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Xequence as open source project (Kickstarter)
SevenSystems mentioned a strategy to launch a kickstarter which would make Xequence open source.
This is an open ended discussion to solicit ideas and opinions.
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The idea is nice, but all successful open source projects have at least one or more dedicated individuals. Making it open source by itself won’t do much, unless someone commits to carrying on the torch. It happened with Sandboxie, which was made open source from being a commercial product. And despite all the vocal community clamoring for it to happen, only two people seriously attempted to do something. And only one actually managed to get it off the ground.
Perhaps the better solution would be to find a way to compensate SevenSystems to incorporate wished for features, if he’s interested. Maybe a pool of cash towards a ranked wishlist or something. At least he knows the code and could most easily make something happen.
@5k3105 thanks for starting this discussion.
@Darkstring one of the reasons why I would potentially be willing to open-source Xequence is the fact that I might not have a lot of time in the future to work on it, for commercial and also personal reasons.
If it went the open-source route, I'd be aiming at a (maybe unrealistic) low 5-digit figure to raise. This would include me giving substantial online support for a few weeks (probably on a dedicated forum) so any people picking up Xequence have an easier time. The code quality is quite good though and there's a reasonable amount of comments for most non-trivial stuff.
EDIT: maybe a good example of a large-ish software project that successfully went open-source is of course Blender. They raised EUR 100,000 back in 2002, which would be roughly EUR 150,000 adjusted for inflation. However, Xequence is much smaller in scope, so that's how I roughly arrived at my low 5-digits!
To my mind, there’s only one significant feature missing from Xequence 2: the ability to work as an AUv3 plugin. I’d definitely support a Kickstarter for that! 😀
Along those lines I was thinking the money for the project would include compensation for past work and open sourcing, ie just placing it in github. Then adding stretch goals after the 100k is reached.
Then the task would be prioritizing those goals based on popularity. After the project is funded and any goals fulfilled by original author, a way to sponsor the project on github would be created where both individuals and organizations could continue support.
SSystems creating an empty project now on github could open up both a Discussion section and a kan ban Project to organize this plan.
In this way, by funding the kickstarter, the original author has at least committed to some additional development if the stretch goals are reached.
Once it's open-source, anyone who's more proficient and frustration-tolerant than me regarding AUv3 can do this!
I think 100k is highly unrealistic.
But maybe for (kick)starters: As you created the thread, can you still attach a poll? Maybe something along the lines:
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That might give us some rough general idea about the feasibility.
Yes, I would probably be putting it on GitHub, but let someone else manage the repository, as I have zero experience with it and frankly find the whole thing strange. (but yes, I know everyone uses it.)
I would be in for $150 without even thinking about it if it meant I could get audio tracks/auv3 hosting as has been hinted. Might even remove the sting of NS2 never quite getting there.
Thanks! AUv3 hosting is actually already in, just needs some (maybe a lot 🥴) polish and optimization before release. More details at a later point!
It’s a tricky prospect, what really made the blender open sourcing a success was the community that was already invested in helping themselves; writing scripts and sharing tutorials at first, but as time went on, becoming integral to the development process, Ton might have been the chief coder and figurehead but he very quickly became more of a CEO figure and delegated those tasks (really damn well it has to be said!). The €100k also helped to start the foundation which took care of the legacy and has guided the project over the last two and a bit decades. It’s really a unique thing I think, maybe the scale/scope of it as a product makes it more useful to more people and thus further propels the momentum of it. It’s the scale of it that really doesn’t compare, I can’t remember the amount of users they already had but it must have been in the high tens of thousands at that point, if not more, I’m not sure how xequence compares? (The X is a good start though, lots of great Linux projects are x whatever, I actually thought that it was for a while😅)
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I would be happy to contribute to either idea.
You won't know till well after the project goes open source whether anyone with the skill to pull it off will actually add any of the features you want. Making something open-source doesn't mean anyone will actually develop new versions.
AudioKit Synth One is open source. Lots of people want it as an AUv3...in five years no one has made an AUv3 of it.
A lot of the functionality in blender is due to having a scripting system that takes advantage of the internal ui engine. People can create new features using python and import the core ui elements they need from blender.
And I think thats an excellent way to sidestep the Its Done! crowd by integrating a scripting interface that can access the ui and add additional features or even change the whole workflow. The prominent audio engines for scripting being faust, supercollider and puredata. But they are bespoke, and xequence currently provides a serious midi daw setup to script against. Being able to access already built common ui components through scripts may be a tall order to start with though..
And scale and scope of this project captures more interest than say Audiokit Synth One…
I can add a poll, but before people vote shouldn’t we know the details of the kickstarter first? Like what state Xequence will be in when its posted to github, what if any stretch goals, and how will the project be governed? What type of pull-requests will be granted? Because there are many ideas some may be interested in that may be controversial to add even if someone has already written code to do it, and may rather be optionally used as a plugin?
