So what does this mean all together. No more linuxDSP software development? Or is it just rebranded as OverTone?
Linuxdsp is merging with Overtone (really they are the same company) and Overtone will sell VST plugins for mac, win, and linux. LV2 plugins will no longer be supported, only VST (on linux). Current owners can switch their linux LV2 licences to VST for a fee. This news is not optimal, but is obviously driven by the small size of the linux market. On the plus side these plugins will still be available for linux users, except only in VST versions.
Honestly I am not convinced it is a bad idea on Mikeās part. Part of my main complaint lately with LinuxDSP has been that I canāt work on a session in OS X and then open it on Linux (Or Vice Versa) and be able to utilize the DSP on both platforms effectively, which I imagine this may address is my guess. In which case it is likely to cause me only to spend more money on his stuff, which is great as he does support Linux and has some great and very useful plugins. This is especially important as I try to get my team to work on audio as well and every now and then they need to get me to work on something or touch it up, I am unlikely to get them on Linux for various reasons that shouldnāt be gone into here, so that ability to work on multiple platforms is huge when working with others.
I love the concept of LV2 as an open standard, but supporting multiple different formats only makes so much sense. I do know a lot of places compile to multiple different plugin formats with one codebase, but with how small a shop he is I am not sure how feasible that really is from a support standpoint. As such for him I think this can make a lot of sense even if not the āidealā I might hope for.
SeabladeMy intention is not to get drawn into a lengthy discussion, however, just to clarify - and there is a statement on the linuxdsp site, however, as is to be expected there is always going to be some conjecture, so, to be clear:
- My company (Applied Computer Music Technologies Ltd) was formed, when it became clear that it would be the proper means through which to market / develop not just the linuxDSP plug-ins, but products for other platforms too (and in fact, if you want to develop for other platforms, it is almost mandatory that you have a company or other trusted entity, when applying for developer licenses, code signing certificates etc).
- The company continues to develop successful products, for Windows and Mac, (and linux), and will continue to do so. There have been no secret deals, no mergers, or anything like that. All that has really changed in respect of the linuxDSP software is that the support email is different. The software still works (subject to host application / OS updates) but the linuxDSP software is no longer available for sale and there will be no new releases. This is a source of regret, particularly as I have always been (and remain) an enthusiastic supporter of linux. The commercial reality is, however that for many complex reasons it makes more sense to move things to a more unified approach. The proposed changes to the rules for selling digital software etc, as mentioned in the statement, are a significant (and final) factor in that decision.
- I (as the developer of the linuxDSP plug-ins, and the owner / director of the company) have taken the decision not to continue LV2 support. This is not an LV2 vs VST stance, personally - technically - I donāt really care what the plug-in standard is, although I believe that LV2 exists primarily to solve problems specific to linux, and as such I see no compelling reason as to why it should likely gain any kind of traction on other platforms. Think of it this way, the only reason to adopt LV2 on Windows or Mac would be if some āmust haveā plug-in was released only as LV2, but any developer with something that revolutionary to sell, would be unlikely (from a commercial point of view at least) to release it in a format which few DAWs support.
- Support for a plugin format is not just a question of porting the code (or hitting the compile switch with āLV2ā enabled) even if the port is trivial - which it never is - you then have to test, and re-test and re-test etc to make sure everything really works (and you still likely find that something gets missedā¦) and you have to do this every time you make any changes - so any changes to any version on any OS (just in case). Like it or not, there is a different methodology with open-source vs commercial (āIt works on my machineā is ok, but when people pay you money for a product you have very different, sometimes legally binding obligations)
- āWhy donāt you port the plugins to LV2 on Windows and Mac tooā¦?ā Is the other way of looking at the issue. At the present time, this makes no sense. There is only one (commercial) host application which supports LV2 on Mac / Windows (Mixbus) and it also supports AU on Mac and VST on Windows, so what would be the point of creating LV2 versions for an OS on which the only host which supported LV2 also supported the existing formats which every other host does? (Even if the port was trivial, which it never isā¦ I refer you to my previous point about testing etc).
