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Re: Do we really offer the future?

From: Urs Liska
Subject: Re: Do we really offer the future?
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2015 13:03:41 +0200
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Am 23.04.2015 um 17:04 schrieb Gilles:

Hello.

On Thu, 23 Apr 2015 12:09:29 +0200, Urs Liska wrote:

Hi all,

First of all:
I have _not_ asked "the LilyPond team" to spend any resources for
whatever.


First of all, nobody wrote that you did.
Well, let's say that perhaps your initial reply offered the possibility of misinterpretation. 



Second:
The intention of my post is _not_ to find ways to help publishers do
their business, to help them increase their profit, to "please" them,
to sell LilyPond's soul to the "sharks" or whatever some commenters
wanted to read from it. I must admit it's somewhat disappointing to be
misunderstood that way,


Perhaps your initial post offered the possibility of misinterpretation.
Re-reading it again I see that I didn't explicitly write that my interest is in getting LilyPond a stronger support by opening the door for new users and "customers". And maybe it was naive to assume that I could take this for granted from all the other things I have written over the last two years (from that perspective: what other motivation should I have than to strengthen LilyPond's position?). Probably both is due to the fact that I instantly wrote these messages on may way back home in the bus, after two days at the fair ...
But I can't read anything from it that points to a anything that altruistically takes on the perspective of the publishing industry. 




and I somehow feel attacked below the belt by
such comments.


Nobody attacked you.  [Not even if you actually held the idea of
defending "big publishers" profits (which would be your right).]

I'm sorry that you misinterpreted an honest response to your honest
request for comment as a treacherous personal attack.
I didn't say "treacherous" and I explicitly didn't mean you exclusively (otherwise I'd have said so). 




###


To whom LilyPond should strive to "offer the future"?
IMHO, certainly not to the "[...] big house[s] with traditions,
regulations and limitations".



What's for the LilyPond team in spending resources trying to work around
those self-inflicted limitations?


and


"Can you tell me why we should be interested in helping music
publishers exactly?"


I don't inherently care about the fate of publishing houses. But I
think there are a few "self-inflicted limitations" in LilyPond's
attitude that should be overcome to assist LilyPond to survive or at
least to prevent it from eventually being doomed to insignificance.


I assure you that I understand your frustration (from personal
experience in another project).
As much as I agree with the risk, prediction of doom is not a working
argument (from personal experience in another project...).
You asked for my motivation and intention. And as I care about LilyPond's future and significance this is the answer. 


The main point here is not about helping publishers do their business
but (and that is a point that hasn't been discussed at all in this
thread) to help LilyPond evolving through an increased user and
developer base.


I do agree with that goal, and I did mention the idea of a project
towards that goal (albeit using another direction that would probably
displease the "big publishers").
So then it might be more fruitful to call that another idea, rather than categorically dismissing the efforts of someone who invests considerable time and effort in LilyPond. 




LilyPond's developer base is too thin, to a dramatic extent in my
opinion.
...


I agree as I said above (that lacking resources is a risk).
I understood your original post as doing more with less, in the sense
that "we" (community) should (in order to solve the problem) work
towards satisfying the "limitations" of "big publishers".
I might have misinterpreted, but you did not give explicit examples
beyond the existence of problems with "big publishers" (or IOW "big
publishers having a problem with LilyPond).
OK. This sentence with "limitations" in it was probably sloppy. What I mainly referred to as limitations is the fact that changing technology is a major consideration for anybody, and that I was lacking the striking arguments for pushing someone in the right direction. 



IIUC, your idea is that the user base would grow if LilyPond were used
by big publishers.  This I can perhaps imagine. [Although from what I
read on this list, a "SCORE" program exists that is/was used by
publishers and yet does not seem to have a large user base.]
Yes, SCORE is a commercial program that is still in limited use and which is regarded as superior to all others by some publishers. AFAIK Schott and Carus are two bigger publishers who use SCORE. There's another text based notation program, Amadeus, that is used by a handful of engravers for an even lower number of publishers, with Henle presumably being the most prominent example.
So one new aspect in the discussion is my observation that being based on plain text is not the fundamental obstacle for being adopted in a commercial market. There must be other aspects that belong in the realm of an image that people have, with notions of professionality, reliability, "support", reliable user base etc. 


But I and others highlighted that they might not want to use LilyPond
for the foreseeable future whatever amount of work you put in overcoming
their (or LilyPond's) limitations.
Yes, the might not. But that can't be a reason for me to give up on the idea. 




And LilyPond's user base is too small. The results of my recent
survey make me believe that one cannot wholeheartedly offer LilyPond
services on professional level, as it simply isn't sufficiently clear
that there will be enough capable people around for a long time. It is
a sad irony that you can claim a fundamental superiority of open
standards and plain text file formats, but in reality this doesn't
help anyone because you can't rely on the availability of human
resources.


I agree on the irony.  But is it better in the proprietary world?
The Sibelius case has demonstrated that it is not.
A free software cannot die on the whim of a few individuals. That's
a serious advantage.
Apart from that you compare apples with oranges (software vs. users) that *is* a point. And actually a point I'm trying to make and that *does* have its impact, as far as I can see from my talks. But the point is somewhat futile if there is no reliable user base available. 



But "big publishers" don't want to contribute
to make LilyPond up to their business processes...


