quoted 3 lines Instead of dismissing the original poster's comments and my own as "murky
> Instead of dismissing the original poster's comments and my own as "murky
> 1's and 0's" you should actually attempt to address some of the questions
> raised by the posts.
Okay, willdo. I was trying to be brief in the interests of everyone not
interested. (some of the responses below are paraphrased from something
David Z. wrote.)
quoted 4 lines Why can
> Why can
> someone develop SynC Modular and Audiomulch for $49 from scratch, and
> Max/MSP costs the consumer six times as much for similar software that
> wasn't even original developed by the company?
first of all, that's not a fair comparison. Max/MSP is a graphical
programming environment for music and sound: some people use the software to
generate noise in the same way that they'd use SynC Modular or Audiomulch,
but other people use the software to make their own stand alone
applications, or to control motorized pieces of sculpture that respond to
external input, or to do spectral analysis on the sound of bird calls, or to
develop a logical, fluid system of speech for interactive movies. David Z.
has been working tirelessly for years to give Max/MSP this broad
functionality, and the team of programmers he has working with him now - any
of whom could find more lucrative work elsewhere - is dedicated and
brilliant.
the price of Max/MSP is set to be the main source of revenue to continue
development of the software. it is our intention to make Cycling '74 a
sustainable business--this is in the best interest of the people who would
like to depend on the continued viability of the tools they use, as well as
the people who work for the company. we would all like a world in which our
favorite software could be provided for free, but there is no way that a
company like ours could sustain the current development effort by giving
away its products.
there are a couple of other points to make. first, after having acquired Max
from Opcode, we *lowered* the price by $100, despite Opcode's evidence to
the contrary that lowering the price would have no effect on sales. second,
while this doesn't affect anyone who is becoming familiar with Max/MSP in
the past year, there were a lot of people who were afraid that with the
Gibson acquisition and subsequent shutdown of Opcode, Max was a dead
product. we've not only saved and revived it, we're about to release a new
version that is a major advance, and we have many years of further
development planned.
on developing software "from scratch"...
Max/MSP is made up of hundreds of little programs (objects), some of them
are complex and others are not so complex. in the version of Max originally
developed by Miller Puckette at IRCAM, there were about 50 objects. there is
now a suite of audio objects (MSP) plus a large number of new Max objects.
the result in Max 4 / MSP 2 is that there are close to 400 objects. some of
these, such as sfplay~, timeline, and the new waveform~ object in MSP 2 to
name just a few, rival the complexity of many standalone applications.
however, because they work within an original framework that our company did
not develop, some people think that our level of originality is extremely
low. this despite the fact that the improvements and extensions that have
been made to the original version of Max developed at IRCAM over the past
decade number well into the thousands.
many of these improvements will not win any prizes for originality. they are
simply based on an obsessive attention to detail and a desire to make the
software work as well as it possibly can. others are fairly original and
significant. in any case, an argument about originality being the basis for
the value of software could only be made by someone who has no appreciation
for the software development process, in which almost of all the effort and
energy goes into testing and minor performance tweaking.
quoted 1 line And just what DID happen with NATO and Netochka Nezvanova?
> And just what DID happen with NATO and Netochka Nezvanova?
the history of dealings with NATO and nn is long, complicated, and has been
extremely frustrating for everyone involved. she likes to paint a picture
of cycling '74 as an evil conglomerate of thieving idiots; ask anyone who
actually knows us or the way that the company works and you'll discover how
ridiculous that is.
from my perspective the basic plot of the story is this: the Max list used
to be run out of McGill university in Montreal. antiorp/nn showed up and
started causing mass confusion and frustration amongst the members of the
list. they had a vote and decided to kick her off the list, in the same way
that the kids in the sandbox may decide to eject a bully.
when the mailing list moved from McGill to the cycling '74 web site,
antiorp/nn was invited to participate again. part of the motivation for
allowing her back on the list came from our users: while she was banned from
the McGill web site she had been holding the price of nato "hostage",
claiming that when she was allowed back on the list the price would drop.
this price drop never materialized. nevertheless, she subscribed to the
list and continued her informational assault on our forum. as time went on
her comments became more and more inflammatory and hateful: she accused
employees of drug addiction, accused us of criminal activity, called us
stupid, and even mocked personal appearances. Her tactics were extremely
disrupting and consuming: many, many hours were spent staring at my monitor
in disbelief, and users, if they weren't overwhelmed or extremely confused
by her antics, were complaining.
(interested parties can visit
http://www.cycling74.com and read the archived
messages themselves in the community:discussions section. of relevance to
the idm list might be the angry messages posted by sean booth of autechre.
quote: ""autechre think n4t0 sucks d0g p00 with a straw" - autechre")
so a decision was made not to allow her to participate. Here is the message
that David wrote to explain the decision:
We have removed the user "netochka nezvanova" from the Max/MSP community
discussion site. Additionally, we have blocked all of the domains we believe
are controlled by this user from registering for the Max/MSP discussion
site.
We have reason to believe that the individual or group using this name has
initiated legal action against Cycling '74, and it is no longer in our
interest to provide a forum for continual attacks against me and my
co-workers. It has never been in our interest of course, but we felt there
were certain reasons to ignore these attacks and permit "netochka nezvanova"
to continue participating here.
Those reasons have now disappeared, as I will discuss below. Whether or not
there is actually any legal action taken against us is immaterial.
If you object to this action, you are free to start your own Max/MSP
discussion list. I will not participate in any list in which "netochka
nezvanova" participates, and I will discourage my co-workers from doing so
as well. If any individual posts anything "netochka nezvanova" writes to our
discussion, they will be similarly removed. If this doesn't stop the flow of
material from "netochka nezvanova" to our discussion we will resort to
moderating every contribution.
Let me say a few things about this action. As I indicated above, there were
reasons I felt it was worth allowing "netochka nezvanova" to participate
here. First, "she" had developed software based in Max/MSP and desired to
share it with others. It seemed wrong to me to keep people from learning
about it. That was a while ago. Everyone who participates here knows about
Nato now. There have been Nato workshops, concerts, discussion lists, and
Nato is now distributed by IRCAM and V2. "She" doesn't need our "help"
anymore, and from all appearances there is a very low percentage of the
material submitted to the list that actually concerns the software. There is
a mailing list for support of Nato users in addition to at least two lists
run by other parties where Nato is discussed. None of this existed when we
decided to take the list over and allow "her" participation.
Second, after "she" was thrown off the McGill list, "she" intiated what
could best be described as a terror campaign that included spam to anyone
who posted to the Max list, denial of service attacks, and threatening and
slanderous e-mail sent to random individuals at McGill. I didn't see any
point to subjecting myself and my co-workers to this type of harrassment.
However, it turns out that many of these acts are felonies. If this behavior
recommences, the victims of the behavior can pursue legal remedies, and I
would strongly suggest they do so.
Third, a lot of people complained to me about the fact that the price of
Nato was being held "hostage" until "netochka nezvanova" was again allowed
to participate in the Max mailing list. I was supposed to do something about
this. Presumably all of these people have purchased their software by now.
In any case, the price of Nato has nothing to do with whether "netochka
nezvanova" participates in the Max list, and it never did. We do not control
the price of Nato.
I want to apologize to all of you who have had to put up with the presence
of "netochka nezvanova" during our management of this discussion service. We
will try to do better.
---------
If prompted, I will continue this conversation in public or in private.
Frankly I'm just as tired of all the nn junk as everybody else, and would
prefer just to forget all about it.
Ben
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