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Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

Looks to be a extensive update with lots of new and useful features, thanks as always PaulDavisThe1st :) Especially Arrangement and Quick Groups will be good time savers for me!

> For several years, people downloading Ardour for macOS have had to deal with various kinds of messages (from Apple) saying things like "This program comes from an untrusted source" to "The file is damaged". As of Ardour 8, macOS users downloading Ardour won't see this stuff any more, because we have given up and paid $100 to join Apple's pay-to-play scheme. Our builds are all notarized now, and so people on macOS should have the same smooth experience they get from other macOS software downloads.

Hope macOS users live up to the commonly referenced "Apple users are more likely to pay for software" and donate either time or money to Ardour if they use it, as it seems making applications available to them cost developers actual money now.

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I thought Ardour was a commercial product? If you want to download a binary from their site it's either a demo version with injected silence every 10 minutes, or a paid-for option (either a small monthly sub or a larger one-off payment). You can build it locally yourself for free of course, but I don't know if many non-devs would do that.

It is not really a commercial product, rather it follows an old, but somewhat rare, tradition of making usage slightly more difficult in order to raise funds. OpenBSD used to do the same and not provide pre-built images to raise funds via CD sales from those that could not be bothered to learn how to build images from the source code. You can certainly object to this, but I do find it reasonable as there are few good ways to fund open source software.

As for Ardour itself, it is clearly completely open source [1].

https://git.ardour.org/ardour/ardour/src/branch/master/COPYI...

You're talking about orthogonal concepts.

Ardour is free software (and therefore open source). Ardour is not proprietary software.

Ardour is a commercial product. They sell pre-built binaries, updates (perhaps some level of guarantee/support for those binaries?) etc. Ardour is not "freeware", shareware or a hobby project or anything else like that.

I am not sure it is clear cut as you present it. Clearly Ardour the project is not a commercial product and the same should go for the source code. Arguably the pre-compiled binaries are a commercial product as they are presented to a market for a price (although the same of course does not hold for Ardour binaries provided through package managers and elsewhere). To me, the confusion mostly arises from the fact that we use Ardour to refer to all of the above, while clearly they are all different things.

Ardour certainly looks like a commercial project to me. I think this thinking arises from a couple of misapprehensions, namely:

1. Commerce is bad and somehow at odds with free software and the GPL,

2. The only way to do any kind of software trade is proprietary software.

In fact, commerce is beautiful and a cornerstone of economics and our civilisation. Most people in the free software community are not opposed to commerce. What they are opposed to is proprietary software. That is, claiming ownership of software and therefore doing commerce based mostly on rent-seeking and retaining power over said users. Free software and the GPL aims to disable this, but it does not disable, nor does it oppose, commercial software, unless you believe (2), which is evidently false, as you can see with Ardour.

I am not sure how Ardour would feel about being referred to as a commercial project. But I do suspect if you went back in time and sent an e-mail to misc@ ten years ago calling OpenBSD a commercial project because they sold CDs you would be told to take a hike. I will just agree to disagree on this one. You seem to want to make a bigger point about software and commerce and all I see are shades of grey in that commercialisation is not clear cut and neither is what is a project, its outcomes, etc.

I think GP makes a reasonable point about what commercial actually means. If you are selling something, that's commerce. If the Ardour dev or OpenBSD devs don't like it, then they are free to adopt a euphemism that makes them feel better about it, but that appeal to authority doesn't change the meaning of the term. I think that actually further reinforces GP's point about how the term "commercial software" has become a dirty word.

Now that said, I do support avoiding language that is offensive to people even if it doesn't seem to me like it should be (so long as it's still clear what is being communicated. I don't like Orwellian expressions).

I don't object to it at all, I think it's a great idea. We need more models of supporting open-source, including financial ones. BTW I also don't see commercial and open-source as intrinsically opposed to each other - projects can be both, and I wish more were.

It's also just packaged in Debian which means any distro based on it likely have it.

"Give your stuff away for free to devs" is a pretty good idea for both free and nonfree software. (And Linux users are, for now, still likely to be developer type people than not).

> I thought Ardour was a commercial product?

Ardour is licensed under GPLv2.

That is unrelated. Things licensed as open source can still be commercial products. Ardour is open source and can be freely build and distributed, but it's also available as a pre-build product to pay for.

> it's also available as a pre-build product to pay for

Show me where to pay for the pre-built product:

https://community.ardour.org/download?platform=linux&archite...

All I see is a direct download link. If you want to pay that's optional.

Have you pressed that button?

""" Subscribe

$1, $4, $10 or $50 per month ... """

""" Single Payment

If you choose to pay less than US$45 ... """

""" Free/Demo Version

Periodically goes silent after 10 minutes.

No access to nightly (development) builds. """

And, if you wonder, you can't enter 0 for the payment.

Ah I see, so that's what it looks like when you're not using a linux distro to obtain Ardour. And no, I never pressed the button because I just get it through Ubuntu Studio, and I've been using Ardour for years, for my simple (but frequent, multiple times per day) needs whatever version is in there is plenty.

Ardour is very high quality for FOSS. There are many distros that include a free version of Ardour. Ubuntu Studio[1] for instance, and then there are distributions where installing it is an apt-get[2] or yum[3] or whatever[4] away, and paying for it is optional.

[1] https://ubuntustudio.org/2022/11/ardour-7-1-backports-availa...

[2] https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=ardour

[3] https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/ardour7/ardour7/

[4] https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/ardour/

There's also a distinct commercial DAW based on Ardour called Harrison Mixbus.

https://harrisonconsoles.com/product/mixbus/

I don't think macOS users have any more or less responsibility paying for this software than Linux users. $100 compared to the development resources that went into this is nothing, and the developers realised that, too.