- Developer resources are finite - plug-ins and audio software generally requires a complex mix of skills - to put this in context, the AF2-10 graphical EQ which was recently released, I personally wrote every line of that plug-in, from the low level graphics, to the UI, to the FFT code which uses several innovative new methods, to the filter DSP algorithms, which allow the filters to model analogue designs even at close to Nyquist, at sample rates as low as 44.1 without oversampling, and I did this for three operating systems, in two programming languages, with at least three plug-in formats, and there are more being developed. I didnāt use any UI toolkits, I just made it happen, and we sell it for only $25 or so - though my copy cost a lot more than thatā¦ Clearly it makes sense to make the maximum use of developer resources, including others involved with the company and product development. Another reason why consolidating resources, formats etc makes sense.
As Seablade mentioned, providing the plug-ins in more āuniversally supportedā formats, also makes sense from a user perspective - I very much hope that Mixbus will support native linux VST in future releases, so we can get closer to genuine cross-platform session support across Windows, Mac and Linux
I appreciate there will be some āpainā in migrating from the linuxDSP software, but we (as a company) are trying to make sure this happens in a fair and responsible fashion, consistent with the best decision to enable the company to continue to develop new and innovative products, for linux as well as Mac / Windows, and provide a high level of product support, and I would also like to thank everyone who has supported the linuxDSP software this far.
Symbolically itās disappointing to lose a Linux-focused brand bringing out Linux-focused products, although the economic rationale makes sense. It is no doubt a smart business move and the end-user experience may very well improve as a result.
The salt in the wound, however, is that existing paying customers are being asked to pay again if they wish to move to the overtone equivalent plugins to ensure continued support. Feels almost like a ransom note.
Only partially, nothing will stop existing plugins from working, you are effectively upgrading the plugins to a multiplatform equivalent is all. Money I am feeling is well spent myself, and likely to be spent in the next few days on my part with no regrets.
SeabladeSure, I can rationalize the move, and rationalize the charge to upgrade to the new multiplatform plugins. And like the original LinuxDSP plugins, I have no doubt that the charge will be worth it considering the quality of the product.
I wish I could share your confidence that ānothing will stop existing plugins from working,ā but I do not. Many things can and have stopped existing plugins from working under Linux in the past. Beyond that, itās only reasonable that software has a usable life-cycle. So the only option to ensure continued usability is to pay. Fine, I accept that. However, the charge leaves me feeling cold toward LinuxDSP and Overtone, which is not something I like feeling. It is difficult to parse statements like āI would also like to thank everyone who has supported the linuxDSP software this farā with the explicit requirement to pay more to receive support beyond the six month time period. And if one does pay, is one guaranteed continuing support from Overtone for a year, 2 years, or just until the business changes name or focus again? I personally would like a more explicit (and public) statement about exactly what the cross-grade payment guarantees.
@looplog: I can understand your concern, but this is most definitely not some kind of cynically motivated move. What it comes down to is simply, if you have a working system, it will continue to do so. If something beyond our control breaks that support for the software, then we will do our best to address that for existing users, but we will not be releasing any new linuxDSP software. If you want to buy the new products (which includes effectively new software, for Mac / Windows etc) then you have the option to do so, either at the normal price, or at a discount via a crossgrade if you are an existing user. But you donāt have to. We wouldnāt charge for a compulsary update and we never have.
Will the new software be supported indefinitely? in so much as any other product you might buy - there are free demos, specifically so you can test compatibility without paying anything, and you get support for free, even before you buy the product, because we want the software to work well for users. If you upgrade your host application(s) or OS without taking the precaution of backing up the existing version, and in doing so, you break something (accidentally or otherwise) - we will do our best to support it in future releases, but the same precautions need to be exercised as with any other software / hardware add-on or drivers etc.
