Hi! I have been happily using Ardour as a hobbyist since version 5. At the same time I also started learning Pure Data. I was wondering how difficult it would be to implement a feature similar to "The Grid" from Bitwig. I’m not sure whether this could be done as a simple plugin, or if it would require much deeper integration with Ardour.
You can already load Cardinal as a plugin and get the full scope of is power(s) (or VCV Rack if you paid for the "pro" version). You just don't get the GUI "integrated" into Ardour, and its tied to a specific track.
We might do this via I/O plugins (an existing Ardour feature), which would make the inputs & outputs of Cardinal be just like your hardware. Lots of details to that sort of design, however.
There is also PlugData which could theoretically be handled in a similar way.
What we will not try to do is to implement Yet Another Software Modular Environment ourselves. Cardinal/Rack (or even PD) are approximately infinitely better than anything we could or would do.
Right, it works by a bunch of different people all using the words in the same way to communicate. Like, say, various SI prefixes being used to mean powers of two in computing contexts by large numbers of people for longer than most of us have been alive.
Joking aside, I often hear people say "they should" when talking about GNU/Linux (for example: "they should just standardize on one audio stack"), as if there were a central authority making those decisions. What many don't realize is that with FOSS comes freedom of choice... and inevitably, an abundance of choice. That diversity isn't a flaw, it's a consequence of how the ecosystem works.
There's free choice for those OSes to use different kernels, but they don't, they all use the same Linux (rather than say BSD). There's a lot of advantage in getting aligned on things, even though anyone can choose not to.
For distro-packaged FOSS, binary compatibility isn't really a problem. Distributions like Debian already resolve dependencies by building from source and keeping a coherent set of libraries. Security fixes and updates propagate naturally.
Binary compatibility solutions mostly target cases where rebuilding isn't possible, typically closed source software.
Freezing and bundling software dependencies ultimately creates dependency hell rather than avoiding it.
It however shifts a lot of the complexity of building the application to the distro maintainer, or a software maintainer has to prioritize for which distribution they choose to build and maintain a package, because supporting them all is a nightmare and an ever shifting moving target. And it's not just a distribution problem, it's even a distribution version/release problem.
Look at the hoops you sometimes have to jump through or hacks you have to apply to make something work on Nix, just because there is no standardization or build processes assume library locations etc. And if you then raise an issue with the software maintainer - the response is often "but we don't support Nix". And if they're not Nix/Nixos users, can you blame them?
If you've ever had to compile a modern/recent software package for an old distro (I've had to do this for old RH distro's on servers which due to regulations could not be upgraded) - you're in a world of pain. And both distro and software maintainers will say "not my problem, we don't support this" - and I fully understand their stance on that, because it is far from straight forward, and only serves a limited audience.
That is very true. But because it is open source, one can request for packaging, contribute a package, use a third-party repository, or build it from source when needed.
Paying makes sense when you actually need/use those services. Paying "because you can" feels wrong to me. If the goal is to support FOSS, there are many more ways to contribute than subscribing to a service you don't use.
Without commenting on Ubuntu Pro specifically, the whole point of a Linux distribution is that users don't need to know or care what specific services they use. I'd happily pay $50/year to use "Debian" and trust that the Debian Foundation figures out how to feed that money back to the appropriate upstream projects.
Please don't try and make me give $0.05/week to dbus maintainers or whoever.
It's a different social contract. It's not just the waitress, it's service in general. One trying to judge the other is never quite going to work because it rubs us wrong in some weird internal way.
Eg go into a big store brand in most of the US and the cashier will be all flashy smile asking how is your day, and you ignore it and ask your request, and that's the game. A french person would mostly hate that, feel the question as annoying.
You go to a similar french store and the cashier and yourself will say the bonjour / merci / ... yada yada game and if someone doesn't do his part he's considered rude; I found a lot of foreigner surprised by that, the fact that you're not answering "merci" or asking "s'il vous plait" because it's nice, but because not doing it puts you in unpleasant person territory.
Ok business meeting, even in tech. American are always super optimist and happy, and seeing a solution and the end goal, French are over realist bordering on pessimist.
It's not that black and white of course there is a lot of inter mingling and differences, but overall which one you feel "better" is very personnal and based around what you're used to.
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