[Ardour-Users] Could this solve Ardour's financial headache?

[Mark Knecht]

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 11:47 AM, Paul Davis <paul at linuxaudiosystems.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-01-08 at 11:46 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>> Maybe something more like the community picking out a specific
>> hardware vendor and trying to get them to do something that would
>> package Ardour and provide some income that way.
>
> Some discussions like this are underway already. I'm a little skeptical
> that they can really lead to much - the margins are really not so big
> and the h/w vendor would like to keep as much of them as possible. but
> maybe 80% of whatever windows OEM cost. I'm not much of a numbers guy,
> and I tend to always be pessimistic about this kind of idea, but we'll
> see.
>
> --p

I completely understand. When my last start-up died in 2004 I spent a
good portion of 2005 looking at how to make audio cards using FPGAs.
(Ala RME) The margins are VERY small in the end unless you can command
some sort of premium for a feature set. Simply supplying a piece of
open source software won't (in my opinion) do that.

I don't want to be pessimistic though. Live CD setups are interesting.
Allowing someone to boot a machine using Linux and record to a USB
drive is interesting. Portable devices runnning small form factor
versions of Ardour. Someone wanting to get a foot hold against Digi.
There's lots of potential reasons. Getting support from you and the
other developers is certainly worth something.

I wish whomever the best of luck!

Cheers,
Mark