• a code base that is accessible to people who have never seen it before
• code that’s free from "encumbrances" or code or concepts proprietary to a third party, such as licensed libraries or materials covered by patents (and thus usually requiring removal)
• an active community of developers
• a process for maintaining development

Or, put more simply: you have to fully own the thing, you have to want to share the thing, and there has to be a group of people who can work on it productively. Even satisfying one of these is unlikely here, let alone all of them.

Ownership, in particular, is an area a lot of people underestimate. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Tascam/Teac wanted to open source the code — and they almost certainly don’t. Even if they did, they might be unable to do so, because they may not own all of its contents. Then there’s the question of whether Giga would really be an ideal framework for open development. Keep in mind that, while Mozilla’s Firefox grew out of proprietary Netscape code, it was also an independent platform, and setting up that platform — one that would be better suited to open development — took years of work.

There are some really terrific open source sound projects out there. CSound, for instance, once proprietary (though free for non-commercial use) is today covered under the open LGPL license. As a result, it’s made an appearance in karaoke hardware. Pure Data (Pd) was recently incorporated into interactive music design for the upcoming EA game Spore from Will Wright, as composed by Brian Eno. Neither of these products is as end-user friendly as a typical commercial product, it’s true. But each has been incorporated into other projects in a way that would be impossible with a proprietary application. I love Max, for instance, but licensing Max for Spore wouldn’t have made any sense; Pd happens to run easily in a "headless" operation, and it’s open source.

Open source code (or free software, if you like), is just one part of what this software industry needs. We could really use better interchange file formats, more extensible applications, and more standards for communication between software and software, software and hardware, and hardware and hardware. Even if you use exclusively free or exclusively proprietary software, these are important.

In fact, if we weren’t stuck with a mess of formats for files and communication, the death of one application might not be so damaging. And given that artists are wildly loyal to specific tools for artistic reasons, it seems, even pragmatically, that format lock-in is overkill. All our real-world evidence says people stick with software because they love the tool and have a good relationship with the company that makes it.

When it comes to open source code, though, you need a community of people investing time, often without direct profit. I think there’s more excitement now about doing that than at any time in recent memory in music technology. OpenGiga may never see the light of day, but you can expect progress on free projects like Pd will accelerate.

See also yesterday’s story and accompanying discussion:

Life After Giga: A Call for Open Source Sampling Development

The discussion there was about an independent project that would make sense for open development, not an open Giga or Giga clone.

The LinuxSampler project offers GigaSampler 3 compatibility for Linux and Windows, so it’s already an open alternative for dealing with your orphaned Giga sampler files. (Naturally, you could also look to a number of Giga-compatibility samplers on the market.)

But the open source community has long been under fire — often rightly so — for simply copying proprietary software rather than doing something new and innovative. I enjoy "new and powerful," so that sounds like a great idea, and that’s what Darren is proposing. He writes:

What I want to do is build a code framework (not to be confused with a library) that will contain classes for handling streaming sample playback, resampling, and all that fun stuff, as well as directed graph building for DSP. From here, the framework can be used to build monolithic applications for sampling and synthesis, as well as a Reaktor-like application, if we do it right.

Yes, it would be better to split things out into libraries, but that takes a lot more work, and I’m tired of things not happening. The sooner we can get some code working, the better.

I should also mention that there are existing open source libraries we can and will leverage, like libsndfile, libsamplerate, libfftw3, and the Rubber Band library, so we won’t be starting completely from scratch.

This sounds terrific to me — not necessarily as a replacement for existing, proprietary tools, but as a framework on which new tools could be built. There are research and compositional projects that could absolutely benefit from the existence of such a library. And having this tool as an option could strengthen computer music platforms in general. (In other words, wherever you stand in terms of open source and philosophy, it could be a good thing. Hey, I’m happy all around — I couldn’t live, basically, without both systems.)

But enough theory — the idea needs developers and real code, so it’s not just an idea.

If you’re a developer, do get in touch. I’m happy to help host and support any such work in any way we can via CDM. Darren is on gmail as dmlandrum, or leave a comment here.

By the way, happy OSCON day.

Image: jagelado. (Interestingly, since the creation of that image, Microsoft has come to make more use of open source — you can argue about the reasons, but not the effect.)

What do you do if Tascam lets you down, and you’re a sound house dependent on their GigaStudio/GigSampler player? For major soundware development house SONiVOX, the answer was: make your own software.

Somerville, Mass-based SONiVOX has announced “announced the existence” of an in-house software development team. Read: the team has been there already, but they haven’t wanted to talk about it until news broke that Tascam’s GigaStudio was going away.

SONiVOX says they have developed “a universally compatible player technology that focus on intelligent MIDI performance, intuitive interfaces, and the highest sonic fidelity.” It will support not only SONiVOX’s own products, but third party-products, as well. SONiVOX points out their experience working with clients like Motorola, Analog Devices, and Google, on sound software.

The press release apparently went out on Friday, but I missed it. Now, with it clear that Giga is dead, the news makes more sense. Peter Alexander at Film Music Magazine, who also broke the GigaStudio discontinuation story, correctly read the signs as early as Monday. He has a long, excellent opinion piece on that site that laments Tascam’s failure to develop their own, long-promised player. He wrote then:

“SONiVOX, an American company substantively smaller than either Tascam or their publicly traded parent, TEAC, has beaten the Giant to market by creating their own dual platform player for both PC and Mac with product ready for shipping by late July early August.”

Memo: To Sample and Software Developers [Film Music Magazine]

Nor is SONiVOX alone. They join EastWest and Spectrasonics, as Peter observes, along with Garritan, whose Steinway-authorized piano instrument runs on the in-house ARIA Player. And that’s to say nothing of developers like Native Instruments, Cakewalk, Steinberg, MOTU, and Apple, all of whom might be considered soundware developers themselves, running on their own virtual instrument products.

Of course, this also illustrates just how tough the market is for any sampler, even one from a company the size of TEAC. In fact, it seems to be the independent companies who are most willing to keep fighting in that climate.

What remains to be seen is how well SONiVOX can support third parties. If they can do so affordably and effectively, you could see serious migration to their sound platform.

SONiVOX’s own virtual instruments, the first for the platform, are scheduled for release at the end of the month:

http://www.sonivoxmi.com/