I wouldn't stick to that yet.
As I said above pubishers *do* use at least two text based notation programs, and e.g. Schott would have been willing to invest a six-figure amount of money for one of them. So *if* they could be convinced of using LilyPond, and for example *because* it can be improved and tailored specifically, they could also be ready to invest into this tailoring instead of investing in licenses. This would of course mean the contributions would be rather strictly targeted at specific issues, but I really don't think that's a problem.
Of course this means that my above point about the small user base is somewhat problematic, as the user base of these other programs is a fraction of ours. So the issue is something different. Obviously the "emulsion" of 
- text interface (daunting)
- user base (small)
- "corporate entity" (with whom are we dealing here?)
- not *really* knowing about capabilities and limitations of LilyPond
- not *really* knowing (by experience) about the potentials of workflow
- not knowing if content converted to or created with LilyPond can
  be reused later (no real converters available yet)
- the fact that any change in technology is an investment and risk

seems to be at the heart of the issue.
It has to be added that particularly the advantages of the text based approach are quite different for different user groups.
I *think* this could be dealt with through a proper set of materials and arguments - which is one of the original goals of this thread. 








###

The fact that it is practically impossible today to deliver LilyPond
files to commercial publishers rules out a whole category of potential
users: (highly professional) music engravers who do (want to and/or
need to) work for commercial publishers.

I can see that a GNU project is not interested in this kind of work
and explicitly won't endorse it. And that it doesn't consider "market
share" a goal to be pursued.


But it did consider it (as viewed from an "external" oberver):
Contributions were requested to allow a highly skilled developer to work
on developing LilyPond.
Big publishers, which one might imagine know the existence of a software
in their field that produces high quality output, could have stepped in
and request enhancements in whathever direction they may have seen fit.
Did they?



I don't see how my paragraphs and yours relate.
GNU projects explicitly don't endorse commercial work to be done with GNU software. Although this is explicitly allowed, it may for example not be mentioned on a website. So, if I should for example convince three major publishers to add LilyPond to their list of accepted programs we wouldn't be able to announce that on lilypond.org. 

This doesn't have anything to do with asking for money or contributions.
But it wouldn't have been expectable to publishers stepping in at that stage. Why should they sponsor development of a software they don't use. It would be a different thing to tell them: You can use LilyPond (and all the other tools) for free, and they can be tailored to your needs, but it would be a serving both parts to invest in sponsoring some features. 




However, if people feel strongly about it, perhaps make the
recommendation that LilyPond be placed under a license that prohibits
its use for proprietary documents, and the wider community can discuss
that proposal.


(IANAL)
GPL protects the use and availability of the sotware source.
The license of what it produces is an orthogonal concern.


This is correct.
But if efforts are dismissed because they are targeted at the (increased) use of GPL software for commercial projects this *is* an issue. 



Opening the door to the publishing business would also open the door
to academic musicology. I think one of the most prominent evolutions
of the decade is the exploration of digital edition concepts. This is
also interesting for LilyPond because a) engraving tools compiling
text are natural choices to process text-encoded content (as is
generally the case) and b) it is a strong tendency (if not a completed
transition) to think in terms of free software and content there. (In
Germany you will only get public money for research projects in the
"digital" domain if all resulting material is done with open,
accessible standards.) Currently edition projects and institutes don't
see using LilyPond as a viable goal because it will require
substantial work to be able to do that, and because they can only
judge it from the perspective of their individual project - and for an
individual project the necessary effort would clearly be
inappropriate.


That's very concrete and interesting.
Why not explore what it would take to make that effort worth it?


Well, I'm doing that actually.



More explicitly: why does a public/research institution find it more
efficient to use non-free rather than free tools?
How did they reach the "not viable" conclusion?
In a way the reasons are very similar to those of the publishers. It would/will take substantial amounts of time and effort, and the outcome is not as clear and riskfree as one would want before taking such a decision. 


Can we argue against it?
Yes. Basically along the same lines as with the publishers: making the specific advantages very clear, offer a realistic roadmap of transition and make a convincing promise about LilyPond's reliability to "deliver" and to be reliable for a significant amount of time.
I think I should open a new (sub-)thread for this topic, as it is a significant topic, and I can give much more background information about it, and particularly I will be able to use that discussion to prepare a presentation at the Music Encoding Conference in a few weeks. 





This is the reason why I see it as an important consideration to
adopt additional encoding standards like MEI (or even MusicXML) more
vigorously than LilyPond does so far (I think one could consider
LilyPond a classical case of a vendor lock-in situation).


No!
Everything (source code and input format) is free and open: a
publisher doesn't even need to ask for permission to develop a
converter, and use it to get nice output from its wealth of its
otherwise encoded music contents.


OK, conceptually you're right, and my statement goes too far.
But from a practical POV you *are* locked in once you decide to encode your project in LilyPond's input language. Currently there's no real way out to reuse/edit your content in other formats or programs. The possibility that someone writes a converter for something he doesn't use anyway is rather theoretical. It is LilyPond's task and responsibility to open up and become compatible with the outer world. Only then will the outer world consider using LilyPond. I think that not offering export filters to other *document* formats (I mean besides PDF, SVG or other graphics formats) isn't adequate for a FLOSS program (well, for any program, but in this case even more so). We *are* working on MusicXML export, and this is good. But of course that's far from being a reliable solution yet. 





###

It has been brought up that adoption of LilyPond by publishers would
restrict access to culture by "creating" editor's copyright on music
that should be in the public domain.

There are (at least) two fundamental flaws in this argument:
First:
When a publisher releases a new edition of an old work its legal
status is in no way affected by the tool used. So you can't take that
as an argument against endorsing the use of free tools for commercial
products. However, when such an edition runs out of copyright, or the
publishers should change their minds the editions are already
accessible in open formats and for free tools. So using LilyPond for
commercial editions can be seen as an (albeit hypothetical) advantage.


?

I think that you misunderstood my argument.
I _never_ said or implied that free software should not be used to
