6 ms·

> SuperCollider or something similar remains more powerful and more flexible SuperCollider's license effectively stops you from designing commercial products.

> SuperCollider or something similar remains more powerful and more flexible SuperCollider's license effectively stops you from designing commercial products. Even the free version of Elementary allows that.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Well, if you plan to release a commercial product based on writing JS, compiling that to WASM, running somehow inside or alongside a C/C++ core engine also compiled to WASM, both running in some standalone WASM environment ... good luck! Elementary looks like a nice playground for audio if you have a web-leaning bent. Just like SuperCollider is a nice playground for audio if you are familiar with some its fundamental assumptions. Neither of them seem appropriate to be the basis of products I would charge someone for, other than maybe as a one-off custom tool of some sort.
abetusk 5y ago
What are you talking about? SuperCollider is licensed under GPLv3 [1]. [0] https://github.com/supercollider/supercollider#license https://github.com/supercollider/supercollider#license
- NateEag 5y ago
  Exactly. Any product you produce must include full source code, at which point anyone can legally post all your code on the internet. So - very difficult to build a commercial software product with it.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    The entire source code of Ardour is posted on the Internet. Nevertheless, it has no known bad-intent copies, and generates more than US $200k/yr. It is also the basis of two products generally viewed as "commercial", even though they are also GPL-licensed. Almost all of the source code of VCV Rack is posted on the Internet. There have been a few forks for specific reasons, but it's almost certainly the most widely used software modular synthesis in existence, and has created both a paying job for its creator and a mixed libre/paid ecosystem for module developers. The entire source code of Vital, one of the most acclaimed software synthesizers of 2021 is posted on the Internet. The author (Matt Tytel) makes a living from his work. The definition of commercial might be a little wider than you think. Finally, there are several ways to use SC in a product that do not involve the GPL. You fire up sclang as a separate process, feed it SC code, and sclang controls the server. Nothing you write is linked to anything GPL licensed.
    - iainctduncan 5y ago
      Paul, I am very happy to hear that Ardour is succeeding in supporting you. While I'm not really using Linux these days for audio as I'm doing my Scheme in Max stuff now, your contributions were very influential to me back in the oughts when I was, and I remember learning a lot from your posts on various linux audio forums. It's heartwarming to know that the work is succeeding in making a good lifestyle business for you. :-)
    - iainctduncan 5y ago
      So is one of those Harrison MixBus? It would be nice to hear that worked out. What's the other? (or both if I'm wrong on the first count)
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        Mixbus is one, Waves Tracks Live is the other (but is now discontinued, for reasons largely unrelated to the product itself).
    - NateEag 5y ago
      I'm glad to hear Ardour is working well for you. I honestly had assumed it wouldn't be making much income, though I now realize that was based on just about no information (the sole data point I had was that it worked poorly for me when I attempted a trial on macOS about two years ago). I'm glad to hear I was mistaken about that. I wasn't aware that VCV Rack was actually profitable either, nor that there's a mixture of libre and paid modules available for it. I'd vaguely considered that as a business model for OSS audio stuff in years past but didn't think it was likely to work in practice. Apparently I may be wrong about that - do you know if anyone's actually making decent income selling closed modules for VCV Rack? You make a good point about running sclang as a standalone process to firewall the GPL from the rest of a product. Somehow that hadn't occurred to me, but it seems like it would work. Overall - thanks for the rebuttal. You make a strong case that open source audio software is more compatible with commercial sales than I thought, and I appreciate you taking the time to do it.
  - abetusk 5y ago
