Kickstarter for Linux App Skins?

[downerczx]

Hello,

I've been using linux for a long time for music apps, I used to have a blog called "Linux Rock Star" (linuxrockstar.blogspot.com). Anyway, I'm continually blown away by the sound quality of a lot of Linux apps, but am always disappointed with the skins/guis. For example, the yoshimi/zynaddsubfx synths sound spectacular, but the interface (IMHO) looks less than spectacular.

What if we did a kickstarter to hire some GUI artists to do some quality skins for some of our favorite apps? It might require programmers to be on board, however, where the applications are not skinnable.

Do you have a program you would like to have a quality skin for? Post it here.

My list:
Yoshimi/zynaddsubfx
Seq24

does anyone see any potential for this idea?

thanks

[danboid]

falktx has posted (links to) screenshots of a new skin that the dev of the non tools has created for zyn. It looks a lot better to me but you still have essentially the same GUI - it just doesn't look as naff now. I'm sure F will post the link again for you here.

I'm not following zyn dev as I have 100% abandoned it for the infinitely superior (IMO) Aspect and Noisemaker synths and the main reason I have disowned it is its huge, oversized, over-complex multi-window FLTK GUI that should've been replaced by a much more compact QT4 one many moons ago. QT5 runs on Android now btw - just a small hint to any devs looking for something to do!

I would fund somebody wanting to add plugin support to MusE. Apart from that and a few qtractor features I'd like to see get finally "Rui'd" Linux audio is feeling pretty complete and 'very nearly there' to me these days.

[downerczx]

I wish we could do a kickstarter for developers to port plugins to Linux... or some kind of incentive to get them over. I emailed U-he today and they said while not opposed to it, they have no plans to port their plugins to Linux.

Incentive needs to be created.

[brummer]

The non gui patches are documented here:
http://non.tuxfamily.org/wiki/index.php?page=NtkPatches
(note that this is not my work).

Looks to me like there are the guitarix-knob-images in use.

[StephDAVOS]

This is probably off-topic but I would like that plugin GUIs could improve too. Actually, I would like that plugins GUIs became skinable. I guess one way to make it happen would be to come up with some skinable plugin host featuring builtin MIDI controler that would let users drive loaded plugins through pushing buttons and tweaking knobs. Carla could probably make this happen. I don't know much about how GUIs are made but if somebody could come up with some WYSIWYG editor, then it would be pleasure for enthousiasts like me to compose and exchange alternative GUIs for their favorite plugins.

[wolftune]

This is premature, but I just want to make some tiny waves here…

I've been working for the last two months on founding a completely new fundraising system for FLOSS and Free Cultural Works.
I'm currently recruiting steering committee members, invitation only.
There are fundamental problems with kickstarter and other funding systems, and we're working to address these in a way that is better for encouraging everyone to chip in.
I'm mentioning this because, well, if you need to do some fundraising in the very near future, do whatever you need to do.
But long-term, my system (which will be cooperatively run, btw) will be better for us than using kickstarter or indiegogo etc.

Contact me if interested. We're just getting to the point of sharing things with a limited audience.
I'll be sending private invites to people soon.

Anyway, if things go as I hope, this will make a real impact on support for FLOSS and could include GUI projects and whatever else.

Cheers,
Aaron

[Scary Hallo]

The non gui patches are documented here:
http://non.tuxfamily.org/wiki/index.php?page=NtkPatches
(note that this is not my work).

Is there a chance that we see zynsubaddfx with this GUI in kxStudio?

[brummer]

The non gui patches are documented here:
http://non.tuxfamily.org/wiki/index.php?page=NtkPatches
(note that this is not my work).

Looks to me like there are the guitarix-knob-images in use.

he mentioned that, yes.
it's not easy to find proper artwork with a proper license these days...

Let me give a note on that.
Thus knob image is designed by kickback (Pete Shorthose) as part of the guitarix project, as such it underlay the same license as the hole project, and that is for files which are not explicit defined to use a other license (BSD and GPL v3+ are in use as well), the GPL v2+.
Now I see the knobs as part of a website witch is marked as

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

That is the first point which seems strange to me. Anyhow, lets go a bit, lately the knob images are used in zynaddsubfx, which is distributed under the GPL v2. Please not the missing "+", that mean it is a downgrade of the license we have choose to distribute the image under. At least, the minimum requirement for the knob image is the GPL v2+.
So to full fill the needs of our license, it is needed to add a note to the sources that thus image is created by Pete Shorthose, that it is a part of the guitarix project, and that it therewith underlay the GPL v2+ in opposite to the rest of zynaddsubfx, which is distributed under the GPL v2.

