Fuzz Measure Pro 3

[DanDan]

Hi John, sorry but I have to take issue here- all products HAVE to ......
why do they have to? What kind of a blind absolute is that? What is wrong with a reasonable balanced nuanced approach to delivering a level playing pitch?
We in Western Democracies cannot compete either in quality or price with child slave labour in Burma. Sometimes higher principles than price and availability need to be applied in my opinion. In general that sort of thinking, elevating notions of competition, privatisation, etc. above fully rounded thinking, has not served us well. It has instead creating a race to the bottom, in terms of price and quality.
I was not aware of those other free apps, presumably PC, but given the recommendations for REW here, I would make a safe bet that yours is by far the best.
Perhaps this very proliferation of free PC offerings has resulted in one cheap but slightly flawed, and one superb but severely overpriced product for the PC user?
I note that the Mac offering has no significant free competition and has won nothing but praise, for quality and price.
I reckon you may well understand my points of view on this, but doubt that it will persuade you that your creation, born of good intentions, may actually be harming the overall. I wish you well though and it is probably best to leave it at that.

DD

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by JohnPM

I thought I should step in and defend myself before Dan has a chance to pin global warming, the banking crisis and MPs fiddling their expenses on me

I too am very glad you popped in here.

You mean global warming is not your fault?

--Ethan

[jwl]

Agreed, John, good to see you here. I really love your program!

Since you have no intention of making REW a commercial product, have you considered making it truly free software?

In my opinion, this is the only way to make free software truly sustainable; to release the source code so that others can improve upon the product as needed. This will be come especially important if you ever "retire" from doing REW.

I would argue that good software released under a Free license is more sustainable than commercial software. What happens, for instance, if fuzzmeasure goes out of business (hopefully not, Chris!) If that were to happen, then fuzzmeasure is gone.

However, if you were to decide to stop doing REW, and it was released under a Free license, then others could take over maintenance of the code base.

[Ethan Winer]

This may be OT but it seems related to me. I've always felt that commercial software that has any form of copy protection, other than a single serial number that works without vendor intervention, should by law require an unprotected version be available in case the company goes under.

--Ethan

[JohnPM]

Originally Posted by DanDan

Hi John, sorry but I have to take issue here- all products HAVE to ......
why do they have to? What kind of a blind absolute is that? What is wrong with a reasonable balanced nuanced approach to delivering a level playing pitch?
We in Western Democracies cannot compete either in quality or price with child slave labour in Burma. Sometimes higher principles than price and availability need to be applied in my opinion. In general that sort of thinking, elevating notions of competition, privatisation, etc. above fully rounded thinking, has not served us well. It has instead creating a race to the bottom, in terms of price and quality.
I was not aware of those other free apps, presumably PC, but given the recommendations for REW here, I would make a safe bet that yours is by far the best.
Perhaps this very proliferation of free PC offerings has resulted in one cheap but slightly flawed, and one superb but severely overpriced product for the PC user?
I note that the Mac offering has no significant free competition and has won nothing but praise, for quality and price.
I reckon you may well understand my points of view on this, but doubt that it will persuade you that your creation, born of good intentions, may actually be harming the overall. I wish you well though and it is probably best to leave it at that.

Dan, I didn't say "price", I said "value", and I used "have to" because products that do not offer value do not survive. Things can have a wide range of prices and still offer value that customers appreciate. Mercedes manage to sell cars, even in the current climate, despite the fact you can get a new Tata for less than Merc will charge to have special paint. iPods are more expensive than most competing music players, but they nonetheless dominate their market. Macs, as best I can tell, do not attempt to compete on price with other offerings but have a loyal and growing following. Thank you for your comments about REW, but most of the free apps I listed have more features, all have their own emphasis and focus and I'm sure all have loyal followings. I am equally sure Chris's app gets so much praise because it is very well done, and a free offering wouldn't change that. If a professional, full time application developer can't run rings around a part timer then it's not really fair to criticise the part timer for that.

[JohnPM]

Originally Posted by jwl

Since you have no intention of making REW a commercial product, have you considered making it truly free software?

I've thought about it, and if one day I did want my evenings back enough to stop working on REW I would release the code.

[jwl]

That's good to hear, John. I strongly encourage you to release REW under the GPL. Given what you are doing with the program, only good things could come from that.

[jwl]

As an example, I notice that REW has some issues working with Linux sound drivers. Releasing the source code under the GPL would allow the Linux audio community to help fix that. I think REW would become a "hit" in an entirely new community.

[liscio]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

This may be OT but it seems related to me. I've always felt that commercial software that has any form of copy protection, other than a single serial number that works without vendor intervention, should by law require an unprotected version be available in case the company goes under.

This would be pretty hard to enforce.

At any rate, I agree that software using more than just a serial number (e.g. Adobe's horrible product activation for the Creative Suite—it's always a pain when I get new Macs, and don't properly de-activate the old ones.) should remain active for the customers that paid.

Whether the world should suddenly get the product for free is another story, and should be left up to the company. Some opt to open-source their defunct applications (e.g. VisualHub for the Mac), and some simply die/disappear (e.g. many old PC games). In some very rare cases, the application simply goes free (as in beer), but once new technology comes along (OS, hardware), the app would soon be rendered useless.

Open-sourcing 'dead' products isn't really for everyone, also. If the company went under but wanted to sell off their technology or build their technology into new businesses, this could turn into a liability nightmare.

Nevertheless, this is something I think about a lot. Especially in the context of "what happens if I die in a freak accident?" If the author suddenly is unable to continue developing a product, what should happen in that case? Should the product be open-sourced, should the company be sold, etc, etc. Lots of big questions...

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by liscio

Whether the world should suddenly get the product for free is another story

Not the world, just everyone who paid for it.

--Ethan

[HDJK]

I thought this is the appropriate thread to post my findings.

I registered with HTS and downloaded REW. After the first measurements it would not work properly anymore and I spent close to 2 hours trying everything I know on the MAC to get it to work again. Unfortunately my studio is 2 floors below ground, so no internet. Today I asked on HTS and the developer (thanks for the quick answers again John!) told me, that REW does not work with firewire interfaces on the MAC. A limitation of the OSX Java Runtime.

So I'll give Fuzzmeasure a try, since it is fully functional for the first 2 weeks and it will work with my Fireface 800.

For any MAC users out there: if you have a firewire interface, don't use REW