[linux-audio-user] Re: old school

From: Bill Schottstaedt <bil@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Tue Jul 19 2005 - 14:14:27 EEST

> I suggest writing to Bill Schottstaedt, Paul Lansky, and John ffitch
> for a heads-up on Ye Olde Days.

Don't get me started reminiscing!! Here at CCRMA, nearly all our software
has always been freely available (Score/MS was the obvious exception) -- we
were a part of the AI lab, and it's "culture" was one of sharing freely.
Unfortuately, we had unique hardware (PDP-10, Samson box, etc), so as far
as I know, only Colgate and IRCAM actually used our code.

I kept all the documentation from that era, but not much of the code;
most of it was written in SAIL (a wonderful, but now defunct Algol language),
or FAIL (the local PDP-10 assembly language), and some in Maclisp, I think --
it was awhile ago...

On the Apple question, I worked there from 1980 to 1983 or thereabouts --
I remember some company called Mountain Hardware making a synthesizer;
we didn't have much of an audio presence at the time -- my understanding
of the issue (which was just "stuff overheard in the halls") was that
there was some agreement with Apple Records to stay out of the music
business. But Apple was very eager at that time to get outside programmers
interested -- I wasn't aware of any hostility toward hackers. You really
couldn't do much computer music with an Apple 2, however.
Received on Tue Jul 19 16:15:08 2005

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