[Ardour-Dev] Licensing and enforced payments

[Geoff Beasley]

On Tuesday 20 January 2009 16:54:48 Patrick Shirkey wrote:
> There are supposedly thousands of people who are using Ardour who don't
> contribute in any way shape or form. If they did we would surely know
> about them.

 I wonder about this. The number of monthly downloads reveals absolutely 
nothing about the number of users and the extent of the use they make of which 
features etc.etc.  To me, the bottom line here is the fact that getting a 
great experience with Ardour 'out-of-the-box- is beyond every single Windows 
user regardless of their level of expertise; and they are the people you want. 
It takes months to learn a new operating system properly,regardless of 
distribution because the similarities between Linux and Windows are purely 
cosmetic. Tuning the alsa/jack/hw layers can take days.

Ardour is a "professional" piece of soft; it's only useful to"professional" 
users.  It can't even create an mp3. Ardour is a DAW, full stop. DAW's are the 
heart of hundreds of thousands of studios world wide. That's your market, 
period. You have to make it obvious that Ardour can replace their existing DAW 
seamlessly (can it without more complete VST support and session import?   two 
show-stoppers right there) , that using Linux as the base OS for Ardour  
(only) is painless,reliable and transparent, and it seems to me, that unless 
you target these users directly, all your efforts will fail to generate the 
kind of income that the project appears to need to further it's development.

The only solution to this is a live cd that just loads a fast,clean Ardour 
environment ready for testing. Surely this can be achieved. No studio is going 
to throw away existing infrastucture on a whim. Linux isn't yet a replacement 
for 'all" commercial pro audio softwares, so a blend is required. Prove it 
works and you'll gain more support.  That's all you can do. Spread the word. 

This has ALWAYS been the situation. I made the choice to dump the Windows 
software garbage I was using in late 2004 and made a full time 40 track pro-
studio which ran entirely on linux for nearly 4 years. It hurt like hell. At 
times it was embarrasing,other times it was amazing but all the time it was a 
challenge.

We all understand this. It's a fact of life within our community, but we're 
converts. We need more of 'em. There out there, believe me; 
cursing,swearing,smashing keyboards as we speak. We need a tool to easily, and 
in a controlled and consistent fashion, demonstrate how good Ardour is. Saying 
"...go install Planet-CCRMA"  aint the answer. It's too large a commitment. 
Many (most?) just won't go through with it.



I will now withdraw back into my hole; and don't be rude ;)


best,

g.


PS: I admire and salute every one of you for making such a focused and 
dedicated attempt to keep the development of Ardour alive and thriving.

-- 
Geoff Beasley.
Composer,Performer,Producer.
Laughing Boy Records
www.laughingboyrecords.com
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