldn't be what it is now. This is why I've spent a lot of time
writing documentation, interfaces to other languages, etc, etc - all
things not directly related to my own use of ecasound.
> authors and users. They are too much nice projects starving, and people
> (making music and therefore not programming) have not way to influence this
> situation.
Programming is just one way to participate. Few very good ways to help a
project you like:
- write use-cases (how user expects the program to work,
what steps are involved in doing a task)
- specifying interfaces (what should a user-interface for
audio mastering/finalizing look like; what steps are
involved in the process)
- specifying feature sets (what are essential features,
what are useful but not critical)
- documentation ('howto mix mp3s with terminatorX', 'a recording
session with ardour', etc, etc)
- testing
- advocacy (make the userbase grow, spread the word to
get more developers to the group)
The hard part is that - just like programming - these tasks are not easy
and they take a lot of your time. But that's what makes them so valuable!
Paying someone else to do the job is one possibility, but it can be
costly. Time of professional programmers, technical writers, test
engineers, marketing people, is not cheap.
> But if such an organisation has to exist to adress the specific needs of free
> softwares multimedia projects, do you think that a specific distro like
> Demudi could and should play this role ? Do you have an idea about what
> should be such an organisation ?
Now I was just saying that the lack of organizations involved in Linux
audio explains the current situation to a great extent. But this just
means that we don't have ProLinuxTools Suite, but instead a huge selection
of apps ranging from almost-usable, to interesting and some indeed great
ones. This isn't not a bad situation, just different.
My guess is that we will see more organizational involvement in Linux
audio in the near future, whether any of us wants it or not. Prime
suspects:
- a high-profile commercial app is ported to Linux; whether
it is built on top of JACK, aRts, ALSA, OSS, SDL, etc.. will
have a big impact on the audio sw scene
- some free-sw app reaches the critical mass; same note
about platforms applies here (Ardour, Muse, Broadcast,
SpiralSynth, Gsmp, ... there's plenty of candidates)
- a multimedia distribution (Debian/Demudi, PlanetCCRMA,
Mandrake/Redhat/Suse/Slackware/xxx, perhaps a new
commercial player)
<font size="huge" comment=";)">
- some free-sw project manages to get separate projects
together (this is my favorite... LADSPA was a good
start, JACK is the next step! :)) <-- !!!
</font>
-- http://www.eca.cx Audio software for Linux!
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