Open Source, Open Architecture!

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
rfbrw said:


To think I thought the people who came up with the Zone Phone had gone away.

That's a pretty s****y attitude. It's the attitude that keeps Linux and Firefox from amounting to anything outside of the narrow-minded tech community.

If the zone phone is what I think it is, it was very important in behaviour studies. Without it we would know a lot less than we do today. And we know very little.

Thankful more enlightened people, like those at Microsoft, Sony and Philips, pour great sums on money into this. In fact, they bank their futures on it.

rfbrw said:
You reckon without the gaming community, console users notwithstanding.

I reckon very little.
 
phn said:


That's a pretty s****y attitude. It's the attitude that keeps Linux and Firefox from amounting to anything outside of the narrow-minded tech community.

If the zone phone is what I think it is, it was very important in behaviour studies. Without it we would know a lot less than we do today. And we know very little.

Thankful more enlightened people, like those at Microsoft, Sony and Philips, pour great sums on money into this. In fact, they bank their futures on it.



I reckon very little.


It is pretty apparent you haven't the faintest idea what the zone phone was but you are clearly not one to let ignorance of the topic prevent you from commenting.
 
I did a google and came up with nothing solid.

People at my college did some "zone phone" thing where you could phone for free within that zone or area. That was what I was thinking. If that's off, then I evidently was.

Edit: Feel free to enlighten me. I'm always open to learn new things.
 
Of open source and users...

I know better, but what the hell. Let's have a fine flamewar in memory of .rec newsgroups and days gone by :D.

phn said:
Techies and engineers have proven they are incapable of making usable software for anyone but techies and engineers.
And non-techies are incapable of making software period. So what's your point?

I want nothing to do with the backward and narrow-minded people in the open source community. They would have had something to offer if this had been the 1970s, when the PC looked like a good idea. And they will remain dinosaurs until they start to evolve.
This really shows how forward and wide-minded you are. I could not have done it better myself if I were to flame you :).

Open source might still have a future, but then only as a niche for a small group of music nerds. Everybody else will stay away, as they do from Firefox and Linux.
I don't know what people you hang out with, but in scientific and high-performance computing communities Linux is the OS of choice. (Although MacOS laptops have been becoming more popular ever since they adopted Mach kernel and Unix development tools.)

Anyway, I get the impression that none of the posters to this thread are actually involved in open source software development (or any software development? ;)). The basic way open source works is this: You have a problem, you solve the problem, your publish the code so that other people can do the same. With this being DIY{/I] audio forum, I am surprised at the hostile attitude towards open source in this thread.

There is a lot of interesting audio projects going on in open source community. Digital room correction, AAC/MPEG codecs, lossless audio compression, just to name a few. You can run Linux on embedded architectures, or on your iPod. For hardware developers, there is open IP cores project. Why don't you join the fun?

Whatever the pursuit, there are always people who make and people who use. The latter class gets bonus cookie points for complaining while they do so :). Which one are you?

And for the record, I develop two open source projects deployed across three OSes (Linux/Unix, Windows and MacOS), as well as playing with some embedded coding for my audio projects.
 
Compare Open Source software with the market for automotive hobbyests, custom car builders.

In the latter, standards have developed, as an extrapolation of the original industry standards.

I think and Open Source and Open Architecture audio standard can be developed in the same way, as an extrapolation of what industry is already doing.

It can be a combination of approaches.

1. Open source software already available, probably for PCs.

2. Some hardware architecture already available, like from the embedded controller market.

3. Commercial software standards already available.

Then with a combination of writting some software, but also gaining some voice with which to pressure industry, we can make it happen.


It has to be a colaborative effort. That is how Open Source works.


Its also similar to the home built aircraft field. Lots of info sharing.

Anyone here using any Open Source audio software. Anyone using any PC based digital recording or music synthesis software which allows any kind of outside plug ins???
 
One could make the same arguments against Linux. But look at how it is soaring.

I think the first step is to identify interoperability standards for both the hardware and the software.

There is already software which accepts various plugins, modules. So persons can write outside modules.

From this, a standard for how the open source host would work will be developed.

Likewise, and open architecture hardware can be defined.

Netscape browser is now offered under Mozilla. Sun is being pressured to go all open on Java.

Eventually, no digital audio product will be taken seriously unless it is compatible with the standard.

Such standards create business opportunites. So much of what is sold today would be impossible if there were not compatibility and interoperability standards.

It all worked fine in the days on analog. When microcomputers came along, it all was basically open. Then M$.

Audio and appliances never have been open. They are built to replicate analog appliances, where the controls are wired into the signal path. This is not realizing the true potential of digital.

We, the hobbyests have to take a leadership role. We are the ones who should give the thumbs up or thumbs down to new market entrys, not the "High End" comsumeristic reviewers.

We need to develop a vision and a voice.:cool:
 
Plugins. Delay. Compression. Fifty bazillion other features. sheesh. Few things annoy me as much as someone dreaming about the world-changing possibilities of open source software.

If you want to change the world, get started on it. Buy yourself a decent soundcard, install Linux and start writing the code you want. Get a few other people in on the project. Take advantage of a few existing projects - Want Dolby? liba52 will do your decoding. Want equalization, active crossover stuff, etc? install BruteFIR.

When you're finally satisfied with your work and you want to make a consumerish product out of it without a hard drive, grab yourself a Blackfin BF533 STAMP (evaluation board for a DSP running in a Linux environment) or something in that realm and port your code. Then redesign the STAMP (or whatever) to something that can be chinese made for a low cost.

And good luck with your new, open source "audio hacker tool". Especially in a world of inexpensive, extremely capable yet closed source (god forbid) products like the rackmount line from Behringer.
 
The best (and only) starting point you should have, is deciding exactly what it is you want to do.

You want to build a box... which does what? establish your criteria:

- I/O (analog, digital, # of channels, internal/external amplification, will it be doing video switching, PC interface, etc)
- processing capabilities (simple filtering, or full DTS decoding?)
- user interface (knobs, buttons, displays, etc)
etc.
 
All of this is really about compatibility standards. Open Source and Open Architecture changes the ways things are done.

What I want is to determine what is the most functional and most open solution available today. Figure out what is needed to make it go.

Then figure how to get from there to full open and all the desired functionality.

Open Source and Open Architecture are about prostyletizing. This aspect has even been written about.:D
 
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.