I recently suggested to friend setting up a home small studio that he might like to try Ardour (2 x 1.25 PPC G4) I was a bit disappointed to find that payment is now mandatory in the latter part of the month, then after paying Ardoiour didn’t even launch, just crashed with no error messages.
Needless to say this creates a pretty poor impression of the software, now I feel bad for recommending it. I understand that bandwidth is expensive, but donations should really be voluntary.
S
I think some people need to read the GPL and get a clearer understanding of the difference between “free as in speech” and “free as in beer” software.
Clause 6d of the GPL says:
[you may:]…
d) Convey the object code by offering access from a designated place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no further charge.
(my emphasis added)
That is exactly what Paul is doing. You can always have the source code for free, you may have to pay for the object code.
The GPL offers you an alternative: anyone who has an installable binary package of Ardour can give it to you, and while individual users here might on principle not be very willing to email or dropbox you a copy just to save you paying for it, you can also download it in ready-ro-run systems like AVLinux.
I was going to post a version of this message earlier, and explain that I don’t subscribe to Ardour, but send in donations when I do a recording project that makes me money (not often!) - but I looked at the figures and realized that a $4 subscription is a paltry sum for unrestricted download access for a year, so I’ve now subscribed at that rate. It’s not a lot but it’s been said before: if everyone who ever downloaded Ardour sent just $1, Paul could get on with software work and not wase time on silly arguments like these.
And finally: how come there are so many people who can afford the hardware to run Ardour, but are so penniless they can’t pay anything for software? Even if you aren’t running an 8 channel interface, mics and preamps, you at least need a computer and to post here you need internet access - who gets those for nothing?
@anahata: Good point - e.g.
how come there are so many people who can afford the hardware to run Ardour, but are so penniless they can't pay anything for software?
I know that income and circumstances vary widely, but I have often wondered why software is often seen as something that should be zero cost (perhaps because it isn’t a physical product) - when in fact there is a real cost in developing it (perhaps its better viewed as a ‘service’ - in the same way that you have to pay for any other skilled professional if you lack the skills / knowledge / tools yourself - as far as I know there are no open-source plumbers, car mechanics, etc etc… 
I’ve also never understood why (a lot of people) think its valid to say “I’ll pay for the software when I make some money from it” - that’s not really how it works, for example, as a commercial developer, when I decide to develop for another platform (e.g. OSX, iOS, Windows etc) then I have to pay for the tools (e.g. a Mac or a Windows license) needed to do that. If the software I make doesn’t sell, then that’s my risk - I can’t promise to pay Apple or Microsoft only if my software is commercially successful. (Even for linux, the cost is far from zero - I’ve had to take on a lot of extra ‘cost’ just to make the software available, which I wouldn’t have if I just developed it as a hobby - and I only get that cost back if people actually buy it… )
Donations are voluntary, for the source code. If you know how to and want to try to compile it yourself, you are more than welcome to. The number of people that have done this successfully however is exceedingly limited. Also I will mention that the goal is not only to pay for bandwidth, which is remarkably check at the moment, but to pay for Paul and others to actually work on Ardour, which is far more expensive.
In as far as the crash, the NUMBER 1 reason this happens on 10.4(Which I am assuming you are on as you don’t specify) is that your system is not completely up to date. You have to be on 10.4.11 and there is even an update AFTER that which you need to install that doesn’t actually update your OS version number, but installs/updates a system library required for Ardour. Otherwise you get the crash.
Seablade@stuarticus: did you bother read http://ardour.org/first_time_osx_native as strongly suggested when you downloaded Ardour?
In addition, let me note that bandwidth is not expensive. You are not paying for the download, you are helping to pay for the continuing (and past) development of Ardour (both for bugfixes and new stuff like Ardour 3.0). Software like this doesn’t happen as a hobby. If everyone who downloaded it paid US$1, there would be less financial issues associated, but given that typically around 5% of downloaders bother to pay, I am forced to do a variety of things to try to ensure that I and my family get to eat next month. I’m no fan of mandatory payments, but when the amount that people pay is so little its one of several pathways I take to try to ensure that I can continue to work on the software.
