Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2002 23:59:06 +0200 From: Peter Castine chair@icmc2000.org Subject: Re: [a sense of adventure] error

Returning to the suggestion made on around 1<AD>7<AD>2002 20:58, by david stevens :

...

i know that Stephen has been very busy with Karma, but i'm wondering if MegaMax will be updated further. how about rolling it into the max distribution?????

I suppose the answer is that, in a way, that's more or less what's happened.

Cycling '74 appears to have looked at MegaMax, picked and choosen those parts of it that they liked or felt would be particularly useful in Max4 (the ideas, at least), tweaked things around a bit, and re-implemented 'em.

This sort of thing happens all the time (Cf. MacOS and File Exchange, cf. WIndows and Web Browsers, cf. MacOS and E-Mail software... there is another example on the tip of my tongue...). It is generally frustrating to the 3rd party, never mind the line about "imitation is the highest form of praise."

The problem with being a 3rd party is that success can be your greatest enemy. If you add features to the hosting system that lots and lots of people want, the host's producer is likely to turn around and integrate those self same features in the next release. Most causes and side effects are Business Management 101. In general, the 3rd party developer is faced with either inventing new and distinctively enhanced features (or being "better" in some other way), or to look towards different projects.

I am aware that this fate may some day await my own modest offerings. I would prefer other forms of praise.

Thoughtfully,

Peter

praise - i can purchase the rights to your modest offerings if you like. i havent seen the objekts but ... email ecdysone@eusocial.com some numbers if you like

• i'll konsider it.

nn

oops. he is starting to twitch [why do you think he licenses everything - to feed his offspring of course.

Date: Thu, 04 Jul 2002 16:06:43 -0700 From: David Zicarelli zicarell@cycling74.com

                             uuuuuuaaaaaueeeeee zoueeeeee. zomeone give the lord a hand klap.

Subject: Re: [IMMUNE _ PLAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!] Max and PD

...

and I _am_ inspired by it. I had expected that the main trick to making money with an open source product is to sell nicely packaged bundles to big businesses that are prepared to pay multiple kilobucks and more rather than put things together themselves. That is, indeed, central to the example in the newsforge article. Adapting that model to a product living in the Max/MSP world is neither trivial nor even straight forward.

I have a lot more to say about this than I have time to do right now, but I too read the article and I would shoot myself if I had to write software that boring -- you have to ask yourself, what's more interesting, the work or the business model? A lot of open source people are so proud of their "community" but I'm sorry, what kind of a party is this community going to be having?

I like being part of a community that could at least provide its own entertainment.

David Z.

ha _+

despair you mustn't father. you + your employees + konsultants shall be legally entertwined beginning this summer yes.yes.yes for ... the god of benadryl only knows how long - weeks. months. years. dekades.

nn - playing with diamonds