Open source firmware

[megamarkd]

Nobody with a solvent company will do it.  It's like putting the tools to make money into the hands of privateers.  What's to stop someone from creating something like Zaquencer for the BSP if the firmware was released as open source?  People will buy firmware if it's good.  That's money that Arturia won't see for their box and the coding that makes it work.  Sure the coder did work hard to mod the firmware, but if it's open source, they paid jack shit to Arturia to create their sellable product.  As my mate who makes music for money said, "I'm a musician, not a coder. I don't want to learn electronics/C++ to make a sequencer/effect/synth, that's why I pay for Synthrotek gadgets".  His money should go to the people who conceived the product, developed the product, produced and marketed the product.  Not someone who has taken the finished product and tweaked it.
Mutable Instruments release their firmware into the public realm, but only after the product has been discontinued.  It's helped with keeping MIDIPal alive, with a few great mods of that product available, but Mutable Instruments gave up on making money from MIDIPal before they gave it to others to do so.

[FastGraph]

Nobody with a solvent company will do it.

Mutable Instruments release their firmware into the public realm, but only after the product has been discontinued.  It's helped with keeping MIDIPal alive, with a few great mods of that product available, but Mutable Instruments gave up on making money from MIDIPal before they gave it to others to do so.

1st. Look at Red Hat, their whole existence is based on Open Source and they had a $2.05 billion revenue last year. Red Hat even buys proprietary companies and Open Source the products that come with them.

2nd. Mutable Instruments Open Source their hard and software by default and from day 1.

Arturia and it's customers will be better of with Open Source software. The software will be of higher quality with less bugs, bugs that do exist will probably be fixed sooner, see more features and would be updated a lot more frequent. For Arturia to have control over the software they will have to actively participate within the community (which won't be that large) that's working on the software. This is how they can make sure their hardware works best with the publicly available software. If someone forks it to use on their own hardware, let them. If you GPL the software they are obligated to release their enhancements back to the public. See what changes they made and use it to make your own product better. I can go on for a few but what it basically comes down to releasing the firmware to the public is this: Everybody wins...

[Lenny]

@FastGraph, I totally agree.

Another benefit you missed out, is that open source software isn't just about improving the stock firmware, there's also the possibility of 'alternative' firmware, giving the device completely different functionality.  Like turning the BSP into a chip-tune synth, for example.  :-)

I've a lot of admiration for Mutable Instruments -- quality hardware, innovative software, and his allowing other people to re-purpose his hardware.  His instruments are truly mutable.

[funktree]

...firmware comes free.

...Really