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Re: [microsound] MUTE article on PD + free software



On 7 Apr 2005, at 17:02, Kevin Ponto wrote:
Doesn't it usually take many years to get to a point where you can use a program like PD with any great efficiency, and wouldn't these years of limitation have a drastic effect upon one's music?

It can do depending on your previous experiences - hence me finding tools like Supercollider easier than Logic at first (being used to odd programming languages like Lisp I can think that way fairly well).


It's a complicated issue to discuss because people write music for many reasons and think about it very differently. I find I can get too easily distracted by concerning myself with ways of creating music and sound, to the point it completely ruins what I'm doing (that's why my previous comments allude to my eclectic approach combing commercial and open source software).

And your comments about commercial software often "beating the pants off" open source software could partly be explained by the often terrible management of open source projects. People used to always argue that thousands of people submitting code would lead to tremendous pieces of software. However, software projects need to be managed, they need to have a focus. Good projects often end up in useless forked monstrosities, alienating end users and confusing other developers who rely on their projects (consider the current situation with the XFree project).

As much as the guy annoys me, Joel Spolsky discusses software management issues quite well, which may give you some insight into why it's a hard thing to do and why it affects open source software:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/

You may find this particularly relevant:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Biculturalism.html


-- homepage: http://alexyoung.org music: http://noise.me.uk


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