Re: [microsound] who is nn?

[Richard Zvonar <zvonar@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:41 PM -0800 11/3/02, brett lockspeiser wrote:

>just to focus the issue a little bit: from what i can gleam nn seems to
>think the c74's licensing of MAX from IRCAM is somehow going on improperly
>and that an american company is profiting from a product paid for by
>public funds in france

The original version of Max was developed at IRCAM by Miller 
Puckette, but development of the Macintosh version then passed into 
David Zicarelli's hands for development of a commercial version.The 
commercial partners in the Max development enterprise were 
Intelligent Music, Opcode, Gibson, and now Cycling '74. One constant 
throughout this process has been David Zicarelli's role as principal 
developer. This work was often minimally funded, and Max development 
was on occasion threatened by the vagaries of the music business.

The Intelligent Music phase was relatively brief; I saw Max at one 
NAMM show before the company folded. Negotiation of the IRCAM/Opcode 
agreement was then achieved by Ben Austin, who had been with both 
Intelligent Music and Opcode. Support of Max at Opcode was always a 
little iffy, but it's to the company's credit that they kept it in 
their product line and continued to fund development. The acquisition 
of Opcode by Gibson had most of us worried, but in an 
uncharacteristic display of fairness Gibson released Max to Cycling 
'74. I don't know the details of the licensing arrangement, but IRCAM 
continues to own a chunk of Max although the software has evolved 
considerably beyond Miller's original code. I don't know if there is 
any licensing arrangement associated with MSP, but there are 
acknowledgements of both IRCAM and UCSD in the splash screen.

Throughout its history Max has been extended by a community of users 
who have created external objects, but development of the main 
program has always been under DavidZ's direct supervision. Thus there 
is a vague aura of open-sourceness about Max, though in fact this is 
not the case. Max on the Macintosh has been a commercial product 
under commercial development ever since Miller handed it off to 
David. There are other branches of the Max evolutionary tree that 
have grown out of work at IRCAM (Max/FTS) and USCD (Pd), and at least 
in the case of Pd one can download the software without charge.

So from where I sit, the only "improper" activity is on nn's part.
-- 

______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD
(818) 788-2202
http://www.zvonar.com
http://RZCybernetics.com

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