Hello,
 
Let me introduce myself and tell you why I am 
excited about Pd.
 
Lately I have been interested in computer music and 
my home studio.  I have been reading "The Computer Music Tutorial" by 
Curtis Roads.  So I was very excited to learn about Pd through Jim Aikin's 
article in April's Electronic Musician.  Since I got it downloaded and up 
and running I have been enjoying it.  I have a BS degree in CS and most of 
my experience has been internet and Windows programming.  Also 
I worked doing LabView programming, which is a graphical programming 
environment used for testing, measurement etc. developed and sold by National 
Instruments. I am running Pd on a Windows XP machine.  I hope to 
have a Linux machine going in the near future.  I live in Northern 
California.  My primary instrument is guitar.
 
Of course I have lots of questions.  Here are 
a few of my first questions:
 
1.  Besides Dr. Miller Puckette who else is 
developing Pd?  Are his graduate students involved?  Some of the 
people on this board?  
 
2.  Does anyone mind, including Dr. Puckette, 
if someone else modifies Pd and distributes the modified version?   
Are there popular modified versions?  Does Dr. Puckette ever check out 
modifications for inclusion into his software?
 
 
For whatever reasons my programming skills have 
become a bit rusty.  I see Pd as a good opportunity to get my feet wet 
again and have some fun doing it.  Even make some art using 
my programming skills!  The C source for Pd I have looked at so 
far seems very clean and well written.  As do some of the examples written 
in Pd.
 
Thanks for any help and I look foward to 
participating on this board.
 
Bret Parsons