Why Isn't Cakewalk Open Source?

[John]

Bandlab owns the software known as Cakewalk formally known as Sonar. They have every right to offer it in anyway they want. For those that have had Sonar from its very beginning Bandlab came to our rescue when Cakewalk the company  was shut down. We are grateful to Bandlab for keeping it alive and thriving.  For anyone to demand Bandlab  give the code to the world with out buying it as Bandlab did seems to me too presumptuous to be believed. I can't see any benefit to Bandlab or to the user base. Nor can I see any reason this would in anyway benefit  Bandlab. 

If the OP wants Cakewalk to open source  the code than the OP should buy the code from Bandlab and then give it away. At the very lease the OP should reimburse Bandlab for what Sonar cost Bandlab before proposing this absurd notion.    

Also as a practical matter at present we users have a robust development team that is able to know every line of code. That would not be the case if it were not controlled by a single organization.   

As to transparency that notion is not of any use to anyone.  I don't need to know how Cakewalk is written to use it.  

[Wookiee]

5 hours ago, marled said:

OpenSource projects have only 1 official version

But it does not stop unofficial ones being branched, then Bandlab lose what they have paid for.  Perhaps that is a good reason for it not being open source the fact that Bandlab purchased the rights to the software. 

[StudioNSFW]

If Open Sores Software is actually a thing for you, there already is an Open Sores DAW: https://lmms.io

Same answer for the next prop-top who wishes for a Linux version of Cakewalk.

 

 

[Glenn Stanton]

also - open source requires any proprietary licensed software to be released as well - this can be via a company grant (companies like Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, etc will often give grants to certain open source products, some companies like IBM will rescind their grants and thus require the open source project to build their own solution or pay up; and some grants are done via payments - open source products (such as Linux are filled with grants - and some of the enterprise versions include pay-for grant software to be embedded.)

so going "open source" can require a lot of redevelopment and legal work (to avoid plagiarizing someone's code you don't want to pay for, for example). and if one believes the NSA that the open source Linux is the most secure product you can get, you might check on the news about China switching away from Windows due the the NSA key found, and then wonder, how much of the critical parts like crypto, etc are already tainted by the US security operations... oops.

if you want to use a computer and be secure / have privacy - turn it off, burn and bury it. otherwise, welcome to the 21st century ?

[Noel Borthwick]

23 hours ago, Gswitz said:

If there is something nefarious, what are they getting? Uploading my hard drive one byte at a time? stealing terrible guitar riffs? I think the stuff volunteered by me on social networks or data from my phone is a much much bigger invasion of privacy and we know that gets sold.

That riff you played last night was pretty killing so don't sell yourself short ?

Seriously all of us here have better things to do with our lives than steal somebody's personal information. We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't care about developing top notch software for people to make music. I think that would be a fair thing to say about most companies building music software. While it might be hard to imagine how this software could be free, its a testament that good things can happen once in a while. Life is too short to mistrust everything.

[studioguy1]

Frankly, I think this conversation is a waste of time.  I am perfectly happy with the production and attention this group at Bandlab has given my go to daw over the years.   Worrying about other venues is foolish and a needless discussion.     Perfecting this on Windows is a important priority and works well for me.  Thank you people for your efforts and accomplishments with Cakewalk.  It keeps getting better and better, and the fact that you listen to users and their input is really special.

[abacab]

On 8/14/2020 at 4:28 PM, Gswitz said:

I'm with you, Haden. It made me a bit nervous too when the company first stopped charging. I try to limit who I have to trust.

It's not certain that they can be trusted, but it's also not certaion that someone you are paying can be trusted. ? You just have reason to believe they wouldn't want to lose that revenue stream (software you pay for). If the revenue stream could be padded by selling your privacy... well we know some are game to sell it.

I can't see any real danger. A lot of people I have interacted with for a very long time (Noel for example) says it's trustworthy.

I'm not exactly sure the economic model is reasonable, but it's also possible a rich individual just likes music and has this as a side line for fun. I really can't say. There are people that rich. Paul Allen has hobbies like this.

If there is something nefarious, what are they getting? Uploading my hard drive one byte at a time? stealing terrible guitar riffs? I think the stuff volunteered by me on social networks or data from my phone is a much much bigger invasion of privacy and we know that gets sold.

If this stuff is getting sold, I can't imagine to whom. If you figure it out, please tell me and I'll sell myself to them for whatever pennies they'll cough up.

I believe that Meng, the CEO of BandLab Technologies,  https://bandlabtechnologies.com/ is a guitarist and music lover. Consider him a patron of the arts. ?

[Bill Ruys]

On 8/15/2020 at 7:19 AM, Haden said:

 

I don't see how making it open source decreases it's value; it just makes the company and application more transparent. Anyways thanks for the response.

