The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I pay for all the software I use.

B4II, Cubase SX3, Ozone 3, Guitar Rig II, Amplitube, Waves gold package...

All of it. I absolutely paid for it.

I steal all of my hardware, though.

I try to buy, both music and software, especially when it comes to artists and/or programs that I admire. But I'm not above searching for a song on dogpile.com audio search, since it's really the one song I'm after. If I hear more from an artist and like it, I buy the CD.

I do not pay for my software.

I'm Open Source all the way.

I have to use Open Source software if I want to instill good values in my children.

... you know, good Open Source values...

While Open Source has certainly been beneficial, it seems like there's a limit to how good OSS can get when it comes to non-essential apps. I personally use a mixture of OSS and commercial software, and when it comes to art and music, the commercial stuff just blows the OSS stuff away.

More and more OSS is being developed by companies who have an interest in improving the OSS to professional levels, but unfortunately that also rather self-selects which sorts of things get improved. It's highly beneficial to Internet companies to help improve Apache. It's not so beneficial for, say, Adobe to help improve GIMP. (That said I am aware of how various film studios have helped to improve CinePaint or whatever the deep-color fork of GIMP is called these days, but the film production world has a very different set of needs from the graphic design world.)

I think the main difference is one of culture. The creative-tool makers see the tools themselves as the product, and a lot of that is probably because the creative tools are digital replacements for physical tools, which have an intrinsic value. And, since the tools themselves are generally the smallest expense for any of the big players in the creative production service industry, there's no real incentive for them to help improve the OSS tools.

I think that eventually, certain OSS projects will reach a state where they're almost good enough that the professionals start taking interest in improving them further, but that's probably a long ways off for music. Audio programming is a pretty dang specialized field and people in a specialized field tend not to work for free.