Why Isn't Cakewalk Open Source?

[Light Grenade]

One thing I'd like to know is why it's not marketed better. The cakewalk social media platforms are pretty much dead, the user base seems small, and it generally seems overlooked. The bandlab pages are active, yet zero to minimal mentions of Cakewalk on their website or social media. It gives me a slight worry that one day it might just die quietly.

Cakewalk by Bandlab is infinitely better than any previous version of Sonar. I actually don't know how I put up with the bugs in X1, X2 (the worst) X3 and Platinum. I've only realised since having a very stable CbB. There's still a few minor niggles but the overall improvement has been drastic, even from Platinum. I opened a recent, big project in Platinum and the audio engine went truly crazy, however in CbB it played no problem. 

This is not a dig. I want more people to know about this platform and to use it. It's really much, much better than it's ever been and out performs a lot of the competition. 

 

 

Edited August 21, 2020 by Light Grenade

[Byron Dickens]

"Over the last 16 months, as I've debated this issue around the world, every single time somebody has said to me, 'I don't really worry about invasions of privacy because I don't have anything to hide,' I always say the same thing to them.

I get out a pen. I write down my email address. I say, 'Here's my email address. What I want you to do when you get home is email me the passwords to all of your email accounts, not just the nice, respectable work one in your name, but all of them, because I want to be able to just troll through what it is you're doing online, read what I want to read and publish whatever I find interesting. After all, if you're not a bad person, if you're doing nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide.'

Not a single person has taken me up on that offer. I check that email account religiously all the time. It's a very desolate place."   Glenn Greenwald

 

https://www.zdnet.com/article/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-heres-where-to-send-your-passwords/

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged"  Cardinal de Richelieu

https://www.consumernotice.org/data-protection/mining/

https://www.consumernotice.org/data-protection/breaches/

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/21/google-chrome-has-become-surveillance-software-its-time-switch/

 

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-report-exposes-explains-big-techs-personal-data-trackers-lurk-social-media

 

 

But the real issues isn't government surveillance.  It's much less worrisome for the .gov to have your information b/c they are going to keep it secured. It isn't even Google,  Facebook,  Amazon,  etc. having it so much as their advertising partners. Not to mention that those companies have proven themselves to be very poor stewards of the information you entrust to them.

I see you saying "ooh, advertising.  Whoop de do." But these ads aren't just simple little tv commercials or magazine ads.  They mine personal data about you.  Some of them deliver malware. They build a very personal,  very intimate picture of you.  And who has access to it? You just don't know.  No one does.

You're not concerned with your email getting pwned? What is in there? Personal information.  Some of which I'll bet you would not want to be made public. What did the hackers get between the time they got in and you (finally) got the notice and changed your password?

 

You think your information isn't valuable? How do you think Google got to be a multi billion dollar corporation? Why do you think the information from these data breaches gets sold on the dark web? And why the hell do you think a "free" flashlight app wants access to your contacts?

 

Look at the links. This isn't woo woo David Icke/ Alex Jones stuff. This comes from mainstream journalists and actual cyber security people.

Edited August 22, 2020 by bdickens

[Starship Krupa]

Dang bdickens, you sure can whoop up on those straw men. And I'm actuaLOLing at the flurry of questions at the end of your post.

For those of you following at home, the argument fallacies he's engaging in are: "reductio ad absurdum," "straw man," "appeal to authority," and "begging the question."

16 minutes ago, bdickens said:

every single time somebody has said to me, 'I don't really worry about invasions of privacy because I don't have anything to hide,' I always say the same thing to them

Well it looks like you say it even when nobody has said that. But don't let it slow you down. Continue to attempt to provoke only fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and offer no solutions. You may have a future in television news.

30 minutes ago, bdickens said:

I see you saying "ooh, advertising.  Whoop de do."

No you don't. Nobody in this thread said that (straw man).

I know you won't answer this because answering direct questions isn't your style, but since the Internet is such a scary place with all these threats lurking everywhere, and obviously, since you are here you must have a browser and an email address, do you just live with the existential dread and inevitability that disaster will surely befall you, or do you take steps to prevent these awful things you describe from happening? If so, how about sharing those instead of trying to stir up fear?

I mean, it does seem kind of odd, you talk about all of these terrible things that happen, and although you are not quoting me, I know I am the biggest naysayer in this thread. I've been Internettin' for 25 years and I don't do it in a constant state of hypervigilance. By rights I should have fallen victim to at least one or two of these awful occurrences. How do you explain this? Is it all done so covertly that I don't even notice it? If so, I must ask again how "dear" the cost actually is, if I haven't even noticed it.

