Re: [LAU] DAWs and licensing Was: Symphony of love illusive

Dear Louigi (and other readers),

I encourage you to skip to the bottom of this email before you read the
rest. My core point is there. The rest is just exposition.

Thank you for understanding.

On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 11:36:28AM +0100, Louigi Verona wrote:
> Your argument is unconvincing not because I was lucky, but because a
> quick Google search reveals that your claim is factually incorrect.
>
> Let's take a look at the three products, mentioned so far in this
> thread: Ableton Live, Bitwig and FL Studio. [..]

Unfortunately, this *is* a matter of luck. Below, I explain why I did
not search the web for the specific things you have searched for. But
first, I'll address each of those three software products you mention.

Bitwig:

I did not mention Bitwig.

I have never used Bitwig. Unfortunately for me, it was not an option
when I was initially auditioning DAWs, because it did not exist then.
Nor was I fortunate enough to hear of it until after I had already
encountered most or all of the problems that I previously described in
this thread. Nor was I fortunate enough to learn, until you mentioned
this today in your message to which I am replying, that it might be what
in *my experience* is quite a rare thing: a large proprietary package
without most or all of those problems.

FL Studio:

I did not mention FL Studio.

Unfortunately for me, when I auditioned FruityLoops (which was before it
was renamed to FL Studio), it did not seem to be an adequate substitute
for "full-fledged" DAWs like Cakewalk, Cubase, Logic, or Pro Tools.
Perhaps that has changed since then, I don't know. If so, then I am
unfortunate not to have known that. Also, at the time I dropped
FruityLoops from my DAW audition shortlist, I was unfortunate not to
foresee the problems I would in the future experience with proprietary
audio software, so the licensing and compatibility policies for the
software I was auditioning were not a factor to which I paid much
attention during the auditioning process. As I said in an earlier
email, I now very much regret that ignorance; it was most unfortunate.
I was perhaps also unfortunate insofar as at that time, there was much
less information available about licensing and compatibility in general,
which made these areas much easier to overlook.

Ableton Live:

I did mention Live.

But what I did not mention was that it was never part of my workflow. I
don't think I ever even installed a trial version. Instead, I
auditioned it at a shop for musical equipment.

At that time, like FruityLoops, it did not seem to me to be an adequate
substitute for "full-fledged" DAWs like Cakewalk, Cubase, Logic, or Pro
Tools. Like FruityLoops, perhaps that has changed since then, I don't
know. Like FruityLoops, if so, then I am unfortunate not to have known
that. Like FruityLoops, at the time I dropped Live from my DAW audition
shortlist, I was unfortunate not to foresee the problems I would in the
future experience with proprietary audio software, so the licensing and
compatibility policies for the software I was auditioning were not a
factor to which I paid much attention during the auditioning process.
As I said in an earlier email, I now very much regret that ignorance; it
was most unfortunate. I was perhaps also unfortunate insofar as at that
time, there was much less information available about licensing and
compatibility in general, which made these areas much easier to
overlook.

For me, the difference between Live and FruityLoops was that although I
put them both on a notional shortlist to re-audition if/when I wanted a
PC-based sequencer for live performance, Live struck me as being by far
the most potentially-useful of the two. I was almost certain Live would
become part of my regular toolset at some point.

So far, though, I have not had cause to audition PC-based sequencers for
live performance. So, so far, Live has not become part of my toolset.

And in the interim, I was unfortunate enough to experience, with other
pieces of proprietary software, the problems described previously in
this thread.

Because of those experiences, Live now feels like a risk to me even
though its current licensing and compatibility policies look decent.
What if Ableton changes is licensing policy in the future? If it were
Free Software, that would not matter: as with OpenSolaris, one or more
community forks would probably emerge, that I would be able to continue
using. But it is not Free Software: it is proprietary software, and
relying upon it is therefore a gamble that I will not, at this point in
my life, take happily, because: (a) I never liked knowingly taking an
unnecessary gamble; (b) I had terrible luck gambling on proprietary
software in the past (so if I did by a Live license, I would half expect
Ableton to suddenly discontinue Live a few months later or something!);
and (c) in any case, I would rather live in a libre world and direct my
limited remaining energies towards that.

