On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, jeff covey wrote:
> i'm so happy at the way linux is performing with midi; i'm listening
> to "sacred and profane dances" right now, while i also have several
> apps open, am typing this to you, and am recompiling the kernel in the
> background, and the music's not skipping a beat. windows would have
> been dropping notes all over the place a long time ago...
do you use playmidi, btw?
> wow, this could be a truly great platform from music work...
there was a recent mini-discussion on the linux-biz list that was somewhat
disheartening. some people seemed to suggest that the only kind of free
software that will succeed is software that will help programmers or that is
directly related to their work (editors, window managers, compilers), and
that "user" programs will terminally suffer - so that if linux is to grow as
a user platform, there needs to be active development for non-free software.
i don't believe this, and i suppose the best example for my position would
be the gimp. and there are other programs out there as well that are more
"user" related than for programmers. the programs that were cited as never
to be written by free software included point-of-sale software and
database/sales suites for small businesses such as video stores (both would
be great for spreading the popularity of linux, btw). extending this to the
kind of things discussed on this list, that would mean that a program like
cakewalk would never be written as free software for linux, or that
something like the audiotechque project that recently started won't succeed,
and that programs strictly for the composition of music, too, would be a
rarity. but there already are a lot of those, like multitrack etc. anyone
have any thoughts on these dire predictions?
email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright (c) 1997 Michael Stutz; this information is
<http://dsl.org/m/> free and may be reproduced under GNU GPL, and as long
as this sentence remains; it comes with absolutely NO
WARRANTY; for details see <http://dsl.org/copyleft/>.
