[Solar-general] "I think the time may have come to declare the A/DeMuDi project closed."

Lun Ene 15 19:18:34 CET 2007

Es una pena porque  A/DeMuDi es una distro que tenía gran cantidad de 
usuarios, aportó mucho al SL en realación al audio, música, multimedia, y es 
considerada 100% libre por FSF.

No está todo dicho, pero ciertamente, sin ningún trabajo serio en esta distro 
desde abril de 2005, es abandonware: software abandonado, y reemplazado por 
64studio, creado por parte de lo que era el equipo de A/DeMuDi, que al no 
tener más financiación por parte de una empresa que ayudaba, decidió seguir 
su propio camino comercial... aunque no sé qué nivel de compromiso con el 
software 100% libre tiene 64studio, más teniendo en cuenta que deriva de 
ubuntu, pero, ya digo, no lo sé, al menos el kernel parece 100%, dado que 
además es recompilado especialmente para las tareas multimedia.

Este es un mail esclarecedor sobre la situación:

Re: [a-users] Upgrading ardour in Demudi 1.2.0 + Re : test
De: Daniel James <daniel en 64studio.com>
  Para: tim hall <tim en glastonburymusic.org.uk>
  CC: Andrea Glorioso <andrea en digitalpolicy.it>, AGNULA user forum 
<users en lists.agnula.org>, Free Ekanayaka <free en 64studio.com>
  Fecha: 15/01/07 13:06

Hi Tim,

 > I'm using the 32bit packages, I can't
> help feeling this should be called 32studio ;)

I do know what you mean :-)

The idea behind keeping the name the same is that it shouldn't matter to 
the user what kind of PC they have. So if you have a PC that is 32-bit 
now, you can switch to amd64 when you get your next PC, and the 
interface and all your settings will be preserved.

> I don't think I can 
> personally provide any useful support for DeMuDi-1.2.0, it is very old now.

It will get harder and harder to install up-to-date applications on a 
distro which is more than two years old. I think the last A/DeMuDi 
release was 1.2.1-rc2 in April 2005.

> Is anyone else on this list still using 1.2? I think now might be a great 
> time to all switch over to 32/64studio and positively support Daniel and 
Free 
> as that is where the current development effort is happening.

Thanks for the suggestion - we would be very glad to provide a home for 
former DeMuDi users; I am one myself, after all.

I don't know how the AGNULA/DeMuDi community feel about this idea, but I 
think the time may have come to declare the A/DeMuDi project closed. I 
can't decide that of course, since I was never a core member of the 
A/DeMuDi team, but it does look like abandonware now. It might be better 
to shoot it in the head rather than let it die slowly and painfully.

Here are a couple of positive suggestions I can offer:

1. Migrate the users en lists.agnula.org list to 64studio.com and make it a 
general users list for people interested in Debian multimedia, whether 
they are running old releases of DeMuDi or 32-bit builds of 64 Studio. 
To do this, we would need the Mailman data from Andrea.

(As far as I can tell, lists on lists.agnula.org will carry on working 
until the new registrants of agnula.org remember to delete the MX record 
for the subdomain, which still points to the old box at 
agnula.speech.kth.se, IP address 209.68.2.46. The host record for 
lists.agnula.org is now 66.150.161.140, the new registrant's site.)

2. Put out a press release saying that the DeMuDi project is now being 
sponsored by 64 Studio Ltd. and that all former A/DeMuDi users have an 
upgrade path to the 64 Studio 1.0 stable release. Post this news on the 
homepage of agnula.info, and make demudi.org redirect to 64studio.com 
instead of agnula.info.

The alternative would be to renew the agnula.org domain name (they are 
only asking for US $8.50, but I wouldn't trust them with my Visa card), 
re-launch the A/DeMuDi project, start working on new releases etc etc. I 
personally think that would represent a massive and very unnecessary 
duplication of effort.

Please let me know what you think.

Cheers!

Daniel

-- 
Marcos Guglielmetti  
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