[PD] PD usability

[Marc Lavallée]

Le mer 12/02/2003 à 14:12, Yves Degoyon a écrit :

> why keeping that distinction over and over between
> users and programmers ???

Because that's what users wants, and because sometimes we must deal with
them. I'd really like to simply ignore them, but that's not always
possible. They don't want help, they want fancy products, that's how
they've been raised. They see me as a programmer (which I'm not) because
I can install, configure, use, integrate and modify many types of
softwares on different machines. So they want me to sell them a candy
software they can chew on until the next software realease, or they want
me to help them use a candy software, which I don't want too. They are
totally integrated in the market economy, I'm not. Culture clash.

> i was born a user...

We all did, but you evolved as a programmer. 99.9% of the population
won't. So either we keep PD only as a research or hobbyist tool, or we
try to put some sugar on it to please all those "users" out there. At
some point they'll hopefully agree why PD (or jMax) are better tools for
reasons they don't want to understand now. We could even make commercial
products based on PD, if its license allows it, because that's the only
language most users really understand now. It's being done with many
other free softwares, so why not PD? The MSP plugin for Max is PD, so
that should be possible to sell a "better" PD. I don't care if they copy
and use the commercial version (they would for sure), because the goal
would be to made them switch to the free version. It would bring PD to a
larger audience while keeping it free. The market is certainly not too
small. It would give university students access to softwares they
usually can't afford or are reluctent to even try. The advent of the OSX
platform is giving us an opportunity we should consider. Maybe I simply
don't understand what the market economy is all about...

--
Marc