Are there any big artists that use FOSS software?

[sysrqer]

For them it is forbidden to force you to windows as far as i know.

Why so? Developers can support the platforms they choose to. If is your choice to use their product and to be locked in to a particular OS because of that.

[zoco]

I don't see your point. Who is forced into using windows? There is no law for that or something, right?

Most of the computer users. By social pressure. Imposed by the business world with the OS developers behind it.
The existing of that social pressure and the position through this at the edge of monopolism is prove already by the many court cases and written fines so my point should be clear.

If your in business not using windows or Mac OS you can't even work for instance within NEN rules which in their turn are based on laws. And because your company can not work within those NEN rules your company will not even be allowed to carry out assignments and therefore will not get them, going broke.
You will never work for big industries like car brands, within the financial world or food industry with a company based on linux desktop.
And because of that market position many private users use those too by social pressure.
That's force.

Why i think there aren't any big artists that use FOSS software? I think they are there but not telling as they won't be taken serious.

[raboof]

your company can not work within those NEN rules your company will not even be allowed to carry out assignments

This seems overly broadly stated, if true at all. Can you give any specific examples?

I'm a software developer myself, and I see software developers commonly use Linux, also in large financial institutions/banks and big tech shops. Of course finance/accounting departments will have to follow all kinds of rules, but these (for better or worse) are increasingly using big SaaS packages such as Salesforce - so no hard requirement to use Windows/macOS there either AFAICT (though those departments of course still commonly choose it).

[zoco]

your company can not work within those NEN rules your company will not even be allowed to carry out assignments

This seems overly broadly stated, if true at all. Can you give any specific examples?

Like i said, the car production business. They demand a working structure including certain kinds off software.
Construction. If a construction isn't supported by autocad it will not be accepted. They won't accept a bricscad, varicad or drafsight file and no official approval or license will be issued for those.
Administration. Demands certain well known administration software fitting in those working structures of which i won't mention the name as probably most already know it. By administration I also mean tenders and invoicing within the contractually agreed requirements. There simply is no linux software available that covers those demands and structures for say something as simple as those invoices.
Costums. See administration.
Factories. Control of machines with which products within NEN specifications have to be produced. And see administration.
Marketing. Try to find a higher level graphical company or customer were you can deliver other designs than photoshop or illustrator files without conversion problems.
Off course almost all windows based. With common known security and privacy requirements also required within those contracts.
Insurance. You have to work within the common work structures to even get it insured. Otherwise your insurance just does not cover and you are responsible yourself of course what your bankruptcy would mean. Also see security and privacy, administration, construction, factories which all will not be covered.
And you can't imagine who all work underneath with and for those requirements demanding companies.

These are all things even i myself was confronted with in practice. I've worked for companies working for those big production companies, and even as a sub-contractor working for subcontractors i had to follow certain working structures within what was required from them. Or not work for them, that simple.

so no hard requirement to use Windows/macOS there either AFAICT (though those departments of course still commonly choose it).

It's not about a hard requirement for OS. But for a certain work structure for which only windows software is developed and available so you can not do without and are forced to use those. You can not even use those programs in wine. See insurance and al the rest mentioned.

True or not? Ask someone you know working with these kind of high level contracts with the big companies. You need to go beyond the regular ceo of a common company in your town.
Go ask some company who delivers parts for the car industry. There are huge requirements you for sure can't work within with linux.

[CrocoDuck]

Factories. Control of machines with which products within NEN specifications have to be produced.

I actually seen plenty of Industrial Computers running quality control software on Linux operating systems in my professional life, right at the production line. And I mean high volume production, thousands of units a day.

I guess it does depend on the industry. I work in the consumer audio products industry, and I worked alongside big companies too. We haven't seen any of the requirements you list.

Again, in my field, I have been in contact with people that work in audio for automotive (noise cancellation and suppression) and all embedded audio processing uses Linux as a base, to the point that algorithms are often implemented as ALSA plugins.

Not to mention inflight entertainment systems, which nowadays are all based on Android, with a server on the aeroplane normally running some Linux. I routinely test how well USB headphones work with ALSA as part of my job, and flag issues to firmware developers.

