I can say, I have no problems building ardour and have many times before, but the last few updates I've decided to forgo that and just buy the prebuilt binaries

I can say, I have no problems building ardour and have many times before, but the last few updates I've decided to forgo that and just buy the prebuilt binaries. Ardour's given me a lot of value over the years when other options were out of reach and now that I can, having the option to pay a reasonable price or what I can or am willing or able to pay for it is an easy choice to make. There's a lot of FOSS software i've used over the years that have helped me in times when I could never afford proprietary alternatives and as i've gotten older and made more money i've tried to go back and donate or buy prebuilt binaries of that software when I can. Honestly, the existence of such software has helped me so many times in life when I would have either had to fork out unreasonable amounts of money or pirate things. I wish open source maintainers and devs got more credit for the work they do. I bet it would be hard to figure out just how many lives have been enriched and bettered by their work.