[philicorda[_4_]]

On Tue, 06 Nov 2007 10:08:40 +0100, Mogens V. wrote:

Richard Crowley wrote:
"rboy" wrote...

"geoff" wrote:


Spot on. A collection of mediocre shareware apps on whatever OS is
hardly much to get a stiffy about.

Hey dude, open source, OPEN SOURCE! : )


Right. Hardly an *advantage* to the average DAW user. Looks more like
"open source" has caused the kind of perpetual intramural squabbling
(not to mention dabbling) that has limited Linux to be a geek-centric
operating system.

Actually, you're partly right. Having worked on Linux for 10+ years,
I've always liked the open source approach, meaning that no ideas can be
kept out and thus will have a chance if good enough. Sounds nice, and
partly is.
The problem is that everyone wants to build their own version of
whatever, so we end up with too many kinda-same apps, and not always
with a contineous update flow.

I think it's unfair to rant down on Linux; it's a great OS and surely
it'll be there sometime into the future, but so used to say for years,
and it's still not there - partly for the reasons as stated above.

Another very important reason is that nothing can be made part of Linux
(at least in the kernel tree, which _is_ Linx) if not Open Source'd.

In practice this is not a problem. There are both binary only kernel mode
drivers (Nvidia and ATI, some wireless chipsets etc) and applications.
As long as the interface that links to the kernel is open source, a
binary blob is acceptable.

However, like with Windows, these drivers are not normally distributed
with the OS.

Think VST will be Open Sourced?

It is open source, but the license does not allow redistribution.
VST is only really a 100 line header file after all.

Someone has reverse engineered it anyway. I'm not sure if this is a good
thing.

Hence, to interoperate with industry standards, many protocols are based
on reverse engineering, which takes time.

And because Linux isn't a product, but a kernel with serverside- and
userspace-apps packed into one of dozens of distributions, who in the
audio world will provide support? On which distro?

I suppose it works the same as on Windows. Out of the 20 or so versions
of Windows Microsoft make, my audio software is supported on three, and
may work on some of the others.

Microsoft do not provide support for Cubase, Steinberg do.

It's down to the software company to pick the Windows version, and decide
when to terminate support if there are too few customers for that version
to make it worthwhile.

Maya, a commercial closed source app on Linux, also supports three
popular distros. 'Linux' does not provide support for Maya, the company
Autodesk does.


Ubuntu seems by far the best thing that's happenend to Linux on the
desktop, and now for the music top, in a long time. Interestingly,
Ubuntu is here because Mark Shuttle pours lotsa money into it; it's not
a mere community spinoff.

Yes, the kind of polishing and tidying that Ubuntu exemplifies is too
often ignored. Unsurprisingly it's expensive and tedious to do.

It's worth noting that Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, and so is more of a
community project than might first appear.



Computing build on Open Standards, all adhering to RFC's, would be a
great thing. Well, it isn't so.. it's about business. Ubuntu is too.