Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Support & discussion regarding DAWs and MIDI sequencers.

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antiesen
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Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by antiesen »

Once again vandals have played around in the Comparison Matrix of Linux Daw.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

This time the full entry for the Tracktion waveform has been deleted. Shame about my wasted time. I'm out.
This was made to end all partys - Einstürzende Neubauten 1985
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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by sysrqer »

Can't you just revert the change? Looks like there is version control available.
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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by d.healey »

Free/free/shareware:
This is confusing, do you mean free as in freedom or price? I don't care about price but I do care about freedom.

By the way Ardour and Radium are both commercial. You should use proprietary vs free software to differentiate, the word commercial is not very useful.
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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by nils »

d.healey wrote:
Free/free/shareware:
This is confusing, do you mean free as in freedom or price? I don't care about price but I do care about freedom.

By the way Ardour and Radium are both commercial. You should use proprietary vs free software to differentiate, the word commercial is not very useful.
The only proper way it to state the license. Everything else will result in the decade long confusion around the word free.
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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by d.healey »

nilshi wrote:The only proper way it to state the license. Everything else will result in the decade long confusion around the word free.
Even that doesn't always give the full picture unfortunately. Linux Sampler is licensed under a modified GNU GPL but it's not free software.

We could say proprietary or libre. Or proprietary and not proprietary.
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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by milkii »

Ugh, I'll see if I can find time/energy to revert. Google Sheets is a horrific CPU hog, and my using bleeding edge swaywm doesn't help with that.

lower case free as in freeware. I will change that.

they/them ta / libreav.org / wiki.thingsandstuff.org/Audio and related pages / gh

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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by windowsrefund »

Yes, the terminology is confusing. This is intentional. There are many people and entities who work to keep people ignorant in terms of software freedom. One big "camp" I'd point a finger at is the "Open Source" crowd which focuses entirely on *only* the pragmatic side-effects which are often (but not always) derived from the output of the Free Software community. Even the term "Open Source" itself, was created for the sole purpose of tricking decision makers into using Free Software while allowing them to sidestep the moral arguments. It's kinda like an American citizen who not only could care less about the Constitution and/or Bill of Rights but going further, refuses to sit down and try to understand them when he or she is (eventually) shown the logic. That's just laziness. So that's why we have all these useless and confusing words like "open", "commercial", "closed". Free Software is decades old and WELL DOCUMENTED. Anyone who takes 5 minutes can easily understand Free Software consists of a concrete list of well defined freedoms. Therefore, there are only 2 types of software that exist; free and non-free. Any other word just plays into the efforts mentioned above to keep people ignorant.
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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by milo »

windowsrefund wrote:Therefore, there are only 2 types of software that exist; free and non-free. Any other word just plays into the efforts mentioned above to keep people ignorant.
Not sure I agree with this statement. That's like separating all objects in the universe into "bananas" and "non-bananas." The complexity is not just a smokescreen for some conspiracy; there really is a lot of nuance between different software development models, and between different motivations for creating software. BSD licenses really are different from GNU licences in important ways, but which one is more free? Both types give you freedom to adapt, modify, derive, sell, etc. But one restricts your freedom to use any other license in your derivative, and the other doesn't. So which one is more free? By the way, this is not an argument about whether BSD or GNU is "better" or more free. (For the record, I don't really care about that old flamewar.) The point is that they are different, and their differences are important. And there are tradeoffs between them that have to balanced and understood by the software developer and the software user.

I like the approach Creative Commons took. Their licenses are modular, and you can pick and choose what elements you want to use. The options range from public domain, to BSD-style attribution only (CC-BY), to GNU-style copyleft (CC-BY-SA), all options with or without allowing commercial use. This scheme mirrors the complexity of software development licenses. There is not one option which is "best" or most "free." Your choice depends on your priorities and values, what you hope to accomplish with your creation, and how much you want to limit the choices of others with what they do with your creation.
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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by d.healey »

milo wrote:but which one is more free?.
There is no such thing as more free or less free if we are talking about free software. It is either free (it meets the defined criteria for free software) or it is non-free. There is no middle ground.

Sure there are different licenses which allow/restrict other things but free software comes down to 4 specific clauses and if one is missing the software is not free. Creative Commons licenses are good for other media like documents, music, video etc. I wouldn't use them for software. 99% of the time I would choose GNU/GPL or the AGPL. For more trivial code I usually just release into the public domain since there is no advantage to using a copyleft license.
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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by windowsrefund »

d.healey,

Your response is exactly right. This is what people do not understand because they never actually took the time to understand the definition of Free Software.

https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software

Also, about the BSD thing... where someone or some company can hijack free software and then turn around and deny others the same freedoms; that is not something that should be applauded or valued. Having the freedom to deny other people freedom is simply immoral and not honorable.
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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by merlyn »

d.healy wrote:It is either free (it meets the defined criteria for free software) or it is non-free. There is no middle ground.
This is a discussion that goes back into the mists of history, resulting in Aristotle excluding the middle term from logic. If something was A it wasn't B and it couldn't be a bit of A and a bit of B. That doesn't fit with my experience of the world, which mostly happens in the middle ground. The idea of a continuum between polarities seems more like reality to me. Aristotle also said that heavy objects fall faster than light ones, which more recently Galileo found to be incorrect.

The reality of software appears to range from completely locked down to completely free, and all stops in between.
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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by d.healey »

The reality of software appears to range from completely locked down to completely free, and all stops in between.
There are no stops between proprietary and free. It is either free or it's not. If it isn't free then by definition it is proprietary because it doesn't meet the 4 clauses that define what free software is.

Free software has a strict definition. If a piece of software meets that definition then it is free software. If it doesn't meet that definition then it is one of a million other possibilities. I am not saying software can only be one of two things but I am saying it can only be free or non-free not both, not a mix, one or the other.
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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by milo »

I concede that "Free Software" (in capitals) has a strict definition, as set forth by the Free Software Foundation. I don't dismiss their work, which is important and has significantly moved the dial in the direction of freedom for software overall. (Three cheers for GNU!)

But the FSF does not have a monopoly on the concept of freedom in software, and I don't accept their narrow definition as complete. The world of "free software" (in lower case) is much broader than the black-and-white world of RMS. It is a spectral phenomenon, as merlyn asserts, and the "best" place to be on that spectrum for a particular piece of software is always a tradeoff. You don't have to be in the copyleft sandbox on the extreme end of the spectrum in order to be "free" in a useful sense.

An example: Back in the early 90's Tim Berners-Lee considered using the GNU GPL to licence the World Wide Web browser and server. In the end he opted for more of a BSD-style licence. Imagine how different our world might be today if he had chosen GPL. Back then Free Software (in capitals) was considered radioactive by most of industry, and I doubt the technology would have been picked up and pushed forward in the way it was. If the WWW had been licensed GPL, then today I expect that it would be a niche application in the academic world (if it even still existed) rather than a ubiquitous part of life for billions of people. Remember that for most people the WWW was the killer app for the Internet, and was the major reason why most people got online in the first place. Someone else would have invented a technology for connecting people online, but it might not have been as free (note the lower case) as the WWW.
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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by d.healey »

milo wrote:You don't have to be in the copyleft sandbox on the extreme end of the spectrum in order to be "free" in a useful sense.
You're mixing up copyleft and free software. MIT, BSD, GNU/GPL, Mozilla Public License, CC0, etc. are all free licenses as defined by the FSF. Whether a license is copyleft or not makes no difference to whether or not it is free software.
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Re: Linux Digital Audio and Music Workstation Comparison Matrix

Post by nils »

And yet another thread derailed.

Guys, stop typing. Produce music instead!
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