7systems is already a known quality developer. I think outlining a vision of future direction after the kickstarter is finished would go a long way . And some people may want to give more money based on the vision, not just what they will get here and now.
The more the xequence system design is exposed, the easier it will be for people to suggest ideas, because they can point to the design section. And being open to sky is the limit suggestions will allow people to know what the real limitations are.
For me, I would be happy to put in more money based on a future vision. The cost of the app is nothing compared to the time and effort each user invests in the app. If a 15 dollar app costs me 20 hours of effort to get good at it and finally learn I don’t want to use it, or it will never handle my use case, the largest cost was my 20 hours, not the 15 dollars. And how many of the 427 ipad apps do I use? How much time did I spend trying to find the right app that has the right workflow, and exploring all the work arounds that may give me what I wanted? After 2 years on this thing, Id say every daw gets me 50 to 70 % there and then lets me down. There is no 'hey well thats a cool workflow for sometimes’. More like ‘based on this design pattern given, if I could just add these 2 minor features somehow, and I know the dev will never’
Very true. I was just daydreaming about a daw I like to use actually having all the features, workflow, and UI that I want. The Synth One reference really killed that buzz though, lol
One thing to very carefully consider is the licensing type. It would need to be App Store compatible for starters.
Then there is how App Store publishing could work. Apps have to be published by a licensed developer. That implies some entity needs to be the publisher of the official latest release(s) and the TestFlight releases, if TestFlight is used. I'm not sure how concepts such as "nightly builds" might work in that scenario.
Open source is ... complicated ... when it comes to the App Store. There is the possibility of that opening up in the future though, which would make all this easier.
Sorry to be so totally honest here ... I wouldn't contribute to a kick starter that doesn't somehow include a guaranteed future as an AUv3 plugin. I don't care about AUv3 plugin hosting because without audio tracks there's not enough advantage over NS2 anyway. [edit ... well there is MPE editing support though.]
Those are good questions
Not sure I’d want Xequence to turn into a DAW. I’d prefer doubling down on the midi editing and streamlining even further. Even FL mobile isn’t hosting AUv3s yet, probably because it’s a pita.
Also 5 figures seems a tall order, unless there is a big silent chunk of individuals interested in actually getting involved? Is there any iOS music forum more active than this one? How big is the current user base of Xequence?
Yes, the scale of the projects is very different. That's why I'm also aiming for a much lower figure potentially. And I'm very familiar with Blender and how it went open-source as I was one of the first contributors!
Xequence's user numbers are roughly one order of magnitude lower than Blender's I'd say. But again -- so is the proposed Kickstarter aim!
And yes, lots of good Linux projects start with X. Especially X11 / Xorg. Too bad it is being abandoned (unsuccessfully) for a half-assed protocol that starts with a W that nobody really thought through 😂 (a very 21th century thing in general...)
I had actually envisioned a scripting system akin to Blender's at one point. It would fit neatly into Xequence's general architecture, as most of its logic and UI code runs as JavaScript! So integrating scripting functionality would be pretty straightforward. Most of Xequence's logic and UI is already running in a WKWebView, i.e., HTML / CSS / JavaScript.
(most code is actually CoffeeScript compiled to JavaScript, and anyone who'd have used CS in the past would agree that it's far more elegant than even the most modern JS... but then, after potential open-sourcing it would probably be wiser to do one "clean" compilation run to JS and then use that as the base for future contributions, as I imagine working directly on the CoffeeScript code would severely limit the amount of potential contributors...)
Yes, I totally agree. As mentioned, I've started to write up an outline of Xequence's design and how it could be governed in the future. I'm aiming to bring that document into a proper mostly finished state shortly.
I've researched this a bit, and it seems like GPLv3 is actually (now) compatible with the App Store. So no problems there!
I would be happy to keep Xequence published under the Seven Systems account on the App Store (including the fees involved), but I'm not sure that's a very "community" compatible way of doing it. Maybe a more "neutral" maintainer should do the App Store publishing?
I'd say this is the most active forum for iOS-related music software. The current user base is in the thousands. It depends on how you define "current" (active vs. total installs etc.)
Im not opposed leaving it coffeescript. Probably much easier to read and maintain.
I routinely see board games and little 100 page game books on kickstarter raise over 100k. I don’t think it’s about the product, more about raising awareness and interest. This is where planning ahead and believing in your vision can make a huge difference.
I might support a Kickstarter to develop a new feature, such as AUv3
But for reasons that others mention, I wouldn't support a kickstart to open-source Xequence, unless there is an org or champion who will lead it.
