[PD] earning a living coding Pd

mark mark at junklight.com
Fri Jan 30 08:37:43 CET 2004


"This is where I think the Redhat/Cygwin model could work.  People who want
support can pay for a neatly packaged piece of software that has a phone
number that they can call and get someone to ask questions.  As the market
for media art and the like grows, I think this will only become more and
more feasible.

.hc"

The thing is that is *exactly* the space that C74 occupy. PD's big
differentiator is that 
its less developed as a "product" (in the proper comercial sense of the
word) and more 
open - a work in progress guided by some extremely talented people but open
to a strong
community. 

I've looked at Max/MSP and I've even got a pirate copy but I don't use it
because PD 
suits my needs much more. While I like the slick interface in Max/MSP I much
prefer
to be able to role up my seleves and change things to work the way I want in
Pd - and to 
be able to come here and ask questions. 

I personally feel that making a living in the PD space would be very
difficult. (if you
wonder what my experience for saying this is you can check my cv out at my
new
software site http://www.pagefall.com). Derek seems to have made inroads
into a 
service based offering around PD and that is one possible road. The other of
course 
is to use PD as a prototyping tool and generate a new soft synth or
processor or something. 
However this is also a very crowded market place and there are a lot of
"hobbyist" players 
who haven't got to earn an actual living from their work despite some very
high quality 
offerings.

I'm not trying to be negative here - if you want to make a living from
something then you 
need to be realistic about what is viable and what is not.

cheers 

mark 








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