 Hey It's Anfa and Luigi Verano today we have a little voice chat because We had a little Facebook discussion about open source software and commercial software for music production that started when I wrote that I'm not happy about Windows 10 having advertisement inside When it's paid product and you play and then you have to watch ads so I was angry about this and And then Luigi you pointed out like 15 different things that are very like there's no open source tools to do in music production like beat slicing and Stuff Yeah, I can also Set a stage a little bit because Like just so that it doesn't seem that I'm a fan of ads and operating systems or anywhere else I mean that advertising like won't go away and it's Something that humans do and will have to do like if you produce something you will have to show advertising of some sort somewhere And I totally understand, you know, like I'm not a Windows fan and just in terms of my tastes I actually do like Linux for my everyday life I use a Windows laptop at work, for example, and I'm not very happy with that system for various reasons I actually don't see much ads there, but I have seen it and it was surprising to me That hey now operating systems have ads But haven't really studied this like maybe they are turned off easily. I don't know. So I have no idea there I have no opinion on that. I think that at some point in time What happened because like we were really discussing with its audio versus Proprietary I would say audio or even maybe Windows on all of it proprietary. Yeah, and I guess I guess that we were talking about making money and You know something like that. So actually That's an important puzzle that I didn't get from reading just like I think that that changed my Perception of what you wrote there and maybe we should post a link I don't know to Facebook if someone wants to read up that discussion because it's too long to just you know read it in the video inherently bad You know the discussions because all of those branches of comments are not easy to parse later on and then at some point in time of the discussion is very lengthy then Facebook will just you'll just have to always click more more more and It's just not easy to follow So yeah, so that's why we decided to kind of make a follow-up Okay, so yeah, let me I mean I think if you Because like the main point that that I got from you was that When you try to make serious music production with open source tools You're gonna hit a wall many times when you just don't have a tool that you need Or you have to use many different tools and do work arounds to get them to work together Or to get them to work at all often because Sometimes, you know, there is a obscure little tool that someone made But you need to compile it to get it working like there's a plug into For noise cancellation In real time and it's called noise repellent, but you need to build it from source It it doesn't have any dependency. So it's easy But still you have to download the source and type some comments, you know, not not everyone can do this. So I So I got this point and yeah But on the other hand like without having this Idea that you're doing this because you want to get serious in music production Like you don't want to make stock music to sell it And you need just things that will get you through To have a decent product that you can sell That's something I missed and and that that got me like a little feeling that you kind of the test The open source community is a whole because it lacks so much in the in the regard of features Right. So so let me let me clarify my position. First of all So I found the comment that started discussion and it was actually not your post specifically It was a comment by Lee Strickland Who said windows should only use specifically for games that can be ran under wine yet Everything else such as work web browsing and viewing porn lol should be done under linux or unix as they're not prone to the security issues of windows and have better software available to them for those types of activities nine times out of 10 So actually I was replying to that claim that basically apart from games linux could do everything Nine times out of 10 And then I kind of said unless you need to do serious graphics or video editing or electronic music with modern synth or or or That was my comment And then somebody else also agreed with me and that's where we started to discuss because you said well I actually do this you know and that and that and you kind of You know gave some options on graphics And then we talked about About you know about actually talking about music so Just to clarify my position on the open source community as a whole I've written up a An article that I consider to be probably currently my best estimation of what I feel and think about linux audio Which is called linux audio and overview and you can get it at lougeirona.com uh where where I talk about The current state of linux audio now my personal opinion is that linux audio and open source community are really really great I I love that I consider myself to be a part of the open source community because I do release some software and most of the time It's open source when it makes sense like if i'm releasing some obscure game I'm not going to bother preparing the sources and you know releasing when I know nobody's going to really need it Or when I'm releasing some funny project on the web, so let's probably someone comes and says hey Can you release the source code for this? I want to hack it up Yeah, I mean if somebody says that I usually have no problem giving of the source code Uh, I don't think that any of the projects I've made so far, you know, I have no problem giving it away But I really doubt that somebody will ask for that but in the end, uh, I guess that the important the important point is that Liking open source and thinking that open source can do everything are two different things. So uh frequently What happens is that people hold these binary positions where they say? Well, linux can do everything therefore linux sucks or windows has ads therefore everything windows sucks or I I don't like that particular software being proprietary because I would love to hack it up Therefore everything proprietary sucks and so on so on so on I don't hold such a binary view. I have a very nuanced view on free software philosophy actually and the open source community in general I just think that you have to understand What it can objectively do and what it cannot objectively do And it is clear to me that all claims that open source community has the same level of professionalism and And availability and a reliability as the commercial software world or proprietary software world To me this claim just you know, it just It doesn't stand. I just don't buy it and I think that Frequently that is construed as oh, you're against open source But all I'm saying is that no open source is just a very different beast And I think that a lot of people who are in the open source community They don't even set a goal of creating Necessarily something that will match a commercial offering Quite a lot of people who are in the open source community Don't even care about whether software proprietary or not per se You know, like there are people who religiously hold to that you but I have talked to huge amounts of people who are like Yeah, you know, I like that you have open source. You can share you can learn, you know these kind of things Uh, and you know, I want to write this specific Thing that I want to write. I mean people can use, you know, they can buy Adobe after effects and do that, but I want to write the small utility for myself Maybe someone finds it interesting like they're not even trying to replace any of it um And yeah, so that's the claim kind of I was responding to and the fact that linus audio does not give you all the possibilities that For example, you will find on the windows operating system Uh, it doesn't mean that open source is bad It means it has its own place and purpose for people Yeah, I think internet, uh, it's very It's very bad for discussing Views because usually they get flattened out and we miss The whole