100 USD a year (more in Switzerland because Apple doesn't even pay for the taxes) is not nothing. Why should I pay to place apps that I spend my free time to develop and offer for free? Apple should at least not charge a recurring fee if all apps posted are open source and free.

At least over at Google it is a one time fee.

I'd also prefer if there was no $100 to pay. But it is a fair price, and I find the attitude of programmers that everything should be free quite damaging. If you want to donate your free time, that's really up to you. Don't construe constraints for other people or companies from that.

I don't want it to be free. I want Apple to not lie that "This application is damaged" when I don't pay them.

I don't recall the exact message, but I don't think they say it is damaged. They will probably say something like it may be damaged. Which is perfectly true, as they have no means of verifying its integrity.

https://ardour.org/images/thanksapple.png

Ok, that's bad. I fully agree.

> I find the attitude of programmers that everything should be free quite damaging.

Many dead UNIX vendors agree.

It's more a matter of principle ?

IMHO it should be illegal (for a for-profit corporation) to own both the OS and an application store (at least the kind featuring third-party software) - you cannot expect them to be a fair judge of who gets in there and who doesn't !

You can still run the software, but Apple make it harder to do so (you probably have to Google how to do it). You could argue this both ways, I think there's value to the defaults making it harder for your average user to run software which could be unsafe... just think how bad the malware problem used to be on Windows for example.

The malware problem used to be bad on Windows because everything had admin access. And the later "we don't have this program in our database, do you still want to execute it?" dialog wasn't too bad (especially when paired with an integrated blacklist of known malware !).

And why do you assume that other software distributors than OS makers aren't going to do due diligence ?

Nah, I think it's perfectly fair to charge more for a mac version of a program, especially if it's a donation funded open-source one. If you can afford a macintosh, you're more likely to also be able to afford a couple of bucks to support it.

I'd be willing to bet the demographics of those on Hackernews aren't exactly in the "I'm using Linux because I cannot afford to use any other OS" crowd.

It is the other way around. Linux users should be more vigilant about donating to the projects they find important if they care for the longevity of the project continuing as desktop Linux is a very tiny market to support and has heavy fragmentation issues within it.

Seconded. I can afford any OS but I'm using Linux out of principle. It's also - at least for me - the most seamless developer experience out there because I'm running the same OS on servers and my desktop. Whenever I have to work with Windows or a Mac I feel like a fish out of the water.

> as desktop Linux is a very tiny market to support and has heavy fragmentation issues within it.

It's also free to use and distribute software on, regardless of the hardware/software you own. That's the big difference. Plus, MacOS also commands a relatively small market share with it's own fragmentation issues (doubly so if you're cross-platform).

If Mac users want perpetual builds of their software, they have to perpetually fund a development environment. Linux doesn't really work the same way.

Yes, of course it is fair. You can charge whatever you want for your program. But Ardour is free. Accepting donations is not the same as charging for something.

Technically speaking, ardour.org charges for a build service.

You can get the source code for free from us (either as a tarball or via git). You can get the source code or the binary from somebody else.

But if you want to get the binary from us, we ask you pay at least US$1.

OK, I see, I didn't know that. I was just clicking through to the macos download without actually downloading anything. By the way, there still seems to be a notice before download that macOS will say that the app is damaged, although now it won't complain after notarisation, right?

I actually moved away from Apple/Swift development because of the limitations they place on you even if you pay (I cannot embed an interpreter in my iOS app, really?), and am now coding in TypeScript. So while the $100 are not a big deal, I think, it's a symptom of something that's wrong.

You also need to afford a Mac machine for testing as a dev. That's another few hundred bucks on top. I don't think macOS users have a bigger responsibility for paying, but as a publisher I would always make a paid macOS version just to try to regain those expenses again. Time is not equal to money for many people

> I don't think macOS users have any more or less responsibility paying for this software than Linux users

I don't think that either, it's only a hope from my side. A hope that they recognize that the binary they are using cost someone money to generate only because of restrictions put forward by Apple.

They didn't do that for the Windows version though:

> Because we object to paying Microsoft for the privilege of allowing you to more easily use our work, this application is unsigned (more information here).

We will likely start doing Windows notarization during the 8.x series. Our friends at Harrison, who make Mixbus (based on Ardour) already figured it all out a long time ago; it's a bit more complex than the macOS version of the process.

The message is a little confused--Microsoft never charged for code signing. You don't pay Microsoft. You have to get a code signing certificate from a third party CA; you choose your favorite. Microsoft themselves doesn't offer them.

This is different than notarization. Notarization is a process by which Apple centrally scans your binary and decides if it's ok, then stamps their approval on the binary if so. Code signing is a process by which you sign your own binary so that users (and, more importantly, Windows) know it's from you.

Microsoft doesn't do notarization, instead relying on the reputation of the certificate and their client-side malware scanner. The reputation from one executable you sign with the certificate carries over to other executables that you sign with the same certificate (e.g. newer versions of the same app). This impacts SmartScreen prompts. If you get an EV certificate you get the initial reputation for free and can skip SmartScreen prompts out of the gate.

source: have done it; my open source Windows app is signed with my Sectigo certificate

> Hope macOS users live up to the commonly referenced "Apple users are more likely to pay for software" and donate either time or money to Ardour if they use it, as it seems making applications available to them cost developers actual money now.

Just make it $5 on macos. If Mac users can support this shitty company they can actually pay for other software too.

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