Re: [LAU] A year of Linux Audio revisited - would like to know your oppinion

On Wednesday 12 December 2007 04:49:08 Pieter Palmers wrote:
> Chris Cannam wrote:
> > On Wednesday 12 December 2007 05:50, Robert Persson wrote:
> >> Here is a good explanation of how groove quantise works in protools:
> >> http://www.audiomidi.com/classroom/protools_corner/ptcorner_63.cfm
> >>
> >> For some really fancy midi stuff going way further than groove quantise,
> >> you could take a look at some of Ntonyx's products, such as
> >> StyleEnhancer and StyleMorpher. If Rosegarden could implement some of
> >> those features that would be very useful for composers.
> >
> > Groove quantization is one of the oldest outstanding feature requests in
> > the Rosegarden tracker, submitted by me in 2002:
> >
> > http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=633259&group_id=
> >4932&atid=354932
> >
> > Unfortunately, as for so many features, this has simply never percolated
> > to the top of my priority queue, or stack, or whatever my brain uses, and
> > nobody else has ever shown much interest in coding it. And sadly I only
> > have eight hands and three heads and there are only 132 hours in the day.
>
> IMHO this remark gets to the heart of the problem. As a human being we
> have limited resources. I personally have to settle with one head, 2
> fingers and 24hrs in a day. The fact that humans also have to eat, and
> that food is seldom available 'for free' makes that some part of our
> resources are allocated to surviving. Oh, and having 'a life' also
> consumes an astonishing amount of these resources.
>
> There is no way around the fact that one has to eat, and that that
> doesn't go well with writing free software in the 'free beer'
> interpretation. Which seems to be the main reason why people turn to
> Linux. I've done a quick check on the cheapest offer from Cakewalk
> (Project 5) that might have all functionality that came up in this
> thread, and it is 100euro here. If all Rosegarden users were to pay
> Chris 100euro, I think Rosegarden would have more features than 'Project
> 5', or maybe even Sonar.
>
> The catch 22 seems to be that we currently attract a lot of 'free beer'
> attention. But in order to get really professional software, you need
> time, and time = money. So in order for the programs to become more
> professional, we need people that are willing to pay for them. Which we
> don't seem to have.
>
> You could think of it this way: suppose you have a Linux tool that has
> 20% of the functionality of an the equivalent Win/Mac tool, you could
> argue that it's worth 20% of the money. Now add all tools you use on
> Linux and try to estimate this '20%' value of your software collection.
> IMHO that's what you would have to be prepared to pay. Of course I know
> that this is a rude extrapolation, and that 20% of the functionality
> usually doesn't get you anywhere. But to be honest, I think most of the
> tools are more near 80% of the 'competing software's functionality.
>
> To give you another idea, from my personal pet project (FFADO):
> we are registered on the ohloh site
> (http://www.ohloh.net/projects/8040?p=FFADO), and one of the things they
> do is scan your code repository and use some industry standard way of
> value-ing the code (COCOMO). In the FFADO case they end up with a value
>
> > $1.000.000. In other words, if you were to have a commercial company
>
> develop the code, it would cost you 1M$. But hey, pick me, I'll do it
> 'for free'... Rosegarden is also present on ohloh, and is valued more
> than $2M.
>
> I admit that these numbers are large extrapolations and have limited
> applicability, but they do provide some reference.
>
> The only project that seems to be able to break this circle is Ardour.
> I'd say that that is due to the fact that Paul didn't have to worry
> about his survival for the time it took to bring Ardour to a critical
> level. I.e. a level that was high enough for people to start paying for
> Ardour as soon as Paul's self-funding approached it's limits.
>
> For myself I can say that I'm spending an incredible amount of time and
> energy into coding open source, and that there is not that much in
> return. Well, there is the respect from fellow coders, gratitude from
> users, even free hardware (lucky me). But that doesn't pay the bills. So
> I have to go out and spend time at 'something that someone actually pays
> for'. And hence it takes 3 years to reach the functionality that comes
> 'out of the box' on another OS. If I would be sure I can earn a decent
> living with writing 'free' software, I would seriously consider it. But
> alas...
>
> Note that this is not really a reaction to the original blog giving an
> overview of the current Linux audio status, but more an attempt at
> expressing my view on why this is as it is, and why it's IMHO not very
> likely to change soon. It's like the Ableton guy said at LAC07: "I'm
> pretty happy with the we-sell-shrinkwrapped-boxed-software model, and I
> don't see a reason to change that.". Read: "why would we give it away if
> people seem to be willing to pay for it?".
>
> 2 cents for discussion,
>
> Pieter Palmers
Thank you Pieter
  I am certainly one who appreciates the contributions of the multitudes of
individuals who have devoted so much to the open source scene. These
contributions are fueling a whole new society, a quiet social revolution. It
is enabling schools and individuals that never could afford the digital
scenario to place before all of their students a shelf of creative regions
never before even imagined. What is available on that creative shelf today?
The developmental tools, Imaging { 2D, 3D, animation, movies }, Audio from
cell phones to ambisonics, Sciences, Engineering, Mathematics, Mapping {
earth, universe, body } and etc. etc. You and people like yourself are making
it possible. People who stumble into this scene are quite unprepared as to
what exactly is it that they think they see. Too frequently the only thing
that they have to compare to is the digital terrain they grew up in. If they
are getting their feet wet in Linux they are first immersed in the Unix
learning curve, though most of the current releases soften that. Being a self
taught Informatics { http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics } person I
remain awed at the whole Linux Open Source phenomena. As for the wanna winers
noise, it is probably an indicator that the introductory orientation
documentation scheme needs to be streamlined. I was hoping that a release
like UbuntuStudio would see the need and implement such a feature.
Thank You
Tom
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Received on Wed Dec 12 20:15:08 2007