[Ardour-Dev] Funding: Build and Sell Hardware

[Patrick Shirkey]

Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>   
>> It's a pity. I think it would save a lot of time and hassles for most people
>> but I guess we all have hackers trying to access our latest tracks and don't
>> want to run the risk of having the box auto update while it is being used or
>> maybe just don't want to have *potential* inefficiencies...
>>
>>     
>>> Just an idea how we non-developers could work together to provide some
>>> value to future users.
>>>
>>>       
>> A very valuable idea.
>>
>> Of course if it actually makes money then someone is gonna fork it just to
>> spite you from selling out and being successful because you have offended
>> their vision of open source.
>>
>>     
>
> Yeah, there's that, but  I don't think 'racks' per se - if they are
> something like Ardour templates - are covered by GPL anyway. Ardour
> session files aren't covered. That's proprietary or you'd have to give
> me all your sound files, right? That stuff is yours. This stuff - just
> a bunch of templates -  is ours. If someone wants to cop a copy then
> it's no big deal really. In some way that's what we're all doing right
> now.
>
> I think it's more about finding 100 studios around the world that
> might have a small interest in using Linux in some small way and then
> just leveraging this collective knowledge we all have to make it
> easier for them. To me it's a no brainer that if I'm running a
> business and someone can take an old PC with a good quality sound card
> and make it, through no effort of my own, into something useful for my
> studio, then maybe I'd take a chance. $50/month. $25. Whatever they
> give it helps Paul and the others.
>
> But heck, I'm a dreamer... ;-)
>
>   

I like the angle and I think it has some very real potential.

In order to take it a step further we would need to define what exactly 
we were offering and who was going to do what and when.

Because we are all spread across different time zones it would be 
relatively easy for us to cover the 24 hour period. We would need some 
kind of roster to make sure everyone knew who was responsible for first 
response.

Just pointing people to the list is not gonna cut it so we would need to 
have a proper, private support desk with tickets etc...


Cheers.




-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd.