[Ardour-Users] Subscription D-Day time

[Paul Davis]

In another few weeks, it will be 12 months since the first round of
Ardour subscriptions began, and the natural termination point for those
subscriptions will have been reached. Although I am receiving funding
from 2 audio technology-related sources at present, the subscriptions
program is absolutely vital to Ardour's future success. The sponsorship
arrangements could, as Solid State Logic demonstrated last year, end at
any time. A diverse stream of funding for Ardour is the only way to
ensure that it continues to be developed at a reasonable rate. Unlike
Apache, Ardour is not even close to "complete", and is chasing an
ever-moving target. Subscriptions and donations continue to raise
somewhere between US$1000 and US$1500 per month, which can be viewed 2
ways:

   * Totally mindblowingly awesome for an open source project
   * A complete failure for a piece of software with at least 20k
        downloads a month

I prefer to focus on the former, but both contain their share of truth.

If you are an existing Ardour donor, thank you. If you are a subscriber,
thank you for your confidence and belief in the project. If you are a
subscriber whose subscription will come to an end soon, please consider
renewing for another year. And of course, if you are not a subscriber or
donor, please consider revisiting those options.

Coming up February 6th will v2.3, which will contain Ardour's new pet,
Rhythm Ferret, which offers some of the capabilities of ProTools' Beat
Detective. There will be the usual list of bug fixes, and several more
nice features related to managing tempo maps and using them.

thanks to everyone for their continued belief in this project,
--p