Personally it's allways puzzled me how we can have all these companies selling what is basically a free product. I can see how they can sell services, manuals and so forth, but the service market for Linux isn't as lucrative as for other software sectirs for the simple reason that most Linux users know what their doing. With bradband becoming more prevelant, the distributors are really going to have tp try hard to make a buck on the distros themselves.
I dont think any of these system's can be truly calles a *X system. The move away from all assembler code may have been quite convenient, but these lazy coders have sacrificed the pure power and efficiency of the *X platform. Moving to a C code base was the beginning of the end for code bloat. Next thing you know we'll be needing MEGAbytes of RAM...
There are some realproblems with this idea. It seems well suited to DJ's, electronica composers and other such songwriters. It seems horrible for most others. Firstly, a regionally known band can actually make money off the CD's they produce themselves. A major-label artist may only make 35 cents a disc, but an independant can make dollars a disc and be showing a profit after only a 100-200 copies if they keep recording costs down. It may be good to (o) a couple songs as loss leaders, but beyond that you're hamstringing yourself. Second, most musicians make penuts off live performance! If a band gets $500 for a show at a club and sells 10 CDs at the show at $10/disc, that's 1/6 of their take for the night. The only band in the St. Louis region that catually makes a living gigging w/o disc sales or label advances is a Disco/funk cover act and they run a night club on the side.
Finally, trying to apply the same economics/logistics to music recording as to software development is rather shortsighted. Most progeammers draw healthy salaries to code for their employers weather the source is open or not. Musicians are considered lucky as hell if they can even survive in the practice of their craft. I wish I were so fortunate as to be a 60s one hit wonder who collects two cents/minute for radio play throughout my retirement!
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Personally it's allways puzzled me how we can have all these companies selling what is basically a free product.
I can see how they can sell services, manuals and so forth, but the service market for Linux isn't as lucrative as for other software sectirs for the simple reason that most Linux users know what their doing.
With bradband becoming more prevelant, the distributors are really going to have tp try hard to make a buck on the distros themselves.
I dont think any of these system's can be truly calles a *X system. The move away from all assembler code may have been quite convenient, but these lazy coders have sacrificed the pure power and efficiency of the *X platform. Moving to a C code base was the beginning of the end for code bloat. Next thing you know we'll be needing MEGAbytes of RAM...
Firstly, a regionally known band can actually make money off the CD's they produce themselves. A major-label artist may only make 35 cents a disc, but an independant can make dollars a disc and be showing a profit after only a 100-200 copies if they keep recording costs down. It may be good to (o) a couple songs as loss leaders, but beyond that you're hamstringing yourself.
Second, most musicians make penuts off live performance! If a band gets $500 for a show at a club and sells 10 CDs at the show at $10/disc, that's 1/6 of their take for the night. The only band in the St. Louis region that catually makes a living gigging w/o disc sales or label advances is a Disco/funk cover act and they run a night club on the side.
Finally, trying to apply the same economics/logistics to music recording as to software development is rather shortsighted. Most progeammers draw healthy salaries to code for their employers weather the source is open or not. Musicians are considered lucky as hell if they can even survive in the practice of their craft. I wish I were so fortunate as to be a 60s one hit wonder who collects two cents/minute for radio play throughout my retirement!