I typically use open source tools and program for data analysis and numerical simulation within my field. I made a list of packages, a fair bit of which I use, on my blog: https://thecrocoduckspond.wordpress.com ... -software/. I do maintain few Linux based workstations in my office.

I think most of the examples you mention are about standardization: when more entities need to cooperate on a specific project and/or need to receive some kind of certification and/or produce some kind of official document, then they need to adhere to a standard which requires certain software, as you say.

However, there is also the other face of standardization, which is the use of common software utilities, APIs, standards and toolkits to integrate various pieces of technology. One example would be MPI: the bread and butter of scientific cluster computing (which is mostly open source stuff).

I would say I can make many examples about Linux dominating in certain fields. Scientific computing is clearly one of them (al major scientific experiments run on Linux clusters, and all major scientific software tools are open source). Artificial Intelligence is clearly one of them (all major AI tookits and cloud computing tools are open source). Cloud computing is dominated by Linux and BSD. Realtime industrial computers run Linux-rt very often (this is why my university had a course on Linux-rt based OSes), and many 3D blockbuster movies are rendered on Linux clusters. You mention Autodesk (the makers of Autocad): Maya by Autodesk has a Linux version. As far as I know, one of the main reasons is that cluster computing, practically speaking, can be only based on Linux (or BSD, perhaps). If you need to render animated movies you need clusters, and hence you need Linux support. And hence they offer Linux support.

Given that we can find many examples and counterexamples, I would say that it perhaps depend on the industry one works in and with what kind of standardization and official certifications are required within the industry. For example, who knows what the Military does... In the industry I work in, I haven't came across anything like that yet. In fact, I routinely use open source stuff (in agreement and limitation to what prescribed by the open source licenses). For this reason, I do not think there are the means to make a blanket statement about how de-facto the world mandates Windows: in many realms and industries I see proprietary stuff dominating, in others I see open source dominating.

Also, I believe it is OK for developers to choose what platform they want to develop for. I mean, I think it would be unfair to force every developer to develop for every OS, as that would mean:

• Linux
• Mac OS
• Windows
• Menuet OS
• Minix
• FreeBSD and various derivatives
• Haiku OS
• RISC OS

The list could go on, but that is already too long for anybody in the world.

As a note:

True or not? Ask someone you know working with these kind of high level contracts with the big companies. You need to go beyond the regular ceo of a common company in your town.
Go ask some company who delivers parts for the car industry. There are huge requirements you for sure can't work within with linux.

I detect a somewhat smug tone in there. If so, please calm down: if someone asks for examples it is not to imply that he believe you know nothing, or that you are lying, or something like that. It most likely just means that he is interested, and he wants to hear more. By providing more info, it all becomes clearer and everybody reading becomes smarter in the process.

So, to take it from here and going back on topic, could it be that standardization within the audio industry is forcing many recording labels to not use open source at all (and hence most records of most artists are produced with little to no open source)?

[folderol]

Just a small thing. Most synth-using musicians just use the names they know, they have no knowledge (or interest) in what's inside. There are a number of famous named instruments that are 100% Linux inside.

[CrocoDuck]

Just a small thing. Most synth-using musicians just use the names they know, they have no knowledge (or interest) in what's inside. There are a number of famous named instruments that are 100% Linux inside.

That's sneaky. Kinda picturing a ninja penguin working its way into a synth. That's quite interesting, do you have some example about those?

[folderol]

Korg Kronos for starters

As demoed by Jordan Rudess
Edit: Just found it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUErvWA5pYE

[jonetsu]

This might be slightly more to the point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korg_Kronos

https://kronoshacker.blogspot.com/2015/ ... ronos.html

[Basslint]

I apologize for sounding negative, but using hardware that runs Linux counts as much as using an Android smartphone

How does that affect musicians positively? I think that in practice, it makes little difference if a Korg synth runs the Linux kernel or its own, as long as it's compatible with standards such as MIDI.

