On 1/12/23 2:45 AM, Richard Bown wrote:
Consequently, I am reaching out to see if there are any stories or feelings you have around using and/or contributing to Rosegarden that you feel are vital and worth sharing. I would love to hear them. Feel free to email me if you don't want to share on the list.
I haven't seen any replies on this list to your post -- hopefully you received some privately and they were helpful in preparing your presentation. In any case, I'm going to add my opinions (publicly) here.
I'd be very interested in hearing your analysis of the issues surrounding open source software, particularly Rosegarden with its very unique 30 year history. I'm unfortunately not in a position to travel 1/3 the way around the globe to attend FOSDEM (though it would make a nice vacation!), so if your session becomes available online after the fact please post any links to it here.
The current problem with Rosegarden -- and I do claim it is a problem -- is that development contributions have slowed to a crawl. Not counting me (and it's debatable whether I count) there are only a handful of (semi-)active developers. In addition, Ted is the single point gating decisions on if and when merge requests make it into the codebase, and the amount of time and energy he can devote to that Herculean task is limited -- understandably so given his long history with and immense contributions to the project. Maybe you could "come out of retirement" and lend a hand. ;) ;) ;)
None of this matters if one considers Rosegarden to be feature complete and its internal architecture and implementation without need of improvement. I respectfully disagree on both points. But, yes, if that's the conclusion then it's appropriate that Rosegarden "ride off into the sunset" with only occasional/minor bug fixes and maintenance releases. (In that regard Ted has done an exemplary job ensuring the code is stable and crash-free.)
The "elephant in the room" here is Musescore. It's a very different kind of open-source project, with (as I understand it) a full-time paid professional staff and a large number of additional voluntary contributors. In many ways I don't think open-source projects can/do/should compete with each other. But, again in my estimation, Musescore has moved far beyond Rosegarden, and consequently has a user base that's orders of magnitude larger. Yes, the fact that it's cross-platform, particularly to the Mac (music production is Apple's final monopoly, having lost desktop publishing and photo editing a long time ago) is a large factor in that.
What does that have to do with the current subject? Only in relation to my claim that if Rosegarden stays in stasis, its use in and benefits to the community will predictably dwindle over time. That's what I perceive is happening now: There's a small group of active users, and Rosegarden exists as kind of a "cosa nostra"/"our thing"/in-group club for them. Which would be fine except that I think it has a lot more to offer, to more people, than that.
I posted here (and you replied on the thread) regarding my fork of the project. I refer back to that now as my "story and feelings" for possible inclusion as a small datapoint in your talk. In any case, I hope things go well at the conference, and again ask for a link if/when your presentation becomes virtually available.
P.S.: I have an upcoming bug fix and new features commit to the fork nearing completion, and (sigh!) another semi-major new feature planned after that. Someday I'm going to get off this merry-go-round. ;)
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