Would open-source be any better supported - possibly, but, for example, Iām currently in the process of downgrading / reverting a perfectly good machine which I (unwisely) updated to the latest Ubuntu, only to find that the open-source (and the commercial) drivers dropped support for the graphics chipset, and there is no planned future support, and existing versions are not compatible with the latest kernel. The same hardware still works for the latest Windows with the existing drivers. Thereās not a perfect, guaranteed, works forever, solution, and there never will be.
@linuxdsp: Yes, I can understand your position also. If anything, it upsets me that Linux audio continues to be so poorly supported financially to the point where you feel the need to effectively retire your Linux branding and format compatibility. By pointing this out, I probably sound hypocritical given my complaint about paying for the crossgrade, but in the end, if I had of been an OSX or Windows user of OvertoneDSP products in the first place, I wouldnāt be faced with having to pay anything extra right now. From your perspective, the reality is probably more that Linux users were getting special treatment, and will now get equal treatment under your new business model. But as someone who has tried to financially support Linux audio development (when I can), I feel very discouraged from continuing to do so. I will probably end up ponying up the cash should I need upgrades or support, as weāre not talking high finance here, but I will feel just that little bit more foolish for it.
@looplog: but consider ā¦ had you been an OS X/Overtone user ā¦ and you decided to upgrade to Yosemite ā¦ and found that it broke your DAW and/or your plugins. Would that be my or LinuxDSPās responsibility to support (for zero cost)? Or would that be your responsibility for upgrading from a working system to a non-working one? Nothing is going to arbitrarily break your existing LinuxDSP plugins unless you make a choice to move to some new system configuration.
I think this is a good thing in any aspect.
From my end user perspective: OverTone DSP is a lot cooler name than the LinuxDSP name. And most important of all: Now, Itās much easier to explain what this and that plugin is when curios people asks me āwhich plugin is that?ā.
And as a pragmatic Linux fanatic, I think itās much better for the āsakeā of Linux that the symbols of Windows, OSX and Linux stands side by side when you want to buy or download a product. I increasingly work more and more with music projects that origins from Windows and OSX and I canāt say that anyone in my environment is skeptical anymore when they realize that I will mix their project in Linux. So the penguin mark beside good commercial products is a good thing and as such: the change to have everything under OverTone DSP is even better in any aspect.
For me, the biggest difference is I was a LinuxDSP fanboy. Now, Iām a OverTone DSP fanboy! And one more thing: The ability to use the same programs and tools in different platforms is always golden, music is cooperation! 
@Paul:
Just to be clear, Iām not arguing against the idea of paying for products, or paying for support. Nor do I think merging LinuxDSP into OvertoneDSP is a bad idea. And to be perfectly frank, nor do I think Mike should give a hoot on whether I support that move. It is, frankly, none of my concern how he chooses to administer his business for the most part. My concern, however, is in the perceived difference in value for two sets of customers. It has nothing to do with āzero costā provision of support. I was making a comparison between two types of paying customers. If I were an OSX/Overtone user I would be a paying customer. I would continue to get access to paid support. As a paying LinuxDSP customer, I will not, unless I pay more.
You are right that the plugins will not break without some external change instantiated by me. However, software developers are usually explicit about which versions or configurations of an OS their products support. If I upgraded to Yosemite against the explicit advice of a software provider then all bets are off. But what if I move from one supported configuration to another? As a paying user, why should I not think that āsupportā includes assistance with any hiccups that might arise in this process.
The reality, as has been pointed out, is that the plugins will probably not break, and that this is a non-issue. Mike makes good software, and I generally do not update my audio machines as a matter of course. I also purchased my plugins from LinuxDSP some time ago and have no real issue spending a little more to get continued support should I need it. However, what if I had bought my plugins last week? Would I have any more right to be upset?
