Hi all --
I read the article on Slashdot the other day entitled "Making
Music With Linux: We're Getting There", which includes a nice
mini-interview with our own DLP. I also noticed some replies
there from other LAD regulars (it's nice to find real content
hidden amongst the noise).
However, to me the most interesting part of the article
was one that got virtually no response in the forum, so I thought
I'd inquire here. The writer pointed to the demo scene from the
Amiga and DOS, and said that the strong sense of competition there
played a large part in spurring on development progress of the
related music software.
Here in the quasi-Socialistic (and I mean that in a good way)
world of Open Source coding, we tend to look down on competition
because it causes duplicated effort, fragmentation, and various
other problems; we encourage cooperation and integration between
projects as much as possible. While this has obvious benefits,
it does somewhat leave out the nice adreneline rush associated
with intense competition. Is there some way to reap the benefits
of both?
I would propose that a nice happy medium could be reached if
we were to start competing based on content (the actual music
we produce, rather than the software we write to help us make
the music). You know, a good-natured, for-fame-not-money,
competition each month for, say, who can write the best fugue,
best two minute techno piece, best simulation of a violin solo
using nothing but Csound, etc.
All pieces (with source and/or description of the software
used to make them) would be posted on a web site for download
and voting, and we could burn a CD once in a while as
appropriate. Since there's plenty of precedent for this sort
of thing in the demo world and the like (the International
Raytracing Competition is extremely similar in concept) I'm sure
we could work out the inevitable copyright issues in a manner
that would make everybody happy.
Anybody else up for this?
Div.
--
David Slomin, Engineer mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
AltaVista Business Solutions http://solutions.altavista.com/
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