| I just wonder whether Barry Vercoe (remember him? what did he do?)
might have anything to say about all this!
BTW it was my impression that in fact Linus Torwalds does keep a fairly
firm grip on distriutions of the 'official' Linux kernel, to ensure it
does not get broken, and that there is a level playing field for
everybody else, and that this is one of the prime reasons that Linux is
so successful now.
Can we try to eliminate the moral imperatives that have suddenly started
to arise on this thread? Macros at ten paces? Really!
Above all, let us try to remember that Csound was originally created as
a tool for composers, so that they would not have to reinvent countless
wheels in C (or in any other language for that matter) in order to
create mature and original compositions. Csound users (who in most cases
are highly intelligent and experienced musicians) are not second-class
citizens below programmers, they are partners in a vital dyad. We all
learn from each other; possibly more that a few people on this list have
moved into C programming directly as a result of encountering Csound,
and a few programmers have had a go at composing too! There have been
plenty of discussions about source-code on this list, sometimes at a
high level, but admittedly not particularly Linux-oriented.
My underatanding is that John Fitch has the express personal endorsement
of Barry Vercoe for the maintenance and careful development of Csound;
that is a win-win situation for Csound users everywhere. He is acting in
loco parentis here, and if there is any moral imperative, it is that
anyone making substantive changes to Csound, or fixing bugs in canonical
cources, should communicate them to him one way or another.
I am well aware that some Linux programmers consider themselves a breed
apart, and that fascination with a program's inner workings is
justification enough, but surely, we are all the same, and all working
together, aren't we?
Perhaps it's time we all got togther for a toga-party sometime.
--just my 2 euro's worth :-)
Richard Dobson
Fred Floberg wrote:
>
> The reason that I prefer to work with the developers over on csound-unix-dev
> is because, after having been subscribed to this list for quite a long time,
> I've rarely seen any real discussion about Csound engine improvements at the
> coding level. What I do see here for the most part is discussion related to
> writing orchestras, setting up Csound for new users, and topics of that ilk --
> i.e. user related topics as opposed to topics which would interest those who are
> fascinated by Csound's internal workings. I'm most certainly not saying that
> user related topics are a bad thing. I've learned quite a lot from this list.
>
> But I'm as interested in coding as I am in making music (such as mine is),
> and so, judging from the material on both lists, it seems natural for me
> to work with those who seem most (openly) active in making improvements to
> the Csound core.
>
> Now I think I've contributed a fair amount of code to Csound, offical or
> not, and although I've enjoyed the sense of satisfaction and discovery
> that comes with understanding someone else's work well enough to make
> additions to it, I've spent quite a bit of my own free time, sometimes
> racking my brain late into the night, to write what I've written, only to be
> told that I'm part of a group who is "subvering platform-independance", "ripping
> off" other people's work, and "not giving back" to the community whose
> work I have "taken" -- as though I was a thief.
>
> All of the additions to Official Csound are publically available, as Nicola's
> periodic announcements make plain. These additions have been written to cause as
> little impact on the Official sources as possible, and yet, at least speaking of
> my own code, could be easily incorporated into the cannonical source,
>
> if one had the desire to do so.
>
--
Test your DAW with my Soundcard Attrition Page!
http://wkweb5.cableinet.co.uk/rwd |