Since we are talking analogies, consider this. You release Ardour 3.6. You tell paid 3.5 Linux users that support for their version will be discontinued in six months. You then tell them they can pay more to get the supported 3.6 version if they like, at a discount of course. Meanwhile, paying OSX users of 3.5 can upgrade to 3.6 for free. I realise that the Ardour payment model doesnāt fit this hypothetical (in fact, it probably prevents such discrepancies), and that Ardour for OSX isnāt actually a final release, but perhaps you can understand the symbolic significance of telling one set of users they have to pay more to continue to get support where another set of users does not. As a symbolic gesture, this does not generate goodwill among a customer base.
All that being said, it appears Iām alone in thinking this way, so Iāll leave it at that. I will say however, that this situation makes a good case for subscription based payment models, or at the very least, explicitly time-limited purchase prices that do not have an implied open-ended support promise.
Unfortunately, whichever way we do this there are going to be some people who feel theyāre not getting the deal they would like and may consider that unfair. Thatās regrettable, but its not a deliberate policy or intention.
However, most of the OverTone plug-ins which now have linux support, are, in their current incarnations, relatively new. So, its probably better to consider that if you want to move from, technically, the older linuxDSP software to the newer OverTone plug-ins then there is a cost attached. This happens with any product.
this situation makes a good case for subscription based payment models
Personally I donāt like subscription based models for commercial software. More often than not, they are designed to work well for the company, not the customer. I have had direct personal experience of a company selling a software product to me under the guise of reassuring conintued support and updates for the product in exchange for a monthly fee (but the non-subscription version was discountinued, so there wasnāt really an āoptionā) in practice what happened was that if you stopped paying, next time the software āphoned homeā it would stop working. Couple this with proprietary file formats etc, and the temptation to exploit ālock-inā to its maximum is too great for some companies.
explicitly time-limited purchase prices that do not have an implied open-ended support promise.
This belies the complex nature of āsupportā - so, what if you have a deal which is, pay whatever the price is, and get a yearās free updates / support etc, and that works well for you, and not much goes wrong, then the week after the support time ends, a new OS update comes out which completely breaks your software. Conversely, someone else buys the product a week later for the same price and gets a yearās free support, which by implication then includes a free compatibility update to the new OS version.
If the cost includes free support for n new versions, and that must-have feature is released in version n + 1, then thatās not a good deal - unless you happen to buy it at the right time and get support for version n + 1 included.
Especially on linux, the complexities of support for the miriad different combinations of distributions, applications and custom user ātweaksā etc makes it difficult to constrain this in any way to specific OS versions etc. Although we would normally specify the basic requirements e.g. at the present time, we recommed:
āan X11 compatible linux distribution e.g. Ubuntu 12.04LTSā
In most cases, we endeavour to do everything we can to transfer the incompatibility āriskā away from the customer, which may mean we have to provide free updates and absorb the development / time costs. For the vast majority of linuxDSP users that worked well, however, for any product which depends on third-party applications (including operating system functionality) there is always the small possibility that some essential feature on which the product depends will be removed without warning, and while we will try to mitigate gainst that, we canāt guarantee complete protection from it.
Does this simply mean that if I want to buy a new āLinuxDSPā product to use with Ardour it will
(a) be downloaded from the overtonedsp web site and branded āOvertone dspā
(b) use the Linux Native VST instead of LV2
Are there any practical problems with VST compared with LV2? (I know developers have a licensing requirement, but I mean from the userās point of view). There are some old forum posts suggesting that VST plugins are a bit āfragileā compared with LV2 equivalents. Is this true any more?
Can I use a mixture of LV2 and VST plugins in the same mix?
@dsreyes1014: Yes it does, it adds significantly more / better functionality and improved filter algorithms.
The consolidation of LinuxDSP and OverToneDSP sounds like a win-win situation to me. Providing all plugins, with cross platform support for Linux & Mac OS X on a single website makes it easier for new customers and even old customers to find what they or looking for. If they use Mac OS X, it is there and If they use Linux, it is there.