[linux-audio-user] Re: Attracting more Linux audio developers

>From: "Tim Howard" <tdhoward@email-addr-hidden>
>
> It seems that there is a general sense of frustration among the
>linux audio community with attracting more developers, users, etc. to
>start using Linux for serious audio work.

The fundamental problem is that users can buy only computers with
Windows preinstalled. For years I have searched for a local advertisement
about computer which comes with empty disk, or with Linux preinstalled,
or with both Linux and Windows. No luck so far.
People does not buy Windows -- it just comes with the computer.

Microsoft also dumps down the price of the preinstalled Windows.
And birds have told the computer makers get discount on Windows
only if it is the only system in the computer.

So, you could shorten your text from "start using Linux for serious
audio work" to "start using Linux".

> The thing that has been frustrating me lately is that there are
>developers that are offering "free" (as in free beer) software, but
>they seem to have no interest in a GPL release for Linux! (For
>example, VST plugins like Ambience, GSnap, etc.) Maybe I'm just
>stupid, but that doesn't make sense to me.

Strange things happen when one approaches Windows users. Free mostly
means ".exe". While Windows users are open-mindedly downloading
and running pirated software, they are most closed-minded if they
succeed to write anything by theirself.

Recent finding are the user-made modifications for the games.
They distribute them in very closed-minded and protective manner.
For example, there are 30000 mods for Neverwinter Nights at NWVault,
but people must download them one by one, manually. Downloading
one module requires several mouse button presses per file.
That is insane even if one only wants the best mods. Players may
have patience but the modders who want a large asset library are
doomed because model/item/texture mods comes in large amounts.
I decided to not buy NWN nor NWN2 because I would in any case
download all mods.
Unfortunately I did buy Oblivion; see "tessource.net/files" :-(

Imagine if Linux distributions would be downloaded in a similar manner.
Any manual downloading is just waste of time. The fun starts after
everything has been downloaded and installed. Perhaps GIMP would be
downloaded by 90% of users, but most software would be downloaded by
0.3% of users. And people would crack when they realize that they
need to download programs ran only by the Linux system itself.

Next I will check if all 200,000 CC licensed photos at WikiCommons
can be downloaded non-manually. Well, I think already that CC license
is a work of Windows people because CC has the no-commercial and the
no-derivatives versions. Is CC an attempt to windowize the people?
A synonym to ".exe"? The freedom scale is this: PD, BSD, GNU, CC, EXE, $$$

Juhana

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