I hope you don't mind that I'm copying my reply to Erik, and to the Csound developers' list.

First, thanks for the information. Right now, to make the Csound Windows installers, sometimes I use the precompiled binary of libsndfile, sometimes I compile it from sources.

libsndfile is definitely one of the most useful pieces of open source software that I have ever worked with. I use it in other contexts than Csound.

For now, there is no reason to do anything except to follow the new suggested installation procedure -- which should be simple. Nobody needs to pay anything or do anything to get the 'vanilla' libsndfile working with Csound. And if anyone wants to get Ogg Vorbis and FLAC support, they can pay the $5 and get it.

However, in my mind there is an implicit contract in open source software, which says that the money I lose by not getting paid for my software, I gain by using other people's software for free. In the long run, everybody makes money this way, although it's not obvious because no money actually changes hands, just software that has a use value.

Therefore, although I have a LOT of respect for Erik de Castro Lopo, and I also have sympathy for his desire to be rewarded for all his valuable work (if I had been paid for my work on Csound at the rate I am paid in my day job, I could have retired by now). But in the context of Csound, I definitely don't like the approach Erik is taking here. I fought hard to make Csound truly open source. I have no intention of ever causing Csound users to have to pay anything to obtain a working version of Csound. I think an open source Csound is good for music and good for everybody. Think about the OLPC! 

Normally, when I see some sort of two tier licensing scheme for a software package, I simply don't use it. In my mind, this interferes with my feeling of belonging to a cooperative open source economy, from which I can freely draw and to which I contribute my own software work. I expect some other projects could have problems with Erik's approach....

If we really need to, we can replace libsndfile with some other open source, cross-platform soundfile library. Perry Cook's STK has code for this, and there are several other decent libraries. None of them are as good as libsndfile, but they are probably good enough for what Csound is usually trying to do.

Another option would be to take over the burden of maintaining the Windows build of libsndfile. Its license certainly permits that. But I sure don't want to do it myself! And it could lead to a fork from Erik's package, if he's reluctant to incorporate patches the Windows maintainers would have to make.

I'm very interested to hear what the other Csound developers have to say about this. I hope we can come to some sort of agreement. I'm certainly not prepared to fight other developers about this, and I would probably go along with whatever the majority decides.

Again, for now, my inclination is use the 'vanilla' libsndfile and run its installer from our installers. But I don't think we should stop thinking there.