wide spectrum Of it and we just see one piece and that happened to me like I try to keep a wide view but I I filtered out something from your From your post and I got a view on your view that was false And now I see that it's not true what I fought And I think that's true You know, I think I think that you can view the internet kind of In two ways on one hand if you're yeah, if you're reading something then you can You can have a different opinion on the other hand because it's written up You can actually go back where you read and say wait a minute Maybe you know and you can also correct that it's it's just really a difference between oral and written debates And I think that both Both kind of debates require a lot of experience people typically are very bad at debating anyone on any topic This is really something this is a skill that you have to develop when you're talking like person to person And if both people are kind of constructive and hey, let's discuss this Then perhaps it is easier to quickly and formally address some situations like oh, no, no, no That's not what I meant. He here's what I meant and you got it Well, when you're writing it up unless you're really writing it like it's a huge article with here's my assumptions Here's what I think here are the conclusions You will not, you know, you will not generally get there because you will write a phrase You haven't stated your assumptions or what you mean there and unless it's really written up well People will read it the way like according to their context I'm right now in the process of hopefully completing after a year of work an article on The GNU philosophy of Richard Stallman Which I find many issues with and again, my position is super nuanced I'm not saying the free software is bad or that mr. Stallman is completely wrong although I believe that he is mostly wrong and that and I try to Present my arguments in favor of that but the reason I bring it up is because That article required requires like me to really state a lot of things Restate the many times so that it is a clear well laid out argument Actually, I think that in my linux audio overview have the same And if you want we can go over some of the main arguments that we Discussed on facebook so that you know viewers of this video can You know make up their own mind and understand what kind of discussion we had. Yeah, that might be a good thing I'm gonna open it up to have it on my On my view actually I Before we even decided to make a video. I just typically save these things. So actually have it saved in an Uh in a text file because I when I when I'm writing something to facebook I typically first write it in a text file because in facebook it's not very easy to do and that I can't read over You can you can accidentally press enter instead of shift enter to insert a new line and you post it And I did that a few times and I removed my post because it wasn't complete and that was Yeah That's the thing so so oh do you want do you want me to kind of Make my general claim first or do you want to You want me to start yet? Yeah, lead it So basically my contention is that linux audio is a great thing for experimentation and uh, I'm going back to pole davis davis lecture at uh lac 2017 I think that he He really nailed it when he said that it's a great ground for experimentation. It's a great playground, but um when it comes to actual production Value like hey, is this is this a platform that will allow me to produce music? And by music here of course number one. I mean electronic music Uh, because I'm not recording instruments and I'm just not familiar with how easy it is To do that on linux. Maybe it is so I don't know But if we're talking about specifically electronic music and number two complex electronic music and I understand that this is a very Difficult to define term, but what I mean here Is when you're really working on a detailed arrangement That means you have to go back to certain places in the arrangement fix things re-record things Something that you would actually do in a lot of modern DAWs This is the kind of music i'm looking at And when i'm looking at that kind of music, I see a couple of major problems with linux number one Is that the amount of plugins is the let's say High-quality plugins on linux is very low both for effects and synthesizers Uh, and these effects and since synthesizers are super basic typically where like if you go to windows or macOS Creating an effect or synthesizer Plug-in is a creative process people come out with beautiful Beautifully designed and I mean not only visually but I mean in terms of dsp digital sound processing beautifully designed Products that are unique because they're creating interesting sound. They're combining filters They're giving you an interesting sequence or something that like very complicated interesting instruments that inspire you to create something that you wouldn't create with a different tool because The way that the tool presents Possibilities to you influences your workflow Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's like so it's like if you buy you can buy different synthesizers And they will have different capabilities and you for example if you buy I'll give a very simple example If you buy a tp 303 You know, you'll be able to get a very particular sound that is unattainable on other synthesizers Motor design So that's one, right? So the the unavailability of the dsp part of electronic music number two is that The modular environment apart from lmms which we can discuss separately if you're talking about a modular environment, this is extremely difficult to Create a different difficult arrangement Or a complicated arrangement on linux because you have to go back you have to edit things and if you just record it You you set up things in a modular environment. You connect it up You record it something then you maybe you can even try to save it or write a bash script for it If you want and you remove that then you open it up again And then you realize you made a mistake and I have to re-record everything and you have to go back and reconnect things It's just not easy to do Can I insert something? Sure, we can stop here. Um I I experimented when I in my first like years of discovering linux and open source music software I like take took a look at all this all these standalone tools like sec 24 And and various synthesizers like phasex that isn't available as a plugin yet. I asked the devs to do that But no idea if it's coming out at any time soon And like it's even with there's like a few standards of session management when you can Connect programs between but I never really understood how they work and You never really know what is supported and what isn't And it's like I don't know. I feel like walking up A 10 level building on a wooden ladder and you know just waiting to fall On my face So I keep everything inside a DAW and and for years it was lma mass But as I'm doing more recording of my voice And guitars maybe some other things and like recording a sample and then time stretching it in lma mass You can't redo this so for previous albums I I did my music in lma mass my Sequencers arrangement and stuff and exported a mix and I overdubbed Vocals and other instruments in ardor, but that's a little bit complicated and you can't really sketch things So i'm shifting towards ardor, but yeah I did a modular thing for for live gigs with a band where I had a plugin host carla running and a a piano A gig sampler. I don't know fluid synth for for a piano sound From a big sound font And I and I used a bash script to to set this up. So I just run the machine booted it up and was ready to play Uh, but it had issues it it crashed a few times during the gigs So, yeah, it's it's not very rock solid. I yeah carry on Yeah, but I guess that uh the Kind of the important Maybe Point here is a more fundamental one Yeah, like you look at all of this situation and you ask yourself well, why is that happening? Or and like you can do two things you can just describe what is going on And the on the linux platform in terms of audio And then you can supply an explanation why that's happening And if I look at what is going on on linux, and I think you have responded to me that hey Like maybe you can if you if you so my my I can actually Read a couple of things that I said because we then went on in a more into more detail But one of the things that we said was this I said is that that One moment I'm searching for this exact exact Okay, a lot of the plugins that do exist typically have only very basic controls I say and are not on par with proprietary counterparts Simplest example more or less the only usable delay from the calf bag doesn't have panning controls It allows you to switch between panning modes Actually, I actually asked the developer to do that He added some panning modes for me But does not allow to specify panning on the input or output signal Something that I see available by default in many deletions including built-in plugins as well in a health studio Which is currently my Dov choice, which I run through wine, which thankfully it runs pretty well Oh, so running a full studio on linux through wine. Yes. Yes That's that's why lately I've been so productive Yeah, uh, so The point here and you were saying well, you can actually ask developers to add some things and I agree you can I actually as I just said I asked the calf developer To add the the panning control not the controls, but the modes it's like from l to r from r to l That's actually I asked for that and The problem is that yes, you can theoretically ask but that's I'm talking about a fundamental Difference in quality. I guess if you're looking at plugins that exist typically on linux, they're all covering the basics Here's a basic delay. Here's a basic distortion. Here's a basic this basic that But that's not the approach that the rest of the world has taken in the past. I don't know 15 if not 20 years Well, okay 15. Yeah, I guess If you even look at what people do with synth edit The plugins are much more interesting. Yes, of course It's necessary to have basic plugins and typically a door will provide things by default Like a reverb a delay your basic compression whatever everything like this this whole list, but it seems that linux audio Keeps on building the basic stuff again and again Yeah, yeah again, again, I mean I kind of understand it the reason for this I guess If we, you know, now shift it's only five basic delays Everyone does something differently, but none gets too deep None gets to me because a lot of people I guess are learning they're kind of okay, you know, I'm starting my dsp class Oh, here's linux. Wow. Here's an available library. I don't have even to write anything I just can't take the library start writing out my code. Okay. I have a this basic delay plugin I present it on my class at my class and then I Then I just release it for whatever reason throw it up on github and see what happens Yeah, whereas whereas on the winners environment, first of all People are typically doing these things so that actual musicians will want to actually use it in their production To get results not just to learn how to code but to get results And number two there is basic stuff already and so they're building on top of that. Hey, here's here's an interesting delay Instead of just saying, hey, here's yet another delay plugin, which I know I'm not going to sell or even if you're doing it for free There there's actually a lot of very high quality free plugins and windows But you're saying there is delay. So let me create this delay bank where I have one delay Second delay third delay fourth and fifth and then the person can turn all of them on change the parameters And instead of just ping ping ping and it'll be like ping ping Ping ping ping ping, you know And then you can create these complicated tribal rhythms that are typically using something like minimal house and technical stuff like that And you can have really sophisticated stuff And that means somebody had You know that person sat down. He actually this Created an idea productized it then developed this thing and now it's a very usable and interesting tool That gives you something new that that allows you to build on on something on the basics and then Add some interesting twist to your music Now, of course one can say well, you can kind of you know, take several delays and try to do that Sure, you can do anything you can instead of using an elevator you can just run up the stairs, but That's the point of our career And I think that in the 90s people spend a lot of time before A lot of the musicians were using computers if I think I typically mentioned the interview done by um damn I have to okay the name is loading by this very famous artist who was uh explaining How he had to connect all the modules and then synchronize them and then only do the music and that meant that he had to plan everything in advance and uh And right now on linux a lot of time by musicians is spent on setting things up and when you're setting things up problems Yeah, something doesn't work spending a lot of time on it when it worked yesterday Yeah, yeah, so and that that's that's that's one of the problems of this argument Yeah, you can probably take all of these tools and create something along the lines of what they're giving But also it's not always possible. Like they're plugins which there's no way you can take you know separate modules and create something like that if I um It's um, I still haven't found a good way to say it uh in our discussion I kind of said that well a lot of these things are kind of creative products They're like little works of art if you take something like this very old orange vocoder Well, uh, do you know this plugin? No never used it No, yeah, so orange vocoder has a very interesting So a lot of these plugins. Let me see if I can formulate what I what I mean by this You can if you look at a complicated plugin It still uses it consists out of basic elements, right? So uh orange vocoder Is was very popular plugin that was used in a lot of music Where they have this they have a vocoder. They have a built-in carrier synthesizer and carrier samples Very beautiful samples. Actually the synthesizer is rarely used against people to review the samples that are provided with them And then it has filters for all the carriers So you can filter it down and filter it up it has distortion And so you can change the sound in the way it works and then it has this interesting graph Uh, which will also change the frequency or carrier and you can drag the points and it will kind of shape the sound And then it has the volume of course something that I guess multiple coders have How loud is the carrier? How loud is the soar, you know all these things so We have all these things and but it's it's packed into one package in such a way that it kind of Makes sense. Yeah, and also they have that's a very important thing. They have a keyboard down there and you can actually Check the nose Highlight them and that's the carrier wave will play these notes then and so Um And yeah, so granted all these all these elements are separately very simple But putting them together into this one package and creating this product this orange vocoder That's kind of in a way creativity, you know, somebody had to to sit down and do that And envision that this will be an interesting sound and put this these things together And so it's not I I guess that a lot of the times I feel uh that Whenever on you know, we're discussing linux audio it becomes very technical it's like as if there is no creativity, but there's just this raw dsp and Whereas a lot of it is just good creative work You just have to put these things together creatively to get a very interesting product that nobody else did before So it's a little bit like that someone has to design a workflow for a tool and someone else Yes to implement that workflow I think somebody just had designed to design a tool just a more complex Yeah, maybe This is at the mentality people People focus on kind of basic stuff on on the dsp itself because a lot of people are developers who are interested in the dsp But not a lot of people are actually interested to make music Actually on linux. I don't see that much of it People are interested in developing things not making music I think that's an interesting point and this is something I I thought and felt myself like it's a little bit like linux audio is all about the developers and all about people making some tools but You rarely see you rarely see these tools put into good use and I think that summary convention is something that Is there to counter this like to to Restore the balance when the tools are for musicians and the musicians Creating music with it and saying hey, this works great But we would love to have something else here or we need a tool that does this I think like Yeah, it's hard to get serious artists to use open source software and that's true And I but not even I would so they're they're quite a number of tools Uh, I'm not sure whether they have like open source status, of course, uh, like for most people Again, like if we're talking about musicians, they don't care whether it's open source or not, right? They may care if this is free or not. This is another kind of trap developer-centric trap Hey, but this is not open source, you know, like you don't have all the freedoms as a non-developer. I don't care I'm not I don't care about the sources. This is not entirely true There are implications of something being open source There are implications that are relevant to the end user even who's not who's not a developer But in general in like everyday Discussions typically your your serious musician will not care whether it's open source or not He will care whether it's usable or not how much it costs and of course a lot of proprietary stuff Uh, just costs a lot like music plugins. They cost huge amounts of money Uh, yeah, I tend to think that there is a good reason behind that and that a lot of limited resources Are required to create a a given plugin, but That aside, I would say that The why I would generally Say that open source part of linux audio is not going to change much Um is because in the end Although this is not a rule typically most developers will not Necessarily care about the users that much There are exceptions. There are developers who really ask what the users want and try to implement everything and make sure The tool is usable and is being used but as a general rule Uh, I would say that free software developers even tend to moderately oppose The increase of their user base because to them it just means more tickets and more bugs and more more More complaining about their programs. Yeah, uh, we're they're just having fun, right? They're not selling it. They don't care if they're like a million users. Sure. It's kind of Yeah It's good for the ego. I guess a little bit But there's a limit to that and I've seen many times where a prominent linux audio developer will just is not that interested It's like, yeah, I'm glad you enjoyed the software. Please don't send me any emails bugs or features. I'm not gonna do anything That's the default response because he knows that If somebody's happy and he responds to them, they're gonna ask them to do something about it and they're they don't want to do that uh What I think linux audio will become better is thanks to the cross-platform products that are done by commercial companies like bitwig Right now bitwig is a real game changer for linux. If somebody wants to move to linux for whatever reason And this reason is not bound to never using proprietary software or something Ideological like that. Then now a person who's like, well, I want to do music Now they can do it. Now they can say well, there is bitwig. Yeah, you know You have to invest and actually buy it of course. It's it's not cheap at all But at least now you have the option whereas before you had to stick with for example lmms Which is not bad, but it's its development is now more or less Put on pause because there are many of the developers who are senior and very good at dsp and development They left and the community struggles to find somebody who can lead the development But it's difficult and so lmms is a great example It's a big surprise. It's very well made too and it shows that you know, you can actually put together even using Uh, if somebody if a good developer skill developer starts a program He can actually develop, you know, something along the lines of in this case a full studio But nobody I mean questioned that right but that's the nature of open source. There is no commitment a lot of people When they look at a proprietary product, one of the things that they noticed Hey, there's a software vendor behind the product. Therefore, we're now dependent on that guy And wouldn't it be great the free software philosophy states if nobody would own that product Or if there would be like a team that is That like there's an open source product, which means that really nobody owns it or everybody owns it But in the end it means the developer of that product doesn't have much commitment, you know, you're not paying him You're not motivated. That's not that might there might not be enough motivation Something happens. The person gets married. He has kids whatever done even even without any Uh complicated reasons like somebody being hit by a bus or something like that The project can just stop get stalled and just become pure obscure. Unfortunately the The power of the product doesn't seem to Uh to mean that somebody will pick it up and picking up projects that were abandoned Uh is generally very rare. It almost never happens I think it's very difficult to read through someone else's code when you can't even find them and and ask them what it does and Make any sense of it And also it's not their project. That's the big thing on linux You know as a playground for developers, why would you want to work on someone else's project? Isn't it more fun to create your own? It's not actually true for larger projects. For example, if there's right now gimp I don't think that anyone in the community will really want to try to create an alternative to gimp Uh, and I think that is generally frowned uh frowned by down by the community It's like frowned upon sorry sorry frowned upon by the community that If you're trying to do kind of the same thing that already exists You're undermining the work of many people of the community and so you shouldn't do that You're wasting your effort like you could do something useful That'll help a good plug-in or fix a problem in that project and everybody would benefit from this But there's an interesting side effect by the way, uh of this so The side effect number one is that a lot of the better products Like you have a lot of open source products or free software products They're popping up and then one of them becomes successful. You can never know which one but let one of them become successful Like some effects Or ardor or blender Yeah, like ardor blender. I mean blender is not the correct True, uh, correct example because blender it was proprietary and was bought out of being proprietary Open source from the start so gimp is a better example But anyway, so you have all these projects pop up then one of them becomes successful And it creates a slow ball effect where users and developers get drawn to that project They abandon all other things and they want to work on that one And then and so effectively uh Many successful products on linux are monopolies. So there's just gimp. There's almost There are other editors which do slightly different things But as a raster Image editor that is basically the best thing you have And there's no other editor that can match the initial feature set there And it's very unlikely not impossible But super unlikely that people will even go there and start developing Right because all the power is there now So that's the effect one is that you they turn into monopolies effect number two Is that they tend to be very different design wise from what you see in the proprietary world And the reason for this is because you have this older product instead of developing something new People just add new functions and change the product And so you see a lot of evolution design And this is something that we were linux torval said about the linux kernel that linux kernel is not intelligent design. It's evolution uh the The result the end