    This is a bad faith argument and is effectively FUD. The list of open source projects that people use in a commercial setting is long. Linux, Apache, Nginx, mysql/postgres/SQLite, Redis, Git, nearly every major programming language (C, PHP, Go, Python, Node), Firefox/Chromium, to name a tiny fraction. Businesses that have libre/free/open source as their core product are also numerous: SQLite, Gitlab (open core), Red Hat, Docker, Nginx, Npm, Redis, Wordpress to name a few of the big players. There is a long tail and companies like Draw.io, Gratipay, Overleaf, Jitsi and the list goes on. The list of open source hardware companies is also long: Adafruit, Arduino, Sparkfun, Seeed Studios, Gaudi Labs, LittleBits, Olimex, Zynthian, to name a few. GPLv3 is a so-called "viral" license, making sure that any changes are given back to the community. This is done to prevent bad actors from taking the code, modifying it and then claiming it as their own intellectual property. From what I understand, this has the effect of preventing larger businesses with a more "classic" intellectual property stack from using smaller business's code base without giving back. I have heard rumors that larger businesses, like Amazon, specifically use GPLv2 so as to not trigger the viral licensing, effectively benefiting from the commons without giving back to the broader community at large. I have also heard companies like NVidia use MIT licensing for code given to potential clients/customers/internally and strongarm everyone involved to not release it, creating a situation where they're not violating the licensing terms but never releasing it to the public. Though a cultural or psychological effect, from what I understand, smaller businesses tend not to be too successful at "stealing" competitors code as the brand awareness and domain intelligence looks to be the more relevant factor to success. For businesses that do use others libre/free/open source code, there tends to be a virtuous cycle, where they each build on the others success and widen the market. Perhaps it's the other way around that success in one business allows for others to expand the market further. Making money from business is difficult to begin with regardless of whether the core product is libre/free/open. Understanding how to create a business that has libre/free/open source products at its core is still being discovered, so it's not like there's a definitive answer but to say that it kills the opportunity is flat out incorrect.
    - NateEag 5y ago
      > This is a bad faith argument and is effectively FUD. As the one who made the argument, I can assure you that it was not made in bad faith. I'm a big fan of open formats, open source, and libre software, and have made small contributions to various projects for a number of years (usually code contributions and bug reports, but occasionally financial donations too). The argument was made from my sincere belief that, difficult as it is to make a sustainable software business (which I've seen up close, having participated in multiple failed startups), it's much harder to make a successful business with an open source product. I would love to find out my belief is wrong, but it's still the one I've got until persuaded otherwise. Accusing me of bad faith added nothing to your argument and violated the site's guidelines. Maybe skip that next time? > The list of open source projects that people use in a commercial setting is long. Linux, Apache, Nginx, mysql/postgres/SQLite, Redis, Git, nearly every major programming language (C, PHP, Go, Python, Node), Firefox/Chromium, to name a tiny fraction. Yep, OSS is everywhere and used for commercial purposes all the time. Large swaths of what you've listed above aren't commercial products, though, AFAIK. I think most commercial software products use open source tools somewhere in their stack. I should have been more specific with my claim - I think if the core components that form your software's value proposition are OSS, it's very hard to make a sustainable business out of selling that software. The fact that open core products are a popular and successful way of monetizing OSS tools suggests as much, as there's some proprietary "secret sauce" that the users pay to get access to. Open hardware works much better, I think, because people instinctively understand they've got to pay for someone to build the physical artifacts. Somehow, even developers seem to undervalue the effort it takes to build and maintain a useful piece of software. > but to say that it kills the opportunity is flat out incorrect. I don't believe I said it kills the opportunity. Just that it makes it much more difficult.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