Regards,
Mike

-----Original Message-----
>From: Anthony Kozar 
>Sent: May 29, 2008 3:16 PM
>To: Michael Gogins 
>Subject: FW: [libsndfile-users] Windows users/devs, please read
>
>Hi Mike, 
>
>Did you see this??
>
>Anthony
>
>-- 
>Anthony Kozar
>anthony@anthonykozar.net   (Please do not post this email address online)
>http://anthonykozar.net/
>
>----------
>From: Erik de Castro Lopo 
>Organization: Erik Conspiracy Secret Labs
>Reply-To: libsndfile-users@mega-nerd.com
>Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 09:29:17 +1000
>To: libsndfile-users@mega-nerd.com
>Subject: [libsndfile-users] Windows users/devs, please read
>
>Hi all,
>
>As people who have been on this list for some time probably know,
>supporting libsndfile on windows had been a continuting thorn in my
>side and I have been on a constant mission to reduce the level of
>that pain. One of the biggest reductions of pain was when I started
>shipping precompiled binaries for windows, because that stopped people
>not qualified to compile it from attempting to compile it.
>
>More recently I have found a new way to reduce my pain, cross compiling
>from Linux to windows and running the test suite under Wine (the windows
>emulator on Linux and other Unix-like systems). Having this working
>means that I will no longer be supporting any other method of compiling
>libsndfile for windows. I suspect, that the source code tarballs I
>release will soon stop compiling out-of-the-box on windows.
>
>I will however continue to do pre-compiled binary releases for windows,
>probably even add a standard windows installer program.
>
>That brings me to the second issue. The 1.0.18 pre-releases up till
>now have had FLAC and Ogg/Vorbis support. To make this easier to
>compile on windows, the libsndfile source tree has had a copy of
>the FLAC, Ogg and Vorbis source code trees embedded in the libsndfile
>sources. However, this is a bad idea and is strongly discouraged by
>all of the major Linux distributions (AFAIAC my main audience). The
>problem is that if a security problem is found in one of the embedded
>libraries, the distributions have to fix that library *and* libsndfile
>because libsndfile contains an embedded copy of the same sources.
>
>For that reason, my current development source tree no longer contains
>these embedded libraries and instead, links against external versions
>of these libraries. This works really well on Linux but makes compiling
>on windows still more difficult, even cross-compiling from Linux to
>windows.
>
>In order to get some reward for the considerable amount of work I have
>put into the windows support over the years I intend to have two
>teirs of windows releases, both with windows installers containing the
>pre-compiled DLL, documentation, example programs, source code etc :
>
> - libsndfile-core will be a standard libsndfile without the external
>   libraries (ie no FLAC, no Ogg/Vorbis, no anything else I add as an
>   external library). This will be free for anyone to download and
>   use.
>
> - libsndfile-deluxe will be the above with FLAC and Ogg/Vorbis support
>   in a single DLL. This can only be obtained by paying AUS $5 via
>   Paypal or some other online payment system.
>
>In addition, both installer programs will do the following:
>
>  - Install libsndfile-1.dll in the system directory (usually
>    C:\windows\system). It will check to see if there is already a
>    version there and only replace it if the new one is a later
>    revision that the old one. In the case where the new DLL is
>    libsndfile-core and the old one is libsndfile-deluxe, it will
>    give the user the option of chosing whether to replace the old
>    one.
>
>  - Install the docs etc in C:\Program Files\libsndfile\
>
>I know that installing things in the system directory is usually
>considered a bad thing which leads to DLL Hell, but I think I
>can avoid problems like that. Firstly, libsndfile has had a stable
>ABI for 5 years and I see no reason to change it now. Secondly
>since libsndfile is developed for Linux/Unix I am very strict with
>the shared library naming scheme of libsndfile.so.X.Y.Z where a
>change in X indicates a change in ABI. For windows, the libsndile
>DLL is named libsndfile-X.dll where X is the same as for the
>Linux/Unix one.
>
>When I have these installers, my recommendation for people
>distributing programs that use libsndfile is to include the
>libsndfile-core installer inside their installer and to run the
>libsndfile installer during their install process. The user may
>then optionally go to my web page, pay his $5 and get the
>deluxe version to replace the core version.
>
>I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this.
>
>Cheers,
>Erik
>-- 
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>Erik de Castro Lopo
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>"There are only two things wrong with C++: The initial concept and
>the implementation." -- Bertrand Meyer
>------------------------------------------------------------
>libsndfile-users Mailing List
>To unsubscribe: 
>
>
>
>




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Michael Gogins wrote:

> I hope you don't mind that I'm copying my reply to Erik,

No need, I'm a subscriber to the csound-devel list.

> For now, there is no reason to do anything except to follow
> the new suggested installation procedure -- which should be
> simple.

Actually, I'm pretty close to dropping the plans as stated in
the email you forwarded.

My current plans are more along the line of ask for donations
and while the donations flow in at a reasonable rate I will
keep releasing full windows binary releases in sync with
the source code releases. If the donations don't cover my
time for the windows builds then they will fall behind.

> However, in my mind there is an implicit contract in open
> source software, which says that the money I lose by not
> getting paid for my software, I gain by using other people's
> software for free.

Its interesting that you bring that up. libsndfile started
on Linux, for Linux. My chosen development platform is Linux
so maintaining libsndfile on Linux is zero cost for me, hence
I have no problem maintaining libsndfile for Linux indefinitely.

Windows however is a different kettle of fish. Maintaining
a windows machine costs me money (hardware, licenses) that I
would not otherwise incur. The only thing I use the windows
machine for is building and testing libsndfile and libsamplerate.
I have yet to come up with any solution for doing Win64 support
which I have been asked for numerous times.

Secondly, there is also the time cost of maintaining libsndfile on
windows. For me, supporting windows is significantly more difficult
that supporting the sum total of all the other platforms that
libsndfile runs on. This is simply due the the quirks of the platform.

Finally, there is the distaste in my mouth from even supporting
a microsoft platform given microsoft's continuing, open hostility
towards Linux and Free Software.

> Another option would be to take over the burden of maintaining
> the Windows build of libsndfile. Its license certainly permits
> that. But I sure don't want to do it myself! And it could lead
> to a fork from Erik's package, if he's reluctant to incorporate
> patches the Windows maintainers would have to make.

