[PD] software license for pd general patch?

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Wed, 30 Jun 2010, João Pais wrote:

> naturally I get experience everytime I patch two objects together. but what's 
> there now has only 5% of what it was in the first version (including a 
> different design, to cope with some of the features I wanted to put in; and 
> lots of features).

And then what ? I have "a patch" that is actually a long evolution in 
which everything changed except the result and, in some abstract sense, 
some pieces of formula. All the objects changed, even the file format 
changed (the original file was not in pd ; i made a converter so that at 
that point in time, I wouldn't have to remake the patch). It started nine 
years ago. It's just one example. I also rewrote lots of parts of my 
externals, and there's at least one external that I wrote _completely_ 
from scratch FOUR times, in 2001, 2002, 2008 and 2010.

Those are really not the only examples I could give, but I don't think 
it's necessary to give more. The 5% is irrelevant... many projects go 
through that... and neither yours nor mine are the biggest free projects 
to do so. There are methodologies that even expect all code to be in 
potential transience, over and over... « if it's useful, it's bound to be 
replaced ».

> without counting on much of the effort put in just to (try to) make it 
> usable by anyone - like having four possible spoken languages (and 
> several are already on the list to be added later).

Ok, that really sounds like a feature of a commercial software, unless... 
what's the total duration of the soundtrack in each language ? Were any of 
them made by other people for the good of the project ?

> which seems to pay off, someone said he just learned the syntax in a 
> couple of minutes, and in 15m had put in his whole piece (not a big one, 
> though).

Now, how can you use word-of-mouth to attract potential contributors ? If 
you can get other contributors, you can get more value for yourself (in 
non-money terms), which is something you can count in trying to make the 
project be more worth your time for yourself. But it's more difficult to 
do that in the Pd world than outside of it.

> even if it's a bit optimistic, if this patch gets around, it can also help to 
> disseminate Pd. but what I mean is that there are many people who really 
> don't want to do more with the computer than send mails and browse. some of 
> the work I put in was to cater for those people.

So, if you knew that from the start, why did you choose to work for those 
people for free in the first place ?

  _ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ...
| Mathieu Bouchard, Montréal, Québec. téléphone: +1.514.383.3801