[jonetsu]

Absolutely. But then the discussion veered off towards the industry at large at some point.

I still stand by my observation that Linux can possibly gain ground in studios hence with plugin makers based on OS qualities.

[CrocoDuck]

I apologize for sounding negative, but using hardware that runs Linux counts as much as using an Android smartphone

How does that affect musicians positively? I think that in practice, it makes little difference if a Korg synth runs the Linux kernel or its own, as long as it's compatible with standards such as MIDI.

Yes, pretty much. I think there are sort of two dimensions into OSS making into the "big music scene".

One is the sneaky sneaky one in which hardware runs some Linux, or some kind of software based on Open Source technology, which means that, at the end, everybody uses OSS, somehow, a little bit. But yeah, it is not very exciting. It is like people kinda knowing Android is Linux... and not really caring.

The other is that of artists deliberately choosing OSS as their mean of expression, or tools, or whatever in between. Which is where the interesting stuff is. Or it seems not to really be, as far as big names are concerned. I cannot really think of one.

So why that is the case? One possible cause could be that the standard which most recording labels and studio require are proprietary programs. I think that during the years certain programs became somewhat the standard, and hence artists and labels use them, even just for seamless cooperation. This is a valid and legit point which maybe does affect the music industry, whilst I do not think it affects all industries (or even all pro audio industries).

Other than that, maybe big names do not use Open Source just pretty much because really few people overall know about it, or care. After all, technology evolved to the point that you can work well with anything, Open Source or not, so maybe many do not really even feel compelled to try, especially if they already have a comfort zone.

[folderol]

I know a few people in the UK who run small professional recording studios. All of them have just about every kind of 'standard' setup. But it's all for show, so that when band X say they want Protools, then there just happens to be Protools showing on screen when they arrive. The actual work is done by whatever the engineer thinks is appropriate for the job.

I'm not in a position to name-drop, so don't ask who, but I do know that one of these guys has done recording work for some extremely well known artists.

[zoco]

I actually seen plenty of Industrial Computers running quality control software on Linux operating systems in my professional life, right at the production line.

I know there are many linux based systems and machines as it's easy to implement specific developed software on it and it remains highly stable.
But what i mean is, try to do some serious deep going administration on Linux. Which can correspond with software from "the big" business partners and fits in the standards demanded by them. And then i mean serious administration, far beyond typing letters or invoicing. Big international business, so fitting at standards for customs where an oil tanker or or a ship full of cars can not even wait a minute because your consignment notes are unclear.
To be honest, there isn't even simple but effective administration available for small businesses which can correspond with tax authorities and administrative offices. Not starting about the contractual demands for known software by clients for corresponding with there software, which in turn isn't available for linux.

I detect a somewhat smug tone in there. If so, please calm down

Is not. Just a light weight relaxed reaction. Don't take it to serious please. The tone i mean. The information is serious.

[jonetsu]

The other is that of artists deliberately choosing OSS as their mean of expression, or tools, or whatever in between. Which is where the interesting stuff is. Or it seems not to really be, as far as big names are concerned. I cannot really think of one. So why that is the case? One possible cause could be that the standard which most recording labels and studio require are proprietary programs.

Maybe also because artists, when they want to adopt a cause, are choosing something more significant to humanity at large.

Other than that, maybe big names do not use Open Source just pretty much because really few people overall know about it, or care.

Not sure if big names would drop their Waves plugins to choose Calf, for instance. Last time I tried some Calf plugins there was some unwanted noise. Not much, but for a pro studio I can understand that it would make no sense to use that for their customers.

For Linux to become popular in the studios the DAW and plugin makers must make products for Linux. And for them to start to do that they must have solid requests based on technical concerns that are pretty much outside of audio. For instance, maybe a certain number of studios are tired of upgrading their computers each time Windows decides it's time to do so and are looking for support to keep their investments. Everyone one would have to push from every side at the same time.

That means Linux. It does not mean FOSS. FOSS cannot compete on the ground of quality and features with dedicated 40hrs/week teams of developers earning their living with innovation, optimized algorithms, user interfaces, IMHO.