Discussing opensource and proprietary music software with Louigi Verona

I'm talking with Louigi Verona about the current situation with opensource and proprietary software regarding music production.
We discuss the problems with opensource software development, and some ideas emerged on what could help with this situation.
I think this might be an interesting watch for both linux audio developers and linux musicians.

Links:

[BillHustonPodcast]

I've just discovered the music of Louigi Verona. WOW! I love it. Some of the best deep-ambient space music I've ever heard. I'm a Pure Data hacker, so I'm excited to listen to this.

[timorii]

Great balanced interview! + A gratis insight into producing/mixing minimal techno/house with Mixxx at 58:20. Thanks, Tobiasz and Louigi! :)

[nanomancer]

I couldn't agree more with what you guys are saying. I moved over to Linux about 3 years ago, but due to work/life/study etc I haven't had much time for music production in that time. So I've only just started looking into Linux audio, and previously I was using Ableton Live alongside a few hardware devices. So coming from that, I decided to install kxstudio a month ago, and it's been night after night of not making music and fiddling in config files, trying out various daws only to find some limitation. I think I will eventually move to bitwig, but I've not been able to get the demo version working. So I've finally got a reasonable modular setup going, which will be good for playing around and generating ideas, but when it comes to detailed and complex arrangements it's going to be lacking.

As far as session management goes, you are right, very confusing for the beginner, and it seems some of the protocols (LADISH) are no longer in development, I've found Non-session manager the best so far. Tbh, if I didn't already have some Linux experience, moving from other platforms to Linux would just be a non-starter.

[LDdrums]

Thanks for the mention unfa! Very good points by both of you. Actually noise-repellent was born with that "improve it till is black magic" kind of objective but life can happen to me too. What I really don't like in the linux audio community is that "I will make a pack of simple plugins because I can" kind of mindset, we as developers need to focus in one thing and make it as good as possible. I cannot agree more with Luigy in that point and I am now trying to prove the opposite with NR. This strategy has been proven successful over the years for other OSes. Why shouldn't be successful on linux too? Well is up to us devs to do that! So hey! if you are a developer keep that in mind. By the way that lmms talk would be very interesting to hear too!

[LucasZawacki]

Nice and necessary conversation. I'm a developer and I've been using FOSS to compose and produce music for a few years now and I share some of the frustrations you guys talked about.

My approach to music production has always been minimalistic in the way that I want to learn at least in a very basic level how stuff works before I'm comfortable with using it and being creative and for this the open source community kinda made sense to me. Projects like the MOD duo seem to be a step in the right direction to a future of better software "for musicians" and give me some hope.

As a developer this conversation was interesting to listen to for different reasons. I've made musical-artifacts.com thinking about problems I see in the open source music and "online" music production scenes, but I'm more and more realizing that I probably missed the mark on what musicians and producers in general would want from such service and failed to monetize it in a way which justifies putting more work into it (and cutting time from my paid work or fun music stuff).

[nanomancer]

Hi Unfa, I found a beat slicer, not been able to compile it under kxstudio yet. I'll see if I can chase up the link...

[desnerger]

The ultimate issue of open-source is a lack of motivating money. Patreon, Kickstarter, Bountysource are money, but they are not (very) motivating money. In those a client pays before the work is done, and there's no result yet. And in proprietary commercial software a client pays after the work is done, and for the result itself. That's the game changer.

[Umcaruje]

I'm really in love with linux and have been using it for years now as my daily driver, but I still contemplate switching to windows, because for example I can't use Addictive keys under linux, because the installer needs internet explorer to actually install the VST. But I don't know if I can handle the actual bloatfullness of Windows. Seems to me like macOS is the best of both worlds. Enough linux similarity for good UX and a good support for software. Great talk.

[DiddyOwen]

Ой. Внезапно Кирилл :))
Жаль, что с инглишем у меня туго.

[platinael]

Interesting talk.
However you mention Natron anf GIMP as big projects with big teams behind, and it's not true. Natron has 2 developers (and mainly one, who is the core dev), and GIMP has mainly one dev, and a few others who do not commit a lot.
It makes me thinks that maybe one aspect to consider is the motivation of the people who make the soft, both in commercial and free software. Of course it's not the same level, simply because of the money, but it might be a major factor.

So personnally I'm rather optimistic about the future of free audio software :-). It will take time, that is sure, but projects like Blender or Natron (though I'm not entirely sure about the future of this one, considering it's a niche software, with 2 dev, who are exhausted) give hope.

I'm thinking about the Blender institute, who *is* a studio now, and targets to use free software. Although they focus on Blender, they also use Krita, GIMP etc... And I would not be surprised if they grow a bit that they start to push free audio soft.

These times I often think about a possible organization (either a studio, or a foundation) that would support the developpement of free multimedia software (all the main software involved in the creation of movie or animation movie, and that includes both image, video, CG, compositing, audio etc...). This would have to be something progressive, but with a real collective motivation I think it's possible :D.