result is that a lot of the stuff you see on linux looks kind of outdated Yeah, it can actually sometimes even do some of the modern things But the design itself looks somewhere from the 90s And the reason for this is because many free software developers who started that back in the 90s They started that looking at the programs in the 90s or beginning of 2000s and then they continued to develop that community took Took it on and so now 15 years later the software is still around and they're working on it Uh, but it still looks kind of 90s. For example, if you look at key tractor And this is the sequencer of my choice actually really like key tractor partially because of the way how like how geeky and old school it looks but it actually Is that scared me off actually And I like I talked to ruy and he says, yeah, like one of the one of the inspirations was cake walk Now i'm not saying that this is necessarily a problem, but this is just an interesting side effect If you look at key tractor, it is a modern program that is basically using the concept of cake walk, you know walk is Uh, that's an interesting thing because uh, if I can trap you up for a bit because Like this is a problem that I have with uh, some commercial projects as well like I had to use coral draw in One work where it was a Industry standard and now where I work everybody uses I use inkscape and I fix problems with Carl files with inkscape, which is fun But I I always got this feeling that coral draw is like a program designed 12 years ago or 20 And they still didn't redesign it because everybody that use it is so used to it that they they would lose their user base If they redesigned it and make made it modern That's in the same applies to proddles proddles was the first actual DAW that could record With a computer it had to have a separate piece of hardware because computers were unable to do this But it was the first one and and still like it's funny because it feels very Perplexed and uneasy to use And I prefer ardor much more because it's much more modern even though Paul davis designed ardor Looking at proddles and he asked people from proddles like would you give me a source code? They said no Why would we and and he started ardor, but but ardor actually is much more modern to my feeling like it I prefer ardor if I had to pay the same amount of money for proddles or ardor I would pick ardor I think I think that you're correct in that there there are proprietary products that Are also kind of outdated and for some for one reason or another they will not change their design But I think that the tendency the proprietary world is much as much less there If you look at photoshop, if you look at many music programs, you know like ableton fl studio did Like an overhaul of their ui many times they changed a lot on this program Exactly so like I think that proprietary tools generally at least have the capability of doing that From time to time whereas if they own the open source world, it's much more difficult like you have to rewrite Things completely with different paradigms and commercial programs sometimes do that They can say well, we have this new version. We've completely written everything And they put it out And this is less easy to do and less likely in the free software world so the the don't here's so somebody can you know Listen to that and say so what are you saying here? I'm not saying that this is bad This is what it is if you if everybody using that understands what it is then, you know, you're fine You have correct expectations You go into that world expecting that well, this is how it works. These are the peculiarities of Of you know of communal development and I thought this is what I get from it The problem and this is what we started with is only when people start to try When they kind of start claiming that oh, yeah, and this communal development is better or as good as commercial development Where by good they defined features You know But getting the result and stuff like that If if we're talking about Animal learning or something like that or or having fun developing If we talk about this kind of good, then maybe open source world actually wins because it's more fun But if we're talking about getting results Then I think that open source world generally or at least in many things like media video music That it loses in general today And I think that part of that is also because a lot of the modern A lot of the modern tools and specifically in the realms of audio and video are very complex And it's much more difficult for an open source team To do that not impossible. This is being done There are products that are highlights, but in general it's rare and if you have Like inkscape, that's it. We have gimp. That's the only program Nobody else is going to do that and then we have Godot now this game engine Which is becoming more prominent to see that they're working on although Godot is also They started as a proprietary product. Godot is bind to all come studio that that makes games and they made it for themselves But they open source it. Yeah Yeah, which is great. It's the same because there is a team This is a good way for and so one of the things that I Um When I analyze proprietary software versus free software and whether free software freedoms are actually essential to everybody And this is something that really humanity has to adapt One of the things and I generally like my answer again, like It's difficult to give the arguments right now. I'm going to release the article soon I hope by the end of summer and then everybody can read it It's super academic in a way like it's written very carefully so that all the arguments are presented But in general, they'll be there and I I mostly think that most of these freedoms are actually irrelevant But there are cases where Where you would want to not waste human effort one of them is When you have a commercial program, which is really Good, which is high quality and then for some reason they decide to discontinue running it as a business I think it is at that point generally that will be nice to release it to everyone Now, I don't think I'm not sure whether this should be like A prescriptive moral thing I'm not sure, you know, like whether people should do that or must do that But I think that in general sometimes that is a very good idea And I'm very thankful to those those companies and people who decided to do that with blender or With whatever tool there is like with the dough This is great. And also they don't have to run out of business, right? Sometimes they actually do crowdsourcing and they can they can achieve their goals It's not as lucrative maybe but they can do it sometimes By the way, so yeah, this is the problem I really think that would be cool if you know an older tool that is no longer available Is kind of released for free for everyone open source and just okay. Just do whatever Yeah, I think like The big problem with comparing commercially developed software with communally developed developed software the open source community is that Companies are making this is a business people making are making living From developing this thing these things because money is involved and we need money to live right So open source projects are always needing much more development power much more time and much more energy And these things are limited as you said someone gets married someone gets Someone has children and and the project is not developed anymore, but I think that like For the last couple of years maybe a decade rather It's like we're slowly developing something that might change this I think because like now we have patreon and many people are starting to To make businesses out of their creative work And for example, there is a guy who created animation nodes add-on for blender And he has a patreon and like, you know He gets a couple hundred dollars a month. No, maybe maybe it's too much, but Open source product projects should be developed by people who get paid for their work Because the software is free, but it's not free to make and if we want good software we should Get ready to support the developers financially and this is what I tell to