BTW, what's your take on those "loyalty cards" that stores like Safeway hand out to give you deep discounts so they can track your shopping habits? My guess is that you think I'm a chump for paying a boatload of money less for my groceries when I use mine because it allows Safeway to analyze my valuable data.

But here's the thing about my data: no matter how much money Google or Safeway make from selling what I'm interested in to advertisers, it doesn't come at a cost to me because I can't sell that information somewhere else. In effect, I'm selling it to Google and Safeway in exchange for using their services and getting discounts on my food, and they're reselling it. In exchange for use of this or that, I'm granting them the right to watch what I'm up to when I use their services or shop in their stores. That's kinda the way the world works. I'm ever surprised by people who seem to have only recently figured this out. "They're making money off it!" Well, um, have you been living in Mommy'sMagicPurseLand?

Cakewalk seems pretty dang free so far, about as free as a trade show tote bag on the scale of "free." I haven't had to grant them or give them anything meaningful in exchange for the use of it (and I get to keep what I put in it: hmm, good metaphor).

We can never go back to how things were when I was a child. I imagine that someday, in order to even have a phone, we'll only be able to go through one government-sanctioned monopoly, we'll have to use their equipment, and everyone's name and home address will be published in hard copy volumes that will be distributed everywhere, in every business and home and will even be dangling from cables in public kiosks so that anyone who wants to will be able to know our phone number and where we live and where to send us mail, and the only way we'll be able to opt out of having our information published will be to pay a monthly fee to The Phone Company.

Oh wait.

[Byron Dickens]

 Aww, ain't that cute.

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

For those of you following at home, the argument fallacies he's engaging in are: "reductio ad absurdum," "straw man," "appeal to authority," and "begging the question."

 And for those of you following at home, Starship Trooper or whatever his name is must have failed logic class. He might be able to parrot the words, but he has no idea how to use them.  See, you don't get to just throw out big words, some even in Latin, and automatically win the debate. No, you have to demonstrate how the argument is fallacious.  Mere accusations don't cut it.

But, mr. Starship here doesn't even address any of my points.  Instead, he tries to discredit me through the use of belittlement and ridicule. And that, my friends, is called the Argumentum ad Hominem. (See, I can use Latin too.)

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

 

2 hours ago, bdickens said:

every single time somebody has said to me, 'I don't really worry about invasions of privacy because I don't have anything to hide,' I always say the same thing to them

Well it looks like you say it even when nobody has said that. But don't let it slow you down. Continue to attempt to provoke only fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and offer no solutions. You may have a future in television news.

And if Starship Trooper was half as bright as he wants you to believe,  he would have noticed that I was quoting someone from the article cited. Or maybe that's what he thinks "appeal to authority" is.

 

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

 I know I am the biggest naysayer in this thread.

Well, you're the biggest ***** in this thread,  that's for sure.

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

BTW, what's your take on those "loyalty cards" that stores like Safeway hand out to give you deep discounts so they can track your shopping habits? My guess is that you think I'm a chump for paying a boatload of money less for my groceries when I use mine because it allows Safeway to analyze my valuable data.

And here, folks, we have the fallacy of false analogy. We all know who Safeway is and what they do. They are pretty upfront about what they are getting from you & what they are doing with it. They are probably going to hold on to my information a whole lot tighter than Facebook,  that's for sure.

But who the hell are cookiebot.com, fastly.net, nucdn.net, onesignal.com, optimizely.com, permutive.com and servenobid.com? What do they do with my info? I don't remember signing up for anything with them. But here they are trying to trying to put tracking cookies on my device.  Except my ad and cookie blockers stopped them. If mr. Starship was as swift as he thinks he is, he would surely be familiar with such.

2 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I mean, it does seem kind of odd, you talk about all of these terrible things that happen, and although you are not quoting me, I know I am the biggest naysayer in this thread. I've been Internettin' for 25 years and I don't do it in a constant state of hypervigilance. By rights I should have fallen victim to at least one or two of these awful occurrences. How do you explain this? Is it all done so covertly that I don't even notice it? If so, I must ask again how "dear" the cost actually is, if I haven't even noticed it.

Talk about Reductio ad Absurdum and strawman! 'Cause that's them right there.

[John]

Lets keep it civil please!

