> Moselle looks interesting and useful and is definitely worth spending time > on. In a way I am sympathetic about the comments about subscription > fatigue. I am a user of MuseScore music notation software. Even though I > like the software tremendously I had to unsubscribe from the forum.
Hi Linda, Thanks for giving it some consideration. To be clear there is no daily mail or anything on the forum. There's a "mass mailing" to announce a new version, and there's only been one such mail (for the initial release) and not expected to be more often than once a month. I've thought about removing this requirement and haven't for the following reasons: 1) probably almost zero chance of this, but the most serious consideration: should there turn out to be a security problem with Moselle I'd like a way to reach all people who've downloaded it as fast as possible with instructions to either delete it or upgrade it. Such a possibility isn't unique to Moselle; in fact this is true of literally any software. You should be worried about any software you've installed from Microsoft or Apple down to the smallest VST plug-in vendor that DOESN'T give the developer a way to reach you. 2) if the download is anonymous, Moselle will be automatically found and copied by "free download sites" that re-offer the software as free-ware or share-ware and without any connection to the forum and so on. Such sites have higher Google priority than I ever will and it will be hard for people to even find the bona fide site. Meanwhile such sites often require you to use "advertising-supported download managers" and so on that give you adware or worse. Finally, were the community to get used to the idea of downloading Moselle from shareware sites, it opens up the possibility that such sites offer something more sinister--viruses and the like--under the name. I don't want my name associated with adware or viruses, and making a non-membership download makes such a result almost certain. 3) frankly this is power software with a steep learning curve. Furthermore its so new I'm positive it has bugs. Right now I would almost guarantee that even in trying to get a feel for it you'll have problems and questions, at which point you'd need a web forum membership to post a question. 4) I'd say that even getting it installed and started once--before you even make your first sound--takes 5x longer than signing up for the membership, then reading through the first chapter or two of tutorial examples will be an hour or two, 100x longer than the signup. The whole tutorial maybe 10 hours? In short, if you don't have time to get the web account, you REALLY don't have time to even look at Moselle. Its a complete programming language and software development environment. Its not some pretty box that does one thing which will be obvious just by looking at it. 5) its commercial software, and the price for the stand-alone version isn't monetary but is meant to be at least one feedback. Given the experience, planning, and development, and that the result is (I think) one of the top most powerful half-dozen synthesis tools available, I don't think this is too much. So again, if you choose to actually pay the price--a feedback--you will need the forum membership anyway. The only people for whom a membership is superfluous are people that a priori plan to steal it by not paying the "price" of a feedback. If you or anyone has a way to meet the above goals without requiring a membership I'm all ears, but I'm even more eager to have actual feedback on the software. (To date I've had none.) -- dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website: subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