people Like you like open source software you want to use it you want it to grow Share your money because when with commercial software you buy something and then you get to use it and Both sides benefit when you use open source software the developers don't benefit Apart from seeing that someone downloaded it So we need to give back and I think that there it needs to be a shift in the community That we need to start supporting developers with our money. Maybe patreon Is is a tool to do this? Yeah, I mean, I think crowdsourcing I mean in a ready place a pretty significant role in society not, you know, still very low, but Things are being done right now It's interesting and not yet clear how this will play out in the future Whether it's possible to support everything by crowdsourcing. I currently doubt it I think that it will always be a small niche It might be much larger in terms of percentages and it'll see like an absolute numbers It will be very large, but in relative numbers it's still going to be smaller and they're So I think that it would be interesting to look at the comparison of how much people can actually make using for example for talking only about software How much you can actually make using proprietary model and using open source crowdsource model It's you know, you can actually use crowdsource with proprietary programs as well Nothing stops you from that because patreon and similar crowdsourcing Things they don't force you to actually, you know, open the code open the code But at the same time that we want to panacea and one of the examples that That probably you've heard And people who watched my bad geek videos. No, I was all of them. They're great Yeah, which was which and I'm a I'm a big critic of open shot Specifically because the what because it's so bad It's so unreliable in terms of just not stable software And at the same time nothing just nothing on their website points to that the website lists a whole kind of set of features And it looks really nice and you're asking yourself wait a minute How can that not be the ultimate video editor for linux and it just doesn't work It's just even the newer version and so the important thing The reason I bring up open shot in relation to crowdsourcing is because the developer of open shot Made a Kickstarter project where he said I'll develop. So I'm using this mlt or milt or I forget what's the name mlt melt Library yeah multi library and it's super unstable So his claim was that my software is great. It is the library that is unstable and there's a screenshot Actually, I have from their forum. I mean, it's probably still there But just in case it gets deleted or something like that where they say Our software super stable is the library, which is a problem And so he says I'm going to go out and write a library live open shot I'm going to do that, you know when people pledge money and then he eventually did that It took him a very long time very long time much longer than he promised And then he came out. Here's the library or maybe he'll put out the library in time just so that I'm not, you know, I'm not Distributing falsehoods here but Then he said I'm going to develop my own video editor around this library and this time all these mlt problems are going to be Gone it's going to be stable and stuff like that. So Maybe keep alive in time and then I took You know, I tried his open shot too And it's just it's been months if not more than a year, I guess since he released it It's as bad as ever. It's just it just crashes all the time Freezes it's impossible to work with And this guy had a Kickstarter campaign. This guy was paid to do that full time He was actually running writing the program full time. It did not help We have no video editor open shot to is unusable as of today at least on my computer and on computer of my friend He tried it. I tried it. It just doesn't work And this guy was paid so apparently it's also about maybe the skill of the developer and or The amount of people working simultaneously other product or maybe it's not only the developer But also there have to be testers and this is another very big feature Slash bug of the open source community that is good or bad depending on how you approach things is that all the testing is typically Outsourced to the user. Yeah, and that means that reliability of software in a way Is not felt to be developers responsibility. Hey guys, I wrote the code now you please test because I have no Resources for I don't care. All I will do is claim that this software can do this This is this oh the fact that it crashes every two seconds Unless on my you know problem file bugs And so you get in a situation where a lot of the software looks like very lucrative tools You think wow, I'm going to use that and then you install it and it just Unusable just crashes crashes crashes and uh, yeah, so that's that that's one of the things that development in itself like The good thing about patreon and kickstarter that they give possible platforms for development But they don't actually solve the problem of Good well educated structure, you know of the team Well, when a person not just is a developer, but he has testers He has a product manager or something like that where a person understands E-wax designer maybe and which is important when you're using tools, right? You have to understand you have to make sure the tool is more efficient And when you looked into the amount of work that is put into proprietary products Like a lot of people sometimes feel hey, so you're you know, you did photoshop or whatever now you're charging money And you're not showing the code Why can't you just do that? I think that very frequently they don't understand how much work actually goes into this And that this is the result of hundreds of people working on that product for years Which is how millions and millions of daily as well Yeah, and then and when you're looking at an open source project It will typically suffer from lack of documentation bad ux design bad product design Where it's not clear who the product is even for and you know, the features are weirdly Developers like that. I actually have a talk on that from uh lack of la c la c 2016 in Berlin Where I kind of cover some of these topics But uh, yeah, and so so in the end one developer on patreon is not enough, right? For example, you uh said You kind of linked me to natron this software That is a compositor software for video And yeah, and no they have a proper team So these guys have like a whole team of people working on that and you can see that they're probably and they got funded like I don't know a year of development of the whole team somehow like they they got funds to make an open source program and They carried on the development after the funding Ended So it's like slowed down, but they've got the base and and they're developing it Yeah, yeah, but they didn't like a proper team where you have not just one developer or two developers working Only they have like a whole team that's I think that's a more viable approach But then it's much more difficult to execute And if you look at commercial companies all around the world Most of them will fail Or they will find maybe a very niche use case Like you develop a program and then several people use it and this guy developed a program and several people use it And then somebody finally develops something that eventually everybody uses, right? So there's also competition there I think that sometimes people assume that oh well, it's open source. Therefore it's just going to work No, you can develop huge amounts of open source products and they're going to be shit And nobody's going to be using them at all and then finally it may be one day There will be one team that is both well funded Knows what they're doing and actually create a product that works that works and these three factors are not easy to come by For anyone the same team can come together try another product and it won't work because these are difficult things So I think that open source in the end is one factor And it's an important factor and I'm actually for open source. I like open source I just realized that it is a specific tool