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Hello HN, I'm the current lead maintainer of the ZynAddSubFX project. Some of you may have heard of the project in the past, though if you haven't been tracking

Hello HN, I'm the current lead maintainer of the ZynAddSubFX project. Some of you may have heard of the project in the past, though if you haven't been tracking it recently there have been a few major changes. First and foremost the old fltk based GUI has been completely rewritten from scratch using a new custom toolkit (mruby-zest). This was done in order to make the interface more usable by making it easier to navigate, easier to use within plugin hosts, easier to get feedback, and easier on the eyes (the fltk UI wasn't exactly the prettiest). Secondly the work on the GUI was made possible by some work which decopuled the sound synthesis engine from the interface. As of the 2.5.x series all parameters can be accessed out-of-process (or on a different networked computer) via open sound control. This decoupling has improved low latency processing and made it easy to map physical (midi) knobs/sliders onto the virtual ones. Overall this work has resulted in a number of child-projects including the RtOSC OSC implementation ( https://github.com/fundamental/rtosc https://github.com/fundamental/rtosc ), the mruby-zest GUI toolkit ( https://github.com/mruby-zest https://github.com/mruby-zest ), and the Stoat LLVM static analysis tool ( https://github.com/fundamental/stoat https://github.com/fundamental/stoat ). I'm currently hoping that the large interface upgrade (which was supported with some recent crowdfunding efforts) will get more people interested in the project and help speed up the momentum of the project as a whole.

programLyrique 9y ago
I've followed a bit the zyn-fusion project. Apparently, you have opened the sources of the new GUI just a few weeks ago and before that, the binaries could be bought. Has this funding model for opensource (releasing binaries, and then waiting for some time to release the sources) been a success? Have you been able to generate a decent revenue with the crowdfunding efforts?
- fundamental 9y ago
  That tends to be one of the first questions people ask. It depends upon the definition of success within the context of the conversation. The main development sprint (for just the GUI rewrite) was approximately 700 hours. The current number of purchases via gumroad is around 150 users. After taking out gumroad fees that ends up putting me a bit below minimum-wage for the main development sprint (if you ignore any hours spent post-release). That amount funding has certainly been helpful in paying expenses (mostly rent), though it isn't at the scale where more full-time development is feasible. It was a good experience and I'd consider it successful in the context a one-time sort of event. Down the road I plan on having a much more detailed breakdown of the fundraiser, though at the moment my FLOSS writing time is being spent on preparing two submissions for the Linux Audio Conference (mruby-zest/rtosc). Paid binaries are going to continue to be available for platforms where users are likely not going to want to compile for themselves (i.e. windows/macOS). This will help to continue to maintain support on those platforms as well as fund other aspects of development.

programLyrique 9y ago

I've followed a bit the zyn-fusion project. Apparently, you have opened the sources of the new GUI just a few weeks ago and before that, the binaries could be bought. Has this funding model for opensource (releasing binaries, and then waiting for some time to release the sources) been a success? Have you been able to generate a decent revenue with the crowdfunding efforts?

fundamental 9y ago
That tends to be one of the first questions people ask. It depends upon the definition of success within the context of the conversation. The main development sprint (for just the GUI rewrite) was approximately 700 hours. The current number of purchases via gumroad is around 150 users. After taking out gumroad fees that ends up putting me a bit below minimum-wage for the main development sprint (if you ignore any hours spent post-release). That amount funding has certainly been helpful in paying expenses (mostly rent), though it isn't at the scale where more full-time development is feasible. It was a good experience and I'd consider it successful in the context a one-time sort of event. Down the road I plan on having a much more detailed breakdown of the fundraiser, though at the moment my FLOSS writing time is being spent on preparing two submissions for the Linux Audio Conference (mruby-zest/rtosc). Paid binaries are going to continue to be available for platforms where users are likely not going to want to compile for themselves (i.e. windows/macOS). This will help to continue to maintain support on those platforms as well as fund other aspects of development.