However, I’m not the one who was accusing open source software of stealing from the commercial world. I did make the point, though, that I do have a few original ideas of my own concerning the overall design for a sampler. These ideas will apply for other types of music software as well, I think. I don’t want to give too many details just yet, because I want to flesh out ideas and run them past people I trust first. I actually agree with you about implementing popular functionality and open file formats.

I’ve also been called worse things than a dung beetle. :-)

Linuxsampler doesn’t get around anything and not all developers are in Germany. Linuxsampler is based “prior art” to any of those patents and I believe this is why it wasn’t sued by Tascam. Although, of course, anyone can sue anybody these days for just about any reason. Btw, not looking up the patent isn’t going to make you infringement less willful :)
I’m not sure i understood your point about opensource simply copying commercial software. Surely you aren’t talking about copying as in stealing code, are you?
If you are talking about implementing compatible software then i must protest. If nobody implemented open software that does essentially the same thing that closed software did, having the similar form-fit-function, e.g. opening the same file formats, etc. then there would not be many users of open software. I use open software but i must interact with others who do not all use open software. It would be difficult for me to work in the office w/o an openoffice, for example. So there is nothing “uncool” about implementing something that already exists, especially if you can do it better.
You are essentially saying that you would do something different implying that it doesn’t already exist. Why are you so sure that it does not? How well did you do your research? If so, does it not exist because there isn’t much of a demand for it or because it’s impossible to implement properly?

Another way to look at this is that Halion was developed after the giga patent was taken out. I am about 98% certain that Steinberg did not license the patent, and did not feel under any threat of a lawsuit (based on personal communication with Steinberg employees).

The core technology of GigaStudio is that patent on on-demand sample streaming from disk. It’s a real possibility that all of the other commercial samplers on the market license that patent. That makes the patent worth a lot more than the product.

If they do release the product open source, it will be minus the code that the patent covers, at the very least. That would leave you with a neutered product. Creating your own streaming sample code then becomes a patent violation. This ends up leaving you in the same boat that I’m in.

Because it’s the patent that’s worth the real money, getting them to sell that to a bunch of open sourcers will be a chore, and incredibly expensive, assuming they don’t just laugh us out of the metaphorical room.

Now, it could be I’m wrong, and that there is a way around these issues, and other companies have found it. But for now, I think it’s best to assume the worst possible scenario until we know more.

Personally, I’m looking to use 64-bit addressing and letting people really load up the RAM. I’ve also thought about seeing if I can get a version of FLAC that works on 24-bit waves, to save memory. These are just off-hand ideas for now, though.

Though gigastudio is on the scrap heap, I doubt that tascam will be willing to forgo the fee for salvage. It’s clear that they have a significant investment in the IP.

I assume there are companies that are considering taking up the gigastudio mantle. They will probably be doing the same market analysis that Tascam is doing and will likely come to a similar conclusion, it’s not very viable. However, there is another option.

How about forming a cooperative which will attempt to raise the necessary funds to purchase the IP. Once the cooperative owns the code they would be free to make it open source as they wish.

Rather than a petition for Tascam to give the software away we should start collecting pledges from putative coop members. A solid goal would be to gather 2000 $100 pledges. Though 200k is not a huge number it would be enough of start to be taken seriously by Tascam.

At the very least make tascam and or other developers realize that there still is a small market for the product.

If the co-op actually succeeds in raising capital and purchasing the IP there are a number of possible business models that could lead to sustainable development support and maintenance of the product.

Ideally, the coop members would pledge with the full understanding that the resulting product would be open source. This would make the product essentially donation/shareware. I do think that there are enough professional users who would be willing to risk $100-$500 just for a reasonable chance to not have to port libraries !

Once the code is open sourced, development could continue in the “usual” open source manner. However it would be wise to use the cooperative funding model to leverage the existing knowledge base, i.e. hire members of the current product team ( I believe there are a half dozen or so coders).

A knowledgeable product manager could then designate which tasks code be handled by the existing coders and which could be crowd sourced.

Testing and bug reporting would be handled by the coop members. Once a stable release is generated feature requests could accumulated and ranked. Another round of funding could then be raised for the next version.

It’s obvious that Tascam did not feel that there was enough of a commercial market to warrant the continued development and and support costs.

With a cooperative open source model I think gigastudio could at least be sustained for the next 5-10 years. If something like this actually worked it might be possible to expand the product along the lines discussed above.

If there is any interest in this idea I’d be more than happy to work on it.

joel [ATTTT] godelstring [DOOT] com

Fair `nuff.

The open source software I know and use isn’t simply copying proprietary software. If it were, I wouldn’t be using it. OSes are a bad example, because there’s so much that people ask of an OS — Mac, Windows, Linux, etc. are constantly accusing each other of copying, but that could also simply be responding to user needs. In music and audio, what I’ve seen from open source is very much distinct from what the proprietary software is doing. End of story.

GIGA CONNECTION –
I made the connection here, so to whatever extent I muddied the waters by doing that, sorry.

But then, the point here was we have a choice:
* hope that a petition convinces a big corporation to open source a giant, app OR
* build some simple frameworks that would make these things easier to develop

Might the simple frameworks issue become much harder than people expect? Might you wind up with something *nothing* like Giga? Might it be something idiosyncratic and unrelated to commercial products? Absolutely. I think that’s a really good thing.

I also wish people would stop assuming that just because my inflamed sense of self coincides with this whole GigaStudio fiasco, that all I want to do is clone it. I have many idea of my own for a sampling workstation that bear no resemblance to anything on the market. Whether they’re any good or not remains to be seen, but hey, it’s worth a try. I sent a link to Peter something I had written on one of my main ideas, though I did ask him to keep it under his hat for now. I’ll email you a link to it, if you’d like, Paul, as I know I can count on some good feedback from you. ;-)

There are other ways of approaching the same problem, to achieve interesting results.

And you’re right, Olga is much smaller in scope than a huge sampling workstation, but it pains me to say that nothing on Linux comes even close to sounding as good as it does. I want to solve that.

I dont disagree with you, but in my limited experience guys who build their own stompboxes have always been seeking something unique rather than just trying to replicate the successes of the commercial world. YMMV.