that is not a panacea So I talked too much Well, you can't see me You don't know what you people watching this but luigi can't see me because I like we rooted The web cam so so I'm just recording on video where luigi can't see me. So the only way to interrupt it means to do is for me to do I would grant to linux audio the fact that it does challenge you Like there are like for me Oh, yeah It is fun Take you know like the basic tools that linux offers and sometimes these outdated synthesizers that have these weird 80s Beginning of the 90s sounds and you do something with them and you come up with an interesting result I kind of I like that. I love experimenting on linux I just realized that for example for certain genres like If I want to make techno or house, it's super difficult to use the modular environment It's okay to use a little less actually but uh, you know, I would actually gladly talk about lmms at a maybe at a later date not today but uh LMS is a is a great example. It's a good software I just wish that it was developed more the fact that it doesn't support also lv2 plugins as a part of that That is a big big lack Because yes most of the good plugins it happens at our lv2 Actually the original developer developer of lmms all Gblock, I believe yeah He was planning to so he stopped working on lmms Just by the so I came to linux in 2009 And that's about the time that he said oh, I'm actually embarking on a large project I'm going to rebuild the whole lmms from scratch and it's going to be a very different thing It's going to be modular. It's going to be this is going to be that it never happened And I think he started making something called unison studio I remember that Yeah, and it never happened like actually I actually talked to him on google talk I kind of wrote him hate ball was going on maybe a couple years later He's like god and all like I think he didn't do anything. He had some things going on in his life And I don't think that unison is ever happening but You know if lmms was continued to be developed it would have been pretty cool because In terms of what it can do as as an all-in-one door. It's pretty impressive. It has Advanced automation. It has this as that it has you know peak controller, which are real lfo controllers You can link stuff you can Link controls to your midi controller on your desk and twist knobs live or something or record this automation with your knobs or faders Yeah, it's like it's like a proper door It's it's I think it's about the level of afl studio 4 back in the time when it was the first one I used was fl studio 5 I learned on it Studio 3.4. I think Uh, actually, so it was already a very able sequencer. I think that sometimes Nowadays people still call it fruity loops and when it was just started. I think version one or two It was just a beats Three grid. It didn't even have piano roll by version three that I already had it had a proper piano Roll was I you could do anything you want with it at that point of time But somehow people still believe that it's this kind of weird But it's one of the most popular sequencers nowadays actually There are statistics and fl studio seems to be one of the most popular and used Sequencers currently even above ableton as far as I understand It doesn't mean maybe among not among professionals, but just in terms of sheer numbers I saw somewhere a poll that that said yep, this is like the most used right now according to some stats You know viewers can verify that information. I don't think that it's terribly important But all it says is just that it's you know, it's pretty much on par with a lot of these sequencers And so the fact that lmms is basically Like the early but already super capable version of fruity loops is a very big compliment in my view I think by version five they already were called fl studio and You know, uh, so lms is a big thing and when I started I thought that's what I'm going to do But there are many problems that make it very difficult. There are no presets for uh for effects The effects are not seeing to the host as far as I know Uh, you have to like if you're using a delay, you have to set it up all the time At least that's because because it is uh, it is last but And uh, so there's no bpm syncing to to to dawg but lv2 has they have a milliseconds This is something that I wrote in my linux audio overview. Like I I'm you know But anyway, I I think that that should be a separate topic. Oh, lms is a great thing, but uh I'm just not sure that it's ever going to be uh developed again And yeah, seriously, it's just very unlikely not impossible But very unlikely and this is a bummer because theoretically it's a very good It's a very good piece of open source software that is actually capable You can actually get results with it. I made like I don't know three or four full length albums of electronic mean dance music Yeah And there you go and the fifth one is coming out later this year I'm just finishing my my mixes and recording some vocals and stuff in order There is another pretty cool open source too and that is mix Oh, yeah, dj And uh, this is this was actually a big surprise for me because for a long time mix was very basic kind of this two channel dj Platform it was stable. Actually it was stable and used by Some dj that's that's a mandatory thing for dj software. It's not stable. It's it's crap Yeah, so they're pretty stable and then they came out with mix two which Oh, you know offers bead grids and loops and everything and four decks Uh, there are weird design decisions there For example, you cannot get four decks unless you choose a particular skin and the skin will dictate Yeah, and then I had to actually change the skin because they had a very weird knob Mapping and you modify the skin for your needs, right? Yeah, you can just it's just an xml file. We can just exchange things So I just put them around in different order because they have a very different order But anyway, so I and I started using that a little bit. I actually bought two controllers already for that I just because I I decided that I'm not going to go into dj until I complete my article on free software So as soon as I complete my article on stalkin's velocity I'm going to go into dj and also in parallel. I'm actually right now learning to write minimal techno and minimal house rhythms because this is You know, this is a science, you know itself. It's pretty complicated to Um, you don't get the result that easily but you know, I'm getting there. So I've heard some of your tracks from barely in songbook Was it called on sound? Well, you released some some minimal techno tracks You actually inspired me to make one minimal techno track myself, but I haven't played it to anybody yet Yeah, I mean It's like I think it's volume two The volume zero was from my very early days before even linux volume one was when I took some of that and we done that And I have a couple of mixes there and now the volume two is when I'm learning this More properly maybe or in a more dedicated matter But I'm still not entirely happy with the results because you have to learn a lot about how the sound works We kind of you know how to construct a beat how to make it sound properly and all of that kind of stuff Although of course when you're mixing it and uh and dj software typically It the audio engine will make it sound Prettier also because you're mixing stuff and maybe the frequencies somehow work together well But typically when I use even my tracks that I don't consider to be that good at all in terms of sound They sound pretty decent and dj software be tractor or even mix. So I'm looking forward to hear your minimal techno set on sonoi Oh, yeah, yeah, and I hope to drop my various cdm generous mix from my upcoming album there too Probably there you go. I'm gonna suck at djing because I'm not a dj But I'm gonna give it a try Maybe some live vocals will go. I don't know. I mean it depends like in my case. I'm doing Uh, so I'm not doing normal djing I'm doing what is typically called the controllerism, but it's also not exactly that So it's more like a live act actually you're triggering same sequencer sequencers and stuff You just create a new