[Byron Dickens]

Now that we've totally gone off track because someone wanted to get all butthurt for some reason  over an offhand comment about Big Tech and data mining....

 

There's lots of reasons software might be "free." Most of them are not sinister.

 

Cakewalk,  for instance,  seems to be subsidized by the parent companies' other ventures. Other software  follows this model. DaVinci Resolve,  for instance. The free version is subsidized by Blackmagic Design's cameras,  I/O devices, etc.   A lot of other software is free for personal use and costs $$ for business use.

 

Some is what's called "freemium:" basic version is no charge and you can pay for more features.

Some is supported by a foundation.    Firefox, for example, is supported by the Mozilla Foundation.

Some of it is "loss leader." Isotope,  for the cost of your email address and some basic information,  gives away stuff like Vinyl and Vocal Doubler in the hopes that you'll drop serious  money on RX7 or Ozone.

 

 

 

[Craig Anderton]

Based on data mining, for a couple months I was being pitched to as if I was  a black person, living in Ghana, who buys mostly through zZsounds and needs cat food. I am also apparently interested in dating African-American single women...all because I spent a significant amount of time on Ghana-based forums while researching the country's possibilities as a good vacation place, bought some cat food for a neighbor while she was sick, and was looking up "street" prices for gear I was reviewing. I guess they also assume that being a "black person from Ghana" but apparently spending some time in the US, I therefore must be lonely, and sufficiently prejudiced that I'm interested in meeting only women who are black. (Never mind that I'm not single.)

So I think their algorithms may need some work  

[abacab]

2 hours ago, bdickens said:

Some of it is "loss leader." Isotope,  for the cost of your email address and some basic information,  gives away stuff like Vinyl and Vocal Doubler in the hopes that you'll drop serious  money on RX7 or Ozone.

I have collected the entire iZotope "Elements" series one by one either for really cheap, or free.

Maybe someday I will see the need to follow an upgrade path, then they will "own" me.

[Starship Krupa]

6 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

I was being pitched to as if I was   a black person, living in Ghana, who buys mostly through zZsounds and needs cat food.

What would be great would be if zZounds' computer's algorithm picked up on this and started partnering with Amazon to sell cat food. We would know whom to blame/thank.

If it took off, we'd eventually see Fender and Gibson branded pet food (why not, they have their logos on so many knickknacks), then, inevitably, Behringer, at half the price.

[Starship Krupa]

5 hours ago, abacab said:

I have collected the entire iZotope "Elements" series one by one either for really cheap, or free.

Maybe someday I will see the need to follow an upgrade path, then they will "own" me.

Being exposed to the excellence of their products via the Elements series has unquestionably led to me spending money on other iZotope products. My budget is very tight, but I don't need to vet their stuff. It's uniformly excellent and useful.

Meldaproduction is my favorite loss-leader marketing company, with their 37-plug-in FreeFX Bundle. I've often said, give me that bundle and the stock DAW plug-ins, and I'm good to go. I 'll pine for Phoenix Stereo Reverb, but I'll give you a mix.

[Mandolin Picker]

For some reason Amazon apparently thinks that I have started a new hobby of furnace humidifier collecting after we purchased one a month or so ago.

[Bapu]

13 minutes ago, Mandolin Picker said:

For some reason Amazon apparently thinks that I have started a new hobby of furnace humidifier collecting after we purchased one a month or so ago.

You can never have to many

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

reverbs, EQs, compressors, delay, limiters and furnace humidifiers I say

[Byron Dickens]

21 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

So I think their algorithms may need some work  

Yep. That's for sure.

 

My wife, upon hitting a certain magic age, started getting ads for frumpy clothes and wrinkle creams. Even more disconcerting,  articles started popping up about what not to wear (or what too wear) after 50, what to do (or not do) with your hair after 50, etc.

Never mind she never searched for anything like that.  Never mind that she's much closer to, say,  Halle Berry or Demi Moore at 50 than to your grandma at 50. How do these ad companies know she hit that magic number? She certainly didn't tell them.

Google and Facebook told them, that's how.

I also started getting ads for,  um, certain "male enhancement" products.  Never searched for such things.  Don't need 'em. (See aforementioned description of wife.)

Edited August 23, 2020 by bdickens

[LarsF]

"Google and Facebook told them, that's how."

And why so many forums and online stores have login with Google, Twitter or Facebook account and similar.
I think too many do of conveníence, but does not think about consequences.
I guess everything is exchanged between platforms as you do that.

