[Ardour-Users] financial ideas commentary

Grammostola Rosea rosea.grammostola at gmail.com
Sat Jan 17 04:07:46 PST 2009


Geoff Beasley wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-01-16 at 08:20 +0100, Paul Davis wrote:
>
>   
>> . It is, however, my
>> responsibility, and I thank everyone for both their existing financial
>> support and their ideas and enthusiasm.
>>     
>
> your comments resonate with me also Paul. I had the studio kicked out
> from under me in 2008 after 7 years ( nearly 6 of those on or around
> ardour/linux)  and after 21 years of recording/performing/composing full
> time i'm now skidding out of control towards the brick wall of fiscal
> oblivion. i get exactly what you mean. i wish there was a way of
> assisting you directly and moreover assisting all of my open source
> friends/colleagues around the globe. 
>
> with me, it's been hard enough when there was infrastructure in place
> that meant i could at least keep the doors open, but at 53 and with 7
> kids at home there's not a lot of prospects for me either.  
>
> the point i would make is that as with all endeavours, the road to
> commercial success always seems to 'cost' more than it 'makes' for a
> very long time. there are some amazing and unique features in ardour,
> some (mtc sync) are far and away the best example i've seen of their
> type. there are weaknesses as well of course, but none too serious as to
> make the overall product any less useful than many others on the DAW
> horizon. I think the biggest issue with ardour is the commitment a new
> user has to make to get started. then there is the ongoing performance
> issues as systems expand. WE know linux is by far the best OS for
> everything computer, but trying to convince the world is another matter
> all together. 
>
> it is well overdue for a 'live-ardour-cd'...from the dev's themselves. a
> lean, 'ideal' environment for maximizing ardour's system requirements
> and nothing else. that's how you could tell the world about it;
> pro-actively. use ARCH linux as the base;it's incredibly lite,fast and
> flexible.also there are scripts to help make live cd's. the cd , maybe
> in conjunction with a usb drive, would create a great "test rig" for
> interested parties to try before commiting and get the setup WE want
> them to have without having to decide which windowmanager or what gui
> thing goes where. send them to every recording studio in the world and
> see what happens.
>
> because the commercial imperative hasn't been the driving force behind
> it's core development, ardour is stable in many ways other daw's are
> not. it is heartening to see so many passionate and dedicated supporters
> here. i continue to be one myself, and hope to be  back makin' music
> asap....
>
> please don't lose the faith Paul. what you have achieved with jack &
> ardour are truly great soft's that sound magnificent and work elegantly
> and robustly. it's a pleasure to use them and i for one hail you as the
> greatest power for good the computer music industry has today. 
>
> i hope that one day you and your fabulous creations will receive the
> recognition and the rewards you deserve. the thought of pro-sound &linux
> without you is unthinkable. 
>
>
> what say you everyone... how about a "real" solely ardour live-cd  and
> perhaps a tutorial video on board?  let ardour speak for itself.
> i don't have a lot of experience in this, but i'll help as much as i
> can... perhaps i could make the video for eg
>
> it's what i can give atm. 
>
>
>   
Hi all,

I'm just into Linux for about two years. I did never really understand 
how they can make money with GPL released software.

The answers I got where always twofolds:

1) You don't earn money with the software, but with support
2) You offer also a paid-for version to use in proprietary software 
(like Qt and MySQL).


I think 'Ardour' doesn't make money with any of the two. I think to 
solve the financial problem, you have to brainstorm first, what the 
Ardour team can do with these two... (!)


AFTER that, you can think of improving the ways there are already.

At this moment Ardour does make money by (afaik):

a) SAE sponsorship
b) user donations

You could think of more organizations like SAE, who are willing to 
sponsor. SAE is not the only audio production school right? At least you 
have in 'every' country such schools or music education schools like 
that... Maybe here are some opportunities? Doesn't more smaller 
(music)schools could benefit from a project like Ardour?

You could try to make the user donations a bit more effective. (I've 
mentioned linuxmint.com as an example structure). But as said before, 
this is not gonna solve Ardours financial problem.

The last point I must point out is the way of thinking or attitude 
within the Ardour project. Maybe it's to idealistic. To less 
compromises, to less client/user friendly, to less a company structure, 
to conservative, to negative against Windows or even Ubuntu ('Linux for 
human beings' a slogan which say probably  a lot)...

All this is not a problem at all, unless you have a real financial 
problem...

As said before by Patrick, there are to many opportunities to loose 
hope... Open Source software is rising and is becoming more user 
friendly (remember Ubuntu Studio, which could make Ardour better known 
is only about two years old), Ardour with midi support will be more 
interesting for people, financial crisis etc.

Kind regards,

\r
a Ardour lover and supporter.














 



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