track out of all of them I typically use very short loops like two bar four bar loops May compose them and a and then you hear something that is actually Not in the original tracks. It's like a weird combination of them And you can you can do a lot by just even using the equalizer and the filters and stuff like that So it's actually a lot of fun to do. So you're doing this with mix Yeah, you're doing this with mix Yeah, yeah So that's why you why like the four tracks so much because you can like have stems like drums bass leads pads or stuff Fine. I mean it's not entirely that you can do that as well But just you need more source material more than two tracks Now because then you can use whichever two tracks are playing an interesting combination They can have all the bass and drums at the same time depends You can try different things and one you can remove for example the low frequencies on the other Below so you can kind of connect and then with these two tracks you can start phasing in something new and it always moves It's always in the process of moving somewhere There's not a I rarely have like all four decks are playing because then you can do nothing So it's gonna be two or three playing and then I always face something in face something out So it's a lot of fun and I'm very happy to do some mix because right now the cost of moving from linux to windows for me would be pretty high There are generally a lot of things I really like on my linux system There are many things I don't like but you know wi-fi in particular is very complicated, but But in general i'm happy and so of course, I don't really want to move I would prefer to be on linux and so i'm happy that felsuya works So I just like linux operating system in general more than I like currently windows macOS I Tried but I never really got into it and I did because I didn't have to I decided not to but but also I've been using macOS When I worked for a video films a little film studio for like three months but then I was Finally sure that the guy that hired me is is a fraud and he's always me money But I used a hackintosh machine. No, it was a genuine mac pro or something And and we run cubase and then reapered there and and he had the the full Contact and and massive and fm8 and absinthe all the native instruments Pack and and I got to use that finally It was funny I mixed this with tall noisemaker and helm because zen at sub effects wasn't available in a mac As a plug in them. It's finally is I guess zen fusion is available or maybe not yet. I don't know And it's it's an interesting experience and also show me that Proprietary software has its problems as well. It's not like it just works Sometimes it just works and open source software also just works sometimes, but it's not like It's an alderado. You you don't fix your all your problems just by buying something proprietary You fix some problems for sure But it's I don't know by the way We are like over over over one hour. So maybe we should wrap it up And I think I have I think I have a nice thought That could wrap it up on my side and then you could wrap it up on your side and we will Say goodbye to our audience so the whole thing like When I started making music I started making music because a friend My good friend sent me a copy of fl studio 5 and I just started making beats because there was these four samples kicks snare high head and clap And you could pick some numbers and hit play and it was played in the loop and was I was just mesmerized with this And years later. I decided I I'd like to be legal and not use cracked software. So I searched and I found a tracker Uh, I made one album with it and I found the lms and I always I always decided to take the harder route to get where I want to go because like most people uh download cracked software Download samples from other people download presets and they just throw them together and make something But I wanted to make my music as much my own as possible. So I started synthesizing drums from scratch because I heard Pants like pendulum and and I don't know Nowadays Skrillex and and like you hear that these sounds are made Someone makes them they have to be possible. So I started experimenting and I finally after years figure out how to make some decent synthesized drums And it's like I'm always taking the harder route I could I could just you know crack some FL studio and use cracked windows or something When I don't have the money or now when I have the money I could buy it but I feel like I'm developing a lot just by Forcing myself to overcome these limitations and learn how to do nice things with simple tools And yeah, it's difficult. But when I get the good tools, I can do stuff that is decent But it's not like super great I don't know. It's not like I'm instantly doing better stuff that I'm doing without these tools So it's also interesting, but I don't have a problem switching I just joke There's this joke. So I'm reading I thought using loops was cheating. So I programmed my own using samples. I know it I thought using samples was cheating. So I recorded real drums I don't thought that programming it was cheating. So I learned to play drums for real I then thought using bought drums was cheating. So I learned to make my own I then thought using pre-made skins was cheating. So I killed the goat and skinned it I don't then thought that was cheating too. So I grew my own goat from a baby goat I also think that it's cheating, but I'm not sure where to go from here I haven't made my any musically with the goat farming at all Yeah, I know that I don't want to go that far. I'm not writing my own synthesizers and I'm not writing my own DOS Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean for me for me a Linux Linux audio was an interesting playground for ambient music because it's modular and In ambient music you sometimes want to get away from the grid and so I'm using Linux very frequently for for audio experiments and for building an ambient Composition because it's just easier to do ambient And you know, I kind of love the charm of this kind of old school feel that a lot of Linux stuff has And there are some unique tools that I like to use that nobody else has typically So that kind of uniqueness is pretty cool So, yeah, that's kind of that's that's you know, that what what keeps you almost like the community. I actually also Sometimes go to demo parties, which is a demo scene community Which has nothing to do with open source at all, right? But yeah, like I like a lot of these communities It's fun when there's an activity and then the community forms around it and open source is just one of them and you know, I enjoy Just enjoy being in that world And getting at some software. It's also fun to bash it as well And because it doesn't kind of belong to anyone You can do that without being afraid that you're gonna really You know offend someone because well, there are many people work on it You can always say well, I wasn't me. It was this guy who added this code. So Uh, but yeah, but uh, I always keep a cool head in terms of like I started off being a big fan of open source I'm thinking that everybody should adopt it and free software philosophy And then gradually as I think matured as a person and as a developer and then as a product manager Who's working the software industry? I began to my views began to shift away from that kind of radical free softwareism and then today I think I'm I'm moderate very moderate In terms of I think that free and open source is useful But I don't think that it's something that is morally superior in general terms It's just a great way to one of the great ways to do software and just Frequently fun community that forms around this process I think that's a good thought to wrap up our video Yep, thanks for hanging out Thank you And yeah, we probably should do maybe with uh Nils Hilbrich another sonoi video Because we're getting closer About some ideas. Maybe check check how many people are registered already How the organization is is going? Okay. Okay, sir. I have to also signing off. Thanks. And uh, let's do this again someday. Yeah, thanks Let's switch to off the record See you next time