[LarsF]

Many places use this "I'm not a robot"-thingy.
And I ask myself, why does this company or platform want Google to know I was here?

There are these cloud services, and people use it - without thinking it seems, just of convencience.

When I bought a Android phone, I had no idea I had to have a Google account.
And Google exchange whatever they like from you phone, they call it sync to cloud - and all your contacts, calendar and many things are on Google ground.

I hope some awareness is happening after these reports how Facebook sold accounts data etc.

[Starship Krupa]

On 8/23/2020 at 11:14 AM, LarsF said:

There are these cloud services, and people use it - without thinking it seems, just of convencience.

Unfortunately, that's how people are and have long been, and I include myself for many things. We want the prize without thinking about what we're exchanging.

In the matter of companies' tracking my web habits, etc., I go in with the assumption that I'm trading their selling my info in exchange for the service they provide. I never think of it as their somehow benevolently bestowing upon me a wonderful gift, no strings attached. Back when retailer loyalty cards first came on the scene, I remember reading alarmist articles about what an invasion of privacy they were, how now any company or agency who wanted to pay could know every item I had bought. I had a chuckle at the idea that people believed that the data wasn't already out there due to being tracked through credit and debit card purchases.

Even in the case of Cakewalk, I'm exchanging my awareness of their company and its other products for use of the software. I do my part and use that awareness to recommend their other products to people as well. Even if it's not an explicit recommendation, just mentioning "BandLab also owns Heritage Guitars" in a musicians' forum puts that (very much for profit) brand in front of people's eyes. So instead of spending millions on print or web advertising, BandLab pays a handful of people to work in their homes on the Cakewalk code. I like that way of doing business, but I don't have the illusion that it's not a way of doing business.

Having me and others rave about how the excellence level of Cakewalk has moved so far puts out the idea that "brands benefit from BandLab's ownership."

I follow Formula 1 auto racing, and Mercedes and Ferrari and Renault and Honda spend many, many millions doing it just to bolster and maintain their brands' reputation for excellence. Mercedes' F1 driver Lewis Hamilton is the world's highest paid athlete. I don't pay any cash to enjoy F1, but I do hear those brand names at least every 5 seconds when watching a race.

BandLab could be sponsoring Battles of the Bands, instead they  "sponsor" Cakewalk by BandLab. There doesn't have to be anything more sinister than that to it.

[Lokong Otim]

I'm an Ardent Linux user and open source fan, but if cakewalk doesn't want to make it's software open source, they shouldn't (after all, they own the software.)

Issue is: why not compile a Linux version? it's not as hard as doing a mac version, and it's not a must for it to be open source.

Tracktion is doing it with its waveform DAW. The music industry would benefit much more from Bandlab releasing a linux version of cakewalk .

[abacab]

Linux on the desktop is only a few percent of computer users (maybe 1.93%). Even less for computer DAW users. There is really no commercial desktop Linux industry, at least not compared to Windows and Apple. I say this with respect to Linus, and his followers. I have had a version of Linux on hand since Red Hat Linux 9. But messed around with an early version of the Knoppix Live CD before that, about 20 years ago...

So there really is no commercial gain to be made for going cross-platform to Linux with a desktop app. And professional developers don't work for free. I seriously doubt that there is a community of open source devs that would be willing to fork and dive into Cakewalk's code, even if it was open source.

But Linux is the real deal in the cloud server industry. It has the majority of servers installed globally. Respect.
 

Quote

In 2021, 100% of the world’s top 500 supercomputers run on Linux.

Out of the top 25 websites in the world, only 2 aren’t using Linux.

96.3% of the world’s top 1 million servers run on Linux.

90% of all cloud infrastructure operates on Linux and practically all the best cloud hosts use it.

https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/linux-statistics/

Edited June 14, 2021 by abacab

[Terry Kelley]

36 minutes ago, Lokong Otim said:

I'm an Ardent Linux user and open source fan, but if cakewalk doesn't want to make it's software open source, they shouldn't (after all, they own the software.)

Issue is: why not compile a Linux version? it's not as hard as doing a mac version, and it's not a must for it to be open source.

Tracktion is doing it with its waveform DAW. The music industry would benefit much more from Bandlab releasing a linux version of cakewalk .

I don't believe Linux or any Unix clone has the libraries and controls readily available to just "recompile it."

[AB99]

I just hope this cakewalk model is sustainable.  I really want it to last for years.