You may think it is nitpicking, but I guess the minimum required respect is to give credits for the original author, and respect the given license, especial if a real free license is chosen. If we miss that, we didn't must wonder why it is . . .

not easy to find proper artwork with a proper license these days..

[brummer]

well, it's not really useful for you to tell me that, I'm not the author of zynaddsubfx or the gui-update ccde.

Didn't know what you mean by that, useful for me??, you are the promoter here and the upcoming distributor of this, so I tell it to you.
As well for the topic, it could be useful to know for anyone here that Pete Shorthose is the talented designer who create the knobs,

[Scary Hallo]

Yes, and will come as soon as zynaddsubfx-dssi works again, currently broken in latest git.

Saw the update today! Great! Thank you.

As I alway say: KXStudio rocks!!!!

[raboof]

Thus knob image is designed by kickback (Pete Shorthose) as part of the guitarix project, as such it underlay the same license as the hole project, and that is (...) the GPL v2+.
Now I see the knobs as part of a website witch is marked as

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

That is the first point which seems strange to me.

Yeah, that doesn't seem quite accurate.

the knob images are used in zynaddsubfx, which is distributed under the GPL v2. Please not the missing "+", that mean it is a downgrade of the license we have choose to distribute the image under. At least, the minimum requirement for the knob image is the GPL v2+.
So to full fill the needs of our license, it is needed to add a note to the sources that thus image is created by Pete Shorthose, that it is a part of the guitarix project, and that it therewith underlay the GPL v2+ in opposite to the rest of zynaddsubfx, which is distributed under the GPL v2.

You may think it is nitpicking

I think this is actually important. However, you seem to imply works released under the 'GPLv2+' cannot be used in works released under the 'GPLv2'. This is incorrect. There is no such thing as the 'GPLv2+ License': 'GPLv2+' is shorthand for the following sentence in the commonly used preamble (not license):

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

In other words: as a recipient of this software, you get to *choose* under which version of the License you redistribute. So it is perfectly OK to take software licensed under the GPLv2+ and redistribute it under just GPLv2 (or just GPLv3, or just GPLv4 if that ever happens, or all of them).

(this might be a bit of a tangent, if we continue this thread of the conversation it might be good to split it out into its own topic, in order not to interfere too much with the original discussion)

[brummer]

Is GPLv3 compatible with GPLv2? (#v2v3Compatibility)

No. Some of the requirements in GPLv3, such as the requirement to provide Installation Information, do not exist in GPLv2. As a result, the licenses are not compatible: if you tried to combine code released under both these licenses, you would violate section 6 of GPLv2.

However, if code is released under GPL “version 2 or later,” that is compatible with GPLv3 because GPLv3 is one of the options it permits.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.htm ... patibility

[raboof]

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.htm ... patibility

Right - that does not disagree with what I just wrote.

[brummer]

Well, it did.
zynaddsubfx is distributed under the plain GPL v2 only, there isn't a preamble like

. . . either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

in there license file.
so, if you add files which underlay a higher GPL version number, the higher license becomes the valuable for the hole project. You cant re-license a file from GPL v2+ to GPL v2, how you like, special if you ain’t the owner of the copyright.
Have a closer look to what you have wrote

. . . either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

any later, well that is true, but not any former.

[raboof]

zynaddsubfx is distributed under the plain GPL v2 only

Correct.

there isn't a preamble like

. . . either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

in their license file.

Correct: it's the guitarix files that are released under 'version 2 or later' (though not all of them use the common preamble text).

so, if you add files which underlay a higher GPL version number, the higher license becomes the valuable for the hole project. You cant re-license a file from GPL v2+ to GPL v2, how you like

'GPLv2+' is not a license, so indeed you cannot 're-license' from that.

Have a closer look to what you have wrote

. . . either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

any later, well that is true, but not any former.

The key word here is: 'or'.

These guitarix files are 'GPLv2 or later'. This means they can be redistributed under GPLv2 *or* under GPLv3. There is no obligation to redistribute under both.