[PD] segmented patchcords (was Re: PD & MAX)

Hans-Christoph Steiner hans at eds.org
Sat Dec 8 01:09:46 CET 2007


I think you are mixing up two things, FLOSS can be commercial  
software, it often is, think RedHat Enterprise or Digium/Asterisk.   
That's free software that they are selling.  When people are paid to  
work on something, then they can spend more concentrated effort on  
it, that's for sure.

To paraphrase Chris, it's unlikely that people doing something in  
their spare time would be able to make something as good as people  
who are paid fulltime to do the same thing.

As for Pd vs. C, there was a time in the not-so-distant past where  
programmers thought that compilers were horribly inefficient, and  
that they were only really good for prototyping things.  Then you'd  
code things for real in assembly.  That lasted well into the 80's.

.hc

On Dec 6, 2007, at 2:08 PM, Kyle Klipowicz wrote:

> And this is precisely the unfortunate reason why the open source world
> will (almost) always lag behind the commercial world of consumer
> software. When developers make their bread and butter based upon if
> the consumer buys, they're more likely to pay attention to and
> implement the wishes of their users. Take Ableton. They actively parse
> their online forums for feature requests...and then implement them
> when a critical mass is reached.
>
> There are some exceptions in the FOSS world. Ubuntu is quite user
> friendly (with the support of a large endowment from a very wealthy
> organization with a charter specifically devoted to bringing Linux to
> the non-programmer set of the world). Firefox is giving IE a run for
> it's money (although the primary codebase from FF comes from the old
> commercial, closed source Netscape).
>
> I know that Hans' statement re everyone becoming a developer is true
> in theory, but in reality people who want to rapidly prototype a
> project with something like Pd or Max are using these applications
> precisely because they do not want to code in C.
>
> After reading Marius' post re GEM vs. Jitter, it is painfully apparent
> that the capitalist/consumer model of software engineering has a few
> aspects to it that are difficult for the FOSS community to compete
> with. Namely monetary and human resources and the external pressure to
> meet the requests of the user in order to ensure a continuous flow of
> financial support. When you code for a hobby or yourself, it is
> difficult or even impossible to be bothered with these things, and
> rightly so. Without compensation, there's often little scope (or time)
> outside one's own projects for developers in the FOSS world. This is
> unfortunate, but as I see it, true.
>
> Question is, what can be done to change this or compete? Or should Pd
> just become the thing that hobbyist programmers use, while Max takes
> the stage as the "serious" tool for rapidly prototyping interactive
> A/V artworks? I hope that this is not the case...
>
> No flames meant in this mail, just compassionate thought-mulling.
>
> ~Kyle
>
>
> On Dec 6, 2007 1:21 AM, Frank Barknecht <fbar at footils.org> wrote:
>
>> That's exactly the point: From this thread it seems that many of  
>> those
>> people who would be able to implement segmented patchcords aren't
>> interested in that feature. (You'd be one of the exceptions.) So  
>> until
>> someone comes along who wants seg-cords in Pd and at the same time
>> could write the code, the feature stays missing. That's not unusual
>> wiht open source software: features, the developers need, get
>> implemented faster, others maybe never.
>
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