@Paul
I am more than willing to donate a few dollars for the efforts of any free software I use, but I would never be OK with being forced to pay each time I need to download. not everyone can afford to donate. generally, I can’t afford much but I always try to donate when I can. I havn’t really used ardour much as of yet (tried it years ago when ubuntu 8.04 came out, but never really used it as jack and alsa fell apart on my machine), but for students who have debts that could buy houses, they cant really afford to do it. it seems a little unfair, going both ways.
Reaper (propreitary) for one, just has a nag screen, and doesn’t dissable functionality. i personally believe that having a “broken” or “demo” version for FOSS software right off the bat is more likely to alienate newcomers, regardless if they only have to donate a dollar or not. nag screens when you start the program asking for a donation (and ask them to join theforums and community while you are at it) would not be a horrible idea. it lets people hapily keep using the software, and could drive it home a bit better.
I’m planning on donating a few dollars when my next pay comes in, and probably more when ardour 3 goes stable by the way. I fully understand the situation you are in, and how tough things are, but you aren’t the only one in tough times. I feel that punishing musicians (who are clearly not developers) who may or may not be well off is not a nice option either.
I start college for my second year of music production come september (which is costing me $15,000 canadian for just 1 year!!!), and I know I’ll be around people in simmilar situations like me. should you decide to take my advice about the nag screens, I’d try my best to fit regular donations into my budget (dispite the cost of school). as well, I’d push the DAW to other students studying there, many of whom would probably be willing to donate a little here and there (I know alot of the students im going to be studying with. almost all of them are anti DRM and would be more than willing to donate).
I highly doubt any of this means anything to you, as I can easily be written off as some dumb and young kid, but i figured its not a bad idea to get my opinion out there.
edit: nvm. you’ve blocked downloads for people who only pay a 1 time donation, so forget i’ve said anything. that’s not a cause I’d ever support. I hope your project does well(and im willing to participate in the community), but you don’t deserve donations if you don’t keep your promises.
edit2: didnt notice that you make people wait till the next month. that’s not as bad, but I’ll probably not subscribe cause of it. i may just donate once or twice (or whenever you make major releases). if you really wanna make money, place the ads on your site better, and do partner downloads through a mega-upload like service. if i recall correctly they have services where you earn on each download.
The source code to Ardour is ALWAYS free. At the download screen you can choose to download either a tar package of the source code, or you can check it out form the public SVN server.
The binary package is not always available free no. But for people that make a donation they should have no problem downloading it, and even redownloading it (There is even a page set up specifically for that purpose IIRC, you enter your transaction ID IIRC to redownload the package). This is for both Linux and OS X.
However even though that is said, in most any Linux distribution you can install from your repository with no issues and no compilation needed in most cases.
So I would say there is plenty of opportunity for installing for no cost.
In as far as Advertising and Megaupload… really there just isn’t enough money coming in from either type of service to support a full time developer, thus the community support.
Seablade@seablade: when i posted that, I was unable to download the source code. it told me I had to wait till the next month, even though I had donated that day. i was unable to download anything.
i tried to download every package that was on the download page, and it just blocked me from doing it. <- that is NOT cool.
of course there isnt enough money coming from ads and download services. I made the suggestion simply because it helps with the financial strain. set up correctly, I think it could help alot.
I was curious about trying the mac version too, and I havnt downloaded since i donated. it seems paul doesnt care about people who cant afford to donate on a subscription, because it won’t let me downlaod the uncrippled version. thats a massive amount of bullshit. to me, it seems more like a scam than anything.
why the HELL should I donate ANYTHING to this project, if the promise of the uncrippled version is not honored?
