Yeah, Well, Deez Nutz Are Open Source Too...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
On the one hand, okay, I get it. Cory Doctorow wins. Everything should be Open and furthermore Free, and we should all make our living from well-paid speaking engagements where we expound on our misguided beliefs about things we don’t understand. Yup. I’m all for it.
On the other, sometimes open source software can be really fucking frustrating. Okay. Strike that. Pretty much all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me preempt the first thirty replies by saying “okay, yeah, MySQL and Apache are awesome. You win. Firefox is the shit. Group hug!” But you know what? While I may use Apache and MySQL every day, it’s only by accident. I don’t go out and say “gee, I wonder what my Apache server is up to” because I’m not a fucking web developer. I’m a musician.
Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to my point. PureData is pure awesome; it is probably the most robust open source project strictly for musicians, and it does about 80% of what Max/MSP does, for free. (Free as in “I could give a fuck what kind of free you’re talking about.”) But these guys that built it, smart as they are, are living in the wonderful land that exists between the audio driver and the user interface, and the extremities are completely ignored. If I was going to give a class on how to make a program as unfriendly as humanely possible, I’d use Pd as a shining example. If the second semester was on how to make sure that the back end functions as poorly as the front, I’d still use Pd. The only reason I know how to use the damn thing is because I already knew how to use Max, and even then…
One example: boot up Pd on a MacBook Pro, using the internal sound. Run something that makes noise. Now plug in headphones. Yeah, you’re gonna have to go ahead and kill Pd and restart it.
I could come up with 20 such examples in as many seconds, but I won’t belabor the point, and I’m busy rebooting because Pd killed the audio driver when I had the temerity to load a patch. I saw a guy at Ground Kontrol a couple months ago, typical dreadlocked, neck-bearded, forehead pierced latte-tard PDX native, and he had a pink (natch) t-shirt on that said “MY FREE SOFTWARE RUNS YOUR COMPANY.” No, that’s not exactly true, is it? My imagination and Adam’s DSP chops run our company. Your free software makes running my company fucking frustrating because you half-ass your way through it, only working on what can hold your gnat-sized attention span for as long as it takes you to earn enough money to go to Burning Man. Pull up your pants.
EDIT: After reading through some of the comments, I think what I actually meant to say in that last sentence was “hey, you kids, get off my lawn!”
10 comments
Does any open source software go beyond ripping off someone's IP and giving it away for free? Has there been any innovation there?
I'm sure there's a good example of something, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head. Everything that's coming to mind already existed in commercial form.
-CR
I could be very wrong on this (and as setting off to work beckons I don't have time to google) but didn't PD come before MAX/MSP?
you know those youtubes of frank zappa where he's getting interviewed on Cross Fire or something?
CR, for some reason when reading your post those interviews popped in my head. not sure why.
i think you are right on w/your post.. some people choose to see things in black and white and they forget about all the little shades of grey.. it's like the "life line exercise". there's just a total disconnection somewhere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFoJ6XNeKOI&feature=related
the "free software runs your company" t-shirt must have made you bite your tongue. it would have made for easy baiting into a conversational melee. but who has time for that.. or even wants to get into it (not me) when Robotron is 10 paces away.
"I could be very wrong on this (and as setting off to work beckons I don't have time to google) but didn't PD come before MAX/MSP? "
i don't think so. they were both developed by Miller Puckette though. I think he developed PD much later. you'd have to google to be sure of actual dates. but Max was first then Max MSP the MAX MSP jitter and somewhere in there PD came about. i could be totally wrong.
But the guy's shirt is right, your website is hosted on F/OSS software and without your website to be able to sell software through, you wouldn't have much. Yes you could move to IIS but god they suck.
According to Netcraft this site and Audio Damage... servers are Linux based with Apache/2.0.50 Unix mod_ssl/2.0.50 OpenSSL/0.9.7a DAV/2 SVN/1.3.0
I do agree with the usability portion, most open source programs lack any form of decent usability or an interface. Same reason people aren't switching in droves to GiMP from Photoshop.
re: max MSP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(software )
max was first then MSP was derived from work done on pure data according to wikipedia.
Wow, a full page of comments and nobody has jumped in to say "Instead of complaining, fix the bugs/implement usability yourself! That's the way open source works!"
I was feeling this same pain last weekend, after I lost hours to multiple MuseScore crashes. I quickly learned to save after every couple measures, but I still had to repeat a lot of work. Should have just shelled out some cash for a rigorously QA'd scoring app. Or even a moderately tested one.
I think the problem is that while every software developer has their own notion of what's Interesting Shit to work on, in general the most Interesting things are the core features of the software. Things like interfacing correctly with the system, and understanding usability, are not directly connected to the Interesting Problem the software is trying to solve.
In commercial software development you've (hopefully) used the carrot of paychecks to assemble a staff that has some diversity of interests. Somebody on the team *does* enjoy working on audio drivers, or keeping an eye out for usability.
But for the people who are driven to contribute to an open source software project, the Interestingness of the core problem is often the only thing drawing them in. A potential contributor more interested in usability than the features of a particular project would be more likely to contribute to a different project instead.
Obviously there are great open source apps out there that have overcome this, but the incentives aren't set up for easy success.
@Nate: it's worth noting, just for the sake of argument, that the vast majority of the work that was done on the software this site and AD are running on (they are, after all, on the same box) was done by corporations ranging in size from pretty large to very large, as you know full well. The context is entirely different, and their motives were vastly different from that neck-bearded hipster I saw. In this conversation, the "usability portion" is the only portion.
In any case, I'll make two points:
1 - I certainly have an option. I can purchase Max 4 Live. It's not like I paid for Pd, so I don't get to complain too loudly. I'm just typing for the sake of argument.
2 - Well, I guess that I only had one point.
-CR
This is just another excuse to bash Cory Doctorow, isn't it?
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