An OSS app still needs an Apple Developer to release it.
An OSS project needs an active community to maintain it. That is something that needs to be grown, not purchased.
Perhaps AudioKit would like to step in?
Would this possibly be where establishing a foundation would come into play? I don't know anything about that kind of thing, but have this vague picture of a separate entity with some governance structure that owns and maintains the developer account?
Yes, that's basically what happened with Blender back then. However, I'm really not well-versed in these kinds of things (that's put very euphemistically). Maybe Ton R. can be of help 😜
An open source community supported ios daw doesn't exist yet, and a tight community like ios music development could collaborate on something the exclusive and subscription daws will never make.
A single synth app or effect plugin may have a few interested parties, but I would suspect a full featured open daw project would have a much wider appeal. And there is nothing preventing xequence from functioning as both a plugin and host.
Instead of complaining to a possibly uninterested corporation or dev, it would only take a few knowledgeable people to add a new optional feature plugin using well known dev environment and the most popular scripting language known.
Its a great opportunity for every iOS musician and the foundation has already been laid.
tbh, none of that resonates with me. Look at LMMS. Open source but more innovative or well tailored to musicians? Not IMO. Plus the potential interest pool of people who can develop for iOS is probably a tiny a fraction of that of the Linux community. LMMS does very little for me and it has had a runway of many years. I can't see it happening on iOS even with a good foundation like Xequence 2.
I'm genuinely sorry to be negative, but I just can't picture something that grand really happening. That's just me though!
I think I must bow out at this point. Other than preserving the legacy of Xequence 2, evolving it into an AUv3 plugin, and giving @SevenSystems a much deserved return for his labor, I just don't see successful scope expansion ever taking hold. A kick starter framed with those ambitions probably wouldn't get my participation.
Once again, I really apologize, and don't want to drag a great discussion down. I will be quietly watching with great interest though.
Personally I like to hear the negative if its an honest discussion. And opposing views help illuminate and refine ideas.
Lmms, just like the Synth One mention from a different poster just doesn’t seem a good comparison.
Development language is not a minor detail (cpp vs js). Nor is community attention, in this case a pretty focused yet smaller group in the greater scheme to desktop daws where sometimes a larger community can be a hindrance. With a larger space, more players, and better options, a project like Lmms may have a more difficult time attracting people.
And then, it also comes down to ui and workflow, and Lmms’ version may not appeal. Which is entirely the benifit of having an accessible ui and scripting interface, to make it easier to customize. After all, how many people want to write front end ui in cpp? I have, and I stopped. And it wasnt because cpp is too low level - it is - it’s because the linking, makefiles, and insane stacktraces when you accidentally didnt comment out one unused library. Ie JS/coffeescript is a solid choice, and much more accessible than cpp.
Which makes me wonder how a plugin system would work in ios app development. Ive never developed for ios… I don’t want to make assumptions of what ios apps are allowed to do. But seeing as how mozaic allows you to just dump code in, im sure there will be good options
interesring, somehow i always thought Xsequence may be clssic JS app wrapped inside WKWebView .. i guess that is main reason you never added audio part (plugins, or even audio tracks) - inguess it’s hard to combine audio engine (and especially plugins UI) with WKWebView app, isn’t it ?
Btw lot’s of disxussion here, can’t go throught all posts, bur did you somewhwre summarized your motivation and especially your goals, reasons why and what is your best case scenario for going opensource ?
In guess you want to do something what Deluge dev did ? Community developed app where you validate all updates and then publish it in appstore ?
I’m just interested about what is your plan with this … sounds like interesting project for me to contribute cause JS is my main language (you mentioned idea of using plain JS for distribution instead of CS, i think that would be wise choice) for pretty long time and i have also some experience with hybrid WKWebView based apps (curious - do you use cordova or you build the x-code part of project completely yourself ?)
He mentioned it’s WKwebView app written mostly in Javascript wirh UI defined usinh HTML/CSS - this approach makes it actually very accessible for lot of devs, in this case you don’t need that much of Apple API and Ojectice C/C/Swift knowledge. (just some basics) - so in fact you may have actually even bigger potenrial devs pool than for linux app coded most likely in C++
I agree with wim, I don't see how simply open-sourcing it is likely to lead to actual successful development. I think you would need to find a developer or developers that would commit to actually doing the work...and somehow provide an incentive to doing the work. Blender is not a very apt analogy, in my opinion. There was a highly motivated community of sophisticated users (3D animation requires a lot more user know than MIDI sequencing does) and the paid software it replaces was very very very expensive.
SevenSystems suggested that the Blender user base is an order of magnitude bigger than Xequences'. My guess is that the Blender user base is orders of magnitude larger.
Merely making the project open source doesn't make it likely that it will be actively and competently developed.