Lets see if the donations route can keep the windows version
reasonably in-sync with the source code release.

Erik
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer. I can't
imagine something that could be worse than this for the software
business and the intellectual-property business."
 -- Jim Allchin, Microsoft

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I just thought i'd add my 2 cents.

1) as a typical windows user of csound who's spent a reasonable amount of
time now with csound (on & off...) I'm primarily concerned with creative
sonic capabilities, & support the suggestion that the absense of ogg & flac
in csound are of no real concern.

2) Erik's points are very interesting & probably accurate vis a vis the
major hassles of developing on windows versus linux.

As a would be novice developer, i recently attempted a switch to linux,
however as I, (in a supposedly "first world western democracy") still can't
access ADSL in my street - which effectively diminshes my chances of
maintaining a decent Linux build & working with online repositories (sic?)
etc ... this reinforces, for me, & no doubt millions of others, the rather
unfortunate fact that Windows is the most ACCESSIBLE (if not free) user
platform out there...

I'd love as much as the next guy (or gal) to say "i've finished with
windows" - but I feel it's important for developers to realise that for many
users abandoning windows still isn't practically possible... Not to mention
of course the fact that access to cracked illegal music software on windows
is trivial, & no doubt another major factor (dare I say it) why the choice
of windows (especially by those starting out) for computer based audio &
creative work is so prevalent. Add also the traditionally more "affordable"
status of windows vs mac, out the box support for a wide range of audio
hardware.....

It's obviously important to continue to reach those windows users out there.
you cant create a revolution in open source software after all simply by
preaching to the converted....

I realise you guys probably know all this, just thought you may as well get
a reminder from a horses mouth.

My wish for the future is simply that I may eventually participate more
actively in helping you all drive Csound on to bigger & better things.

My thanks to you all

cheers

Tim 

-----
*******************
www.phasetransitions.net
hermetic music * python * csound * possibly mindless ranting
various werk in perpetual delusions of progress....

-- 
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-FW%3A--libsndfile-users--Windows-users-devs%2C-please-read-tp17544613p17549170.html
Sent from the Csound - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


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Michael Gogins wrote on 5/29/08 4:02 PM:

> libsndfile is definitely one of the most useful pieces of open source software
> that I have ever worked with. I use it in other contexts than Csound.

I agree!  It's a very useful and professional library.

> If we really need to, we can replace libsndfile with some other open source,
> cross-platform soundfile library.

I think sticking with a "frozen" version of libsndfile might be preferable
to switching to a different library -- if it ever came to that (which seems
unlikely).
 
> I'm very interested to hear what the other Csound developers have to say about
> this. I hope we can come to some sort of agreement. I'm certainly not prepared
> to fight other developers about this, and I would probably go along with
> whatever the majority decides.
> 
> Again, for now, my inclination is use the 'vanilla' libsndfile and run its
> installer from our installers. But I don't think we should stop thinking
> there.

I think incorporating Erik's "vanilla" installer is a decent way to go.  And
if he decides to accept donations instead of charging for the extra
features, I think we could include a step in the Windows installer (or all
Csound installers?) encouraging users to consider a donation.  I myself will
be happy to donate some money to support libsndfile development in general
even though I don't use Windows specifically.  (This is assuming that I can
figure out some way to send money to Australia that doesn't require me to
have a Paypal account ...)

Anthony Kozar
mailing-lists-1001 AT anthonykozar DOT net
http://anthonykozar.net/


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Felipe Sateler wrote:

> On Friday 30 May 2008 01:00:02 Anthony Kozar wrote:
> > > If we really need to, we can replace libsndfile with some other open
> > > source, cross-platform soundfile library.
> >
> > I think sticking with a "frozen" version of libsndfile might be preferable
> > to switching to a different library -- if it ever came to that (which seems
> > unlikely).
> 
> Please let me oppose that. Should there ever be an important or security bug 
> in libsndfile, then csound users would be stuck with the buggy library (which 
> does happen). 

If I was made aware of a security bug in the last binary release I would
release a new fixed binary asap, regardless of any other factor.

Erik
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Death is perhaps too easy" -- Iqbal Sacranie in 1989 about
Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses". Sacranie
received a knighthood in 2005 as the face of 'moderate'
British Islam. He has never disowned his earlier statement.

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