John, As a software developer in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry, with way more experience with standards definition and application than I ever wanted to have, I appreciate all concerns that have been voiced on this list about standardization. At the same time, the great thing about abc is that its use has been standardized enough that it has become an incredibly valuable channel of communication for music of all sorts. So on balance, I think the value of standardization outweighs the value of flexibility and freedom to change the notation in arbitrary ways - just as standards in the EDA industry have fueled the massive productivity explosion of the last decade (bringing you all those digital electronic playtoys for creating and playing abc files on ...).
In EDA, the tension between the the inflexibility of standards vs. the chaos of proprietary tools has led to significant interest in Open Source software development, where the code is freely available, many people contribute to its development, but integration of those contributions is often controlled carefully by a small governing body responsible for the product, to ensure consistency and integrity. As I listen to the (mostly friendly) debate among several authors of abc software on this list, I keep thinking that an Open Source abc composer/player/printer tool would be appropriate. You even mentioned Open Source twice in your last posting, but didn't comment on the possibility of Open Source abc software development. It seems to me that you all have a lot of great ideas, as well as a lot of strong individual preferences, and perhaps even some animosities I don't understand - but that together you could create an integrated, 'standard' Open Source abc processor that could be better than any of the existing abc tools. You might start with the source code of any of the existing tools, and work together to extend it to merge in features of other tools. You who are developers of existing tools would be the appropriate set of people to govern integration of newly contributed features. And as with most open source software, this 'standard' abc processor would most likely be ported rapidly to all platforms anyone would ever want to use abc on. (Eventually I'll expect to see a Java version of this tool running on my toaster, so I can program the tune it plays when the toast is done...) So please pardon my intrusion (I'll go back to lurking now), but I'd be very interested in hearing you all discuss the possibility of an Open Source abc development effort. Are there any reasons why you wouldn't consider this? Has it been tried before? Is there no way it could be successful? What would it take to get such an effort started? Regards, Erich on 4/18/02 3:05 PM, John Chambers at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... > Careful there. If you do that, you had better stop talking to the > rest of us. There are a lot of people using non-Microsoft systems > here. Some of us even use (gasp!) Open Source software. If you tell > us anything about what your code does or how it works, you could be > prosecuted. Go read your license. Or better, give it to an IP lawyer > and have him explain it to you. > > (Note that that does't end with a ;-). It's not funny. There's a very > real possibility that communication between Microsoft developers and > other programmers will soon be illegal in the USA. > > Of course, some Open Source developers would tell that this might be > a Good Thing. And some Sun, Palm and Sony developers ... > > To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: > http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