> That took me 10 minutes to research.

Again, a matter of luck. Over the last decade or two, I have spent
literally months researching and reading about many aspects of software
licensing, and also about software-based music production.
Unfortunately for me, I did not previously encounter those particular
pieces of information that you provided in your email to which I am
replying.

(And why would I? Initially, my focus was on firefighting the problems
I was experiencing at the time. Later, having learned that there was a
whole libre world in which several entire subsets of those problems were
reliably absent, my focus shifted to that. I did not, and still do not,
see much advantage in searching for proprietary software that can do for
me what libre software can do for me. Which is why, as I said in my
email of 2021-02-14-18:10+0000, "the only pieces of proprietary music
software that I still find tempting are Ableton Live and RME TotalMix".
Those are the only two pieces of proprietary audio software I know of
that can do things of interest to *me* for which I *currently* know of
no libre alternative that *I* would find adequate in a use-case where I
felt that I needed that functionality.)

> I can also say that in many cases old plugins work just fine in many
> modern DAWs. I was able to run Orange Vocoder in a modern FL Studio,
> although the plugin is from 1998. That's over 20 years ago, and it
> runs just fine.

*Some* plugins are fine on that front. I have not said otherwise. But
not all of them are.

The key point is: *your* good fortune with Orange Vocoder, and perhaps
with all of the proprietary plugins you have ever used, is no help to
*me* if one or more of the proprietary plugins that any of *my* old
projects relied on does not work in a modern DAW (or does not work on
x86, or possesses some other severe incompatibility), when I revisit
that project.

(Put differently: to think that your good fortune is necessarily
experienced by me, is an example of "psychological projection":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection . I am sure you
are well-intentioned; but I still have plugins that don't work!)

Having addressed that, here is a request that we end this subthread.

It started with me *thanking* Jeanette for her amazing symphony, and for
sharing details of her libre software setup that were interesting to me.

Jeanette's wonderful composition and skilled use of her uncommon
software were my entire *intended* focus when I started posting in this
thread. I was grateful for the opportunity to learn from Jeanette's
success specifically. Any other remarks from me at that early point in
the thread were intended only as peripheral context for the reader;
explainations of *why* I was grateful. I did not intend those
peripheral remarks to raise discussion themselves, and especially not
discussion beyond Jeanette's setup and how it had enabled the production
of a beautiful home symphony.

I particularly did not anticipate the subsequent criticism that I would
receive later on - effectively being asked to justify my own lived
experiences - for explaining what I had originally intended
overwhelmingly as a statement of gratitude. If I miscommunicated my
intentions, I apologise. Perhaps I should have explicitly delineated
the peripheral remarks as not intended for further discussion, but it
did not seem necessary at the time.

Evidently, several people on this list have had better fortune with
proprietary software than I did, and were puzzled by my misfortune.
Well, OK, we've addressed that. If I offended any of you by the way in
which I now seek to avoid future misfortune, again I apologise: offence
was never my intention. True, I now much prefer libre software, but I
have presented reasons for that preference that I consider adequate.
Reasonable people can disagree about adequacy (and some of you have
disagreed with me), but doing so is not always productive. In any case,
I hope that - especially on this mailing list where we all have an
interest in at least some libre software - a person's preference for
libre software will not continue to be held against them.

So as I say, please, let's put that sidetrack aside now. Allow me to
return to the original topic:

############################################################

Here's to Jeanette, whose diverse and impressive compositions and
recordings have brightened many of our days. What a treat to have a
kind of Bachoven in our midst! And here's to the many software
developers and hardware engineers (and other musicians, in the case of
Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra) whose noble work built all the tools and
instruments that made her music possible. Thank you!

I am *super* excited to learn of Nama, and I am really looking forward
to learning more about it. Thank you, for this, too, Jeanette!

And I am *super* grateful to be subscribed to this mailing list, where
many of you continue to post great music and to showcase useful libre
software that I didn't know existed. Thank you to everybody who does
that!

############################################################

In gratitude,

Sam

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