I’ve looked for a place to put my transaction ID to get the download, but I cant find anything like that.
if paul really has this much of an issue making money from this project, I would highly suggest he get a day job… I work my ass off for the (little) money I make. he’s clearly talented in software development so he should probably go to work for someone to pay his bills, not spread false promises about his audio software…
I’ll try again when version 3 is fully released, and if the same shit happens again, I’ll be sure to let everyone I know who asks about ardour to know its a scam.
and for what its worth…pretty much everyone would prefer nagware over the crippleware garbage paul is releasing right now…
@d3drocks …as a long time user and subscriber to Ardour (and occasional bug reporter) I am amazed by your immaturity on the matter and insulted as part of the ardour community that you consider it a scam… IF you had trouble getting it to work, or downloading it, then I suggest you try the IRC channel for help. I am horrified by your suggestion for Paul to get a day job… many of us rallied to push subscriptions many times when this nearly happened when the former major sponsor withdrew support as they had released a competing product. The ardour community depends on Paul as the project lead to keep this thing going and that requires he be able to work full time on the project.
As Seablade and Paul have pointed out there are free versions for trying it out on Mac. Source code is always free, but I highly doubt that you have the patience to try and get that going. Similarly most distros have a package that requires no donation and if you really don’t know how to setup your linux distro for audio there are multiple specialist distros out there that you just put the cd in and run install… Hardly a scam when it is available for free everywhere… (I installed it on my distro without paying and then subscribed after the fact because I found it to be a great product and have use for it in my amateur/semi-pro studio all the time)…
Ardour is a highly professional tool with features that you would expect on an expensive DAW… It has been modified for the commercial version sold by Harrison consoles known as Harrison Mixbus. I have released music commercially with Ardour, with one track even getting pressed on vinyl … that doesn’t happen with scam software!!!
@seablade: when i posted that, I was unable to download the source code. it told me I had to wait till the next month, even though I had donated that day. i was unable to download anything. i tried to download every package that was on the download page, and it just blocked me from doing it. <- that is NOT cool.
As has already been posted you can always get it from SVN as I stated above as well. I thought I remembered not having to pay for the tarball of the source, but I could be wrong on that, doesn’t change that SVN is always open and read access to it is unrestricted, so not only can you get the source of the currently released version, you can get the source of all fixes, etc. since then, or any individual commit/change/version/etc. before that as well. All of this requires no authentication at all and is completely free, it merely requires running SVN commands listed on the page Paul linked to above.
of course there isnt enough money coming from ads and download services. I made the suggestion simply because it helps with the financial strain. set up correctly, I think it could help alot.
My response was an attempt at a nicer way of saying, that hundreds of ideas have been proposed, and attempted, and yes this is one of the very first ones that was looked at, and believe me has not come close.
why the HELL should I donate ANYTHING to this project, if the promise of the uncrippled version is not honored?
Why the hell would someone offer to help someone cursing at them? There are many things that can be done, but a civil tone is best.
I've looked for a place to put my transaction ID to get the download, but I cant find anything like that.
Try here. My understanding is that you get 3 redownload attempts and that is it but honestly I have never tried it.
http://ardour.org/download_revisit
if paul really has this much of an issue making money from this project, I would highly suggest he get a day job..... I work my ass off for the (little) money I make. he's clearly talented in software development so he should probably go to work for someone to pay his bills, not spread false promises about his audio software....
Has it occured to you that the reason Paul DOESN’T keep a day job is because the community supporting Ardour has asked him to continue working on Ardour Full Time, and that the payments and subscriptions are an attempt to allow him to do so, in order that Ardour’s development proceed. You seem to think that Paul doesn’t work as hard on Ardour with this comment, SVN history might say otherwise, along with conversations with him. Paul is not a company so much as a person, Ardour is not a product as much as a development. Neither is it a business. Thinking about it in terms of things it is not is probably not going to lead you to much satisfaction.
I'll try again when version 3 is fully released, and if the same shit happens again, I'll be sure to let everyone I know who asks about ardour to know its a scam.