Well, if you plan to release a commercial product based on writing JS, compiling that to WASM, running somehow inside or alongside a C/C++ core engine also compiled to WASM, both running in some standalone WASM environment ... good luck! Elementary looks like a nice playground for audio if you have a web-leaning bent. Just like SuperCollider is a nice playground for audio if you are familiar with some its fundamental assumptions. Neither of them seem appropriate to be the basis of products I would charge someone for, other than maybe as a one-off custom tool of some sort.

abetusk 5y ago

What are you talking about? SuperCollider is licensed under GPLv3 [1]. [0] https://github.com/supercollider/supercollider#license https://github.com/supercollider/supercollider#license

NateEag 5y ago
Exactly. Any product you produce must include full source code, at which point anyone can legally post all your code on the internet. So - very difficult to build a commercial software product with it.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  The entire source code of Ardour is posted on the Internet. Nevertheless, it has no known bad-intent copies, and generates more than US $200k/yr. It is also the basis of two products generally viewed as "commercial", even though they are also GPL-licensed. Almost all of the source code of VCV Rack is posted on the Internet. There have been a few forks for specific reasons, but it's almost certainly the most widely used software modular synthesis in existence, and has created both a paying job for its creator and a mixed libre/paid ecosystem for module developers. The entire source code of Vital, one of the most acclaimed software synthesizers of 2021 is posted on the Internet. The author (Matt Tytel) makes a living from his work. The definition of commercial might be a little wider than you think. Finally, there are several ways to use SC in a product that do not involve the GPL. You fire up sclang as a separate process, feed it SC code, and sclang controls the server. Nothing you write is linked to anything GPL licensed.
  - iainctduncan 5y ago
    Paul, I am very happy to hear that Ardour is succeeding in supporting you. While I'm not really using Linux these days for audio as I'm doing my Scheme in Max stuff now, your contributions were very influential to me back in the oughts when I was, and I remember learning a lot from your posts on various linux audio forums. It's heartwarming to know that the work is succeeding in making a good lifestyle business for you. :-)
  - iainctduncan 5y ago
    So is one of those Harrison MixBus? It would be nice to hear that worked out. What's the other? (or both if I'm wrong on the first count)
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      Mixbus is one, Waves Tracks Live is the other (but is now discontinued, for reasons largely unrelated to the product itself).
  - NateEag 5y ago
    I'm glad to hear Ardour is working well for you. I honestly had assumed it wouldn't be making much income, though I now realize that was based on just about no information (the sole data point I had was that it worked poorly for me when I attempted a trial on macOS about two years ago). I'm glad to hear I was mistaken about that. I wasn't aware that VCV Rack was actually profitable either, nor that there's a mixture of libre and paid modules available for it. I'd vaguely considered that as a business model for OSS audio stuff in years past but didn't think it was likely to work in practice. Apparently I may be wrong about that - do you know if anyone's actually making decent income selling closed modules for VCV Rack? You make a good point about running sclang as a standalone process to firewall the GPL from the rest of a product. Somehow that hadn't occurred to me, but it seems like it would work. Overall - thanks for the rebuttal. You make a strong case that open source audio software is more compatible with commercial sales than I thought, and I appreciate you taking the time to do it.
- abetusk 5y ago
  This is a bad faith argument and is effectively FUD. The list of open source projects that people use in a commercial setting is long. Linux, Apache, Nginx, mysql/postgres/SQLite, Redis, Git, nearly every major programming language (C, PHP, Go, Python, Node), Firefox/Chromium, to name a tiny fraction. Businesses that have libre/free/open source as their core product are also numerous: SQLite, Gitlab (open core), Red Hat, Docker, Nginx, Npm, Redis, Wordpress to name a few of the big players. There is a long tail and companies like Draw.io, Gratipay, Overleaf, Jitsi and the list goes on. The list of open source hardware companies is also long: Adafruit, Arduino, Sparkfun, Seeed Studios, Gaudi Labs, LittleBits, Olimex, Zynthian, to name a few. GPLv3 is a so-called "viral" license, making sure that any changes are given back to the community. This is done to prevent bad actors from taking the code, modifying it and then claiming it as their own intellectual property. From what I understand, this has the effect of preventing larger businesses with a more "classic" intellectual property stack from using smaller business's code base without giving back. I have heard rumors that larger businesses, like Amazon, specifically use GPLv2 so as to not trigger the viral licensing, effectively benefiting from the commons without giving back to the broader community at large. I have also heard companies like NVidia use MIT licensing for code given to potential clients/customers/internally and strongarm everyone involved to not release it, creating a situation where they're not violating the licensing terms but never releasing it to the public. Though a cultural or psychological effect, from what I understand, smaller businesses tend not to be too successful at "stealing" competitors code as the brand awareness and domain intelligence looks to be the more relevant factor to success. For businesses that do use others libre/free/open source code, there tends to be a virtuous cycle, where they each build on the others success and widen the market. Perhaps it's the other way around that success in one business allows for others to expand the market further. Making money from business is difficult to begin with regardless of whether the core product is libre/free/open. Understanding how to create a business that has libre/free/open source products at its core is still being discovered, so it's not like there's a definitive answer but to say that it kills the opportunity is flat out incorrect.
  - NateEag 5y ago
    > This is a bad faith argument and is effectively FUD. As the one who made the argument, I can assure you that it was not made in bad faith. I'm a big fan of open formats, open source, and libre software, and have made small contributions to various projects for a number of years (usually code contributions and bug reports, but occasionally financial donations too). The argument was made from my sincere belief that, difficult as it is to make a sustainable software business (which I've seen up close, having participated in multiple failed startups), it's much harder to make a successful business with an open source product. I would love to find out my belief is wrong, but it's still the one I've got until persuaded otherwise. Accusing me of bad faith added nothing to your argument and violated the site's guidelines. Maybe skip that next time? > The list of open source projects that people use in a commercial setting is long. Linux, Apache, Nginx, mysql/postgres/SQLite, Redis, Git, nearly every major programming language (C, PHP, Go, Python, Node), Firefox/Chromium, to name a tiny fraction. Yep, OSS is everywhere and used for commercial purposes all the time. Large swaths of what you've listed above aren't commercial products, though, AFAIK. I think most commercial software products use open source tools somewhere in their stack. I should have been more specific with my claim - I think if the core components that form your software's value proposition are OSS, it's very hard to make a sustainable business out of selling that software. The fact that open core products are a popular and successful way of monetizing OSS tools suggests as much, as there's some proprietary "secret sauce" that the users pay to get access to. Open hardware works much better, I think, because people instinctively understand they've got to pay for someone to build the physical artifacts. Somehow, even developers seem to undervalue the effort it takes to build and maintain a useful piece of software. > but to say that it kills the opportunity is flat out incorrect. I don't believe I said it kills the opportunity. Just that it makes it much more difficult.