[PD] no pd?? WTF ????

[João Pais]

> João Pais wrote:
>> see how high you go with [expr pow(2,$f1)] until you loose
>> resolution - 20 in pd, but 30 in max5 (the coming up of Pd double
>> precision will help this, but it's a work Katja is doing alone).
>
>> High moral feeling (i.e.  the "we're better because we're free" logo)
>> isn't enough for precision dsp.
>
> Ok, so what your're saying is that for closed software, users have to
> wait for the owner of the software to add some feature, while for open
> source software, users have the possibility to add whatever feature they
> want.

I wasn't even going there, was speaking only about quality of performance.  
Since you bring this topic in, you shouldn't say "users", because I (and  
many people I know) can't do anything about improving the pd code until I  
learn enough about C programming, and that won't be happening in this  
life. In this case, "user" is the adequate name because she's working  
alone (with help of others, but she's doing the work alone), and if this  
user has better projects to develop, this feature won't go ahead.
And, in the way things are implemented, even if she manages to make double  
versions of all branches of Pd (vanilla + ext in all build systems) and  
maintain them in the next years, doesn't mean that this will ever caught  
up in pd-core (pd-van) - looking at the current tradition, it will take a  
long time.


> Both positions can take a while for a feature, so, what's your point ?
>
> Try considering openness as a technical feature.

I'm saying that just because the software is free/open, doesn't make it  
better for one task than it's non-free partners (the inverse applies as  
well, of course). And sometimes just saying "here it's better, because  
there is no eye candy and people have to learn how to "really" program"  
doesn't improve the quality of the program as a whole.


About "openness", I'm not interested in theoretical openness, because we  
don't live in a theoretical world. Development depends on real people, and  
if they can manage to allocate time and effort to create concrete things  
(code, in this example). I'm sure there's lots of open code around svn or  
other repositories which isn't going anywhere, openness isn't making it  
develop itself.