You know, I am not sure I should even comment on this. Suffice to say there is lots of traditional software out there that if I pay to download, I don’t always get a chance to redownload. This holds especially true once there is a new version out.
and for what its worth....pretty much everyone would prefer nagware over the crippleware garbage paul is releasing right now....
You speak for everyone? It is strange as your assertion contradicts what was seen on discussions on that very topic over email and IRC some time back when that decision was made, which involved lots of people.
To be clear, making your assertions about income strategies and nagware is fine, but the tone of voice involved means that it may be more likely to be ignored.
SeabladeWell i’ll just say:
For the past 12 months about 20-30% of my total income it’s been directly related to Ardour 3 even in its alpha and beta stages, Mixbus and LinuxDSP, and for the past 3 months about 70% of the total income its been directly related to all this software, everytime i’ve been in doubt i’ve found help in the chats or in the forum, so i am very VERY grateful to you developers, i wish i could do more to help in the development process and i wish i wasnt limited to international transactions so i would donate more, i’d happily donate 10$ a month which i believe is a minimal fraction of the benefit i’m getting from the software, it lets me work and in this comunity i’ve learned and keep learning everyday about music and music making, sadly i can’t or else i wont be able to import some necessary hardware to improve my home studio which is also my job, but to subscribe for the minimun ammount is at least for me honor the effort the developers put on this DAW.
So yes, i totally agree with allank, every word.
Thank devs! every character you put in the code is a great help everyday to guys like me.
off topic, but: the security certificate for ardour.org needs to be renewed. firefox flips out now when you try to log in.
“And finally: how come there are so many people who can afford the hardware to run Ardour, but are so penniless they can’t pay anything for software? Even if you aren’t running an 8 channel interface, mics and preamps, you at least need a computer and to post here you need internet access - who gets those for nothing?”
I don’t have money for hardware like that. it just so happens I’m required to have SOME hardware by my college, so its included in tuition. the hardware will be handed to me when the next semester starts. for what it’s worth, I run on fairly ancient computers in general. I don’t actually have a mac, either. I scavenged parts I could find that would hackintosh well. I actually scavenge parts or buy used to afford it better computers alot.
the other hardware I have for recording was given to me when I was much younger (16). I didn’t pay for it.
@paul and everyone:
sorry for blowing up, it was a particularly bad few days for me, and you didn’t deserve the shit I said. the whole donation system not working for my particular instance was the last thing in a bunch that caused me to be pretty mad. wasnt right for me to blow up. so I’m sorry. you do good work. I’ll probably never subscribe, but I’ll donate at least a dollar each time you make a release that I use.
I do have to stand by my statement about crippleware though, simply because the source code is avalible, but the built version for just 1 platform has limitations. maybe shareware does work better.
anyways, seeing as I’m not liked very much here, and seeing as I won’t really have any time anymore for forums, I just wanted to come back and apologise, as I felt quite bad about what I said.
anyways, seeing as I'm not liked very much here, and seeing as I won't really have any time anymore for forums, I just wanted to come back and apologise, as I felt quite bad about what I said.
Just for the record, being the man and coming back to say this does say a lot about you. It may or may not be that you are liked or not, but it isn’t often that people come back to apologize for a wrong on the internet. Its a good thing, thank you.
Likewise I will say some of my responses may have been harsh as well, so I do hope you realise I wasn’t trying to be offensive in them, but to get a point across. I will apologize for anything you found offensive, and good luck to you in your career.
Seablade@d3rocks: the security certificate has already been renewed. firefox has a problem because its builtin list of certificate providers doesn’t include the one we use. This would seem to explain why.
I’ll join Seablade in thanking d3drocks for both explaining his financial position and apologising where applicable. Being liked or disliked isn’t an issue: I try to respond to points made but not to attack individuals, and both the points I made earlier could apply to posts from several members of this forum.