Making it open source gives years and years of innovation away to anyone to use.  Bandcamp didn't get this for free - they paid Roland for it.  And now, it's a product that brings people into the Bandcamp ecosystem and helps spread the brand.  If they open source it, they lose all that value.  Next thing you have various forks of the product, some well maintained, some not.

I support Bandlab keeping it closed source.  That said, if one day they ever shut up shop and couldn't find a buyer who would continue to develop it, I would hope they would consider making it open source at that point.

As a user of this software for well over 20 years, I was happy to pay for it and would be happy to pay for it again, but am enjoying having it for free and seeing it developed and maintained.

[RobertWS]

The problem with open source software is you get splinter groups and sects who want to do things their way, have control and make a total mess of the sector. 

I don't want to spend hours researching which version of CakeWalk I should get.

[RockinMillie]

On 8/14/2020 at 6:45 PM, Haden said:

It's too good to be true that Cakewalk is free. The fact that Cakewalk isn't open source leads me to believe that Bandlab must be hiding something.

...

Sorry, I must be missing something here.

Please do explain as to why you believe that in the case of software that is free, it therefore follows that it * must * be open source ?

?

[abacab]

8 hours ago, Bill Ruys said:

Bandcamp didn't get this for free - they paid Roland for it. 

BandLab didn't get this for free - they paid Gibson for it. 

FIFY

Agree with everything else that you said, also a Cakewalk user for 20+ years. ?

 

 

Edited August 17, 2020 by abacab

[Mandolin Picker]

One of the things I've noticed is that open source software seems to work best when it starts out as open source. LibreOffice/OpenOffice started as a commercial product (Star Office) years ago, and was subsequently released as open source. It took years to decipher and clean the code base. Today the product is very good, but it took a long time before they could even try to move forward.

[abacab]

16 minutes ago, Mandolin Picker said:

One of the things I've noticed is that open source software seems to work best when it starts out as open source. LibreOffice/OpenOffice started as a commercial product (Star Office) years ago, and was subsequently released as open source. It took years to decipher and clean the code base. Today the product is very good, but it took a long time before they could even try to move forward.

Well, with the sales pressure at an all time low, it seems that the BandLab developers are hard at work cleaning decades of old Cakewalk code! ?

[Bapu]

12 hours ago, Bill Ruys said:

Bandcamp didn't get this for free - they paid Roland for it. 

I recently watched Rick Beato's vid about perpetuating misinformation on the web.

A) It's BandLab that bought it, not Bandcamp

B) They bought it from Gibson (who initially bought it from Roland)

[abacab]

9 hours ago, Bapu said:

A) It's BandLab that bought it, not Bandcamp

B) They bought it from Gibson (who initially bought it from Roland)

Hey man, I guess you didn't read my post a few hours ago where I said the same thing. ?

Edited August 18, 2020 by abacab

[Bapu]

2 hours ago, abacab said:

Hey man, I guess you didn't read my post a few hours ago where I said the same thing. ?

Sometimes I react to a post before I've finished all other posts. My bad.

 

[Bill Ruys]

17 hours ago, abacab said:

BandLab didn't get this for free - they paid Gibson for it. 

FIFY

Agree with everything else that you said, also a Cakewalk user for 20+ years. ?

 

 

Ha ha ha.  Of course.  Twelve Tone -> Roland -> Gibson -> BandLab.  Senility must finally be setting in   Thanks for the correction.

Edited August 18, 2020 by Bill Ruys
Typo

[RobertWS]

23 hours ago, Mandolin Picker said:

One of the things I've noticed is that open source software seems to work best when it starts out as open source. LibreOffice/OpenOffice started as a commercial product (Star Office) years ago, and was subsequently released as open source. It took years to decipher and clean the code base. Today the product is very good, but it took a long time before they could even try to move forward.

 

That's the problem, which do we choose...LibreOffice or OpenOffice?

And how many versions of UNIX are there?   If there was just one, it would probably dominate the market.

 

[msmcleod]

22 minutes ago, RobertWS said:

 

That's the problem, which do we choose...LibreOffice or OpenOffice?

And how many versions of UNIX are there?   If there was just one, it would probably dominate the market.

 

I choose LibreOffice because it's the original OpenOffice devs working on it.

Like most things that were bought up by Oracle, the devs left and started their own fork (like MySQL vs MariaDB).

In saying that, OpenOffice is now part of the Apache foundation, so maybe things are different now.

By UNIX, I guess you mean Linux.... there's a reason for the hoards of distributions.  Linux is the base operating system for SO many devices, it's unreal.  The point is, you can fork the main repo and take out or add what you want to suit your application (which in many cases may be a hardware device).

[abacab]

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

By UNIX, I guess you mean Linux....

Linux is not UNIX. It's only UNIX-like. I know, that's a technical point. But the current Mac OS actually is UNIX certified. I think you get that, but were only clarifying the previous poster's comment.

However,  the Linux platform has been fragmented because it is so open and can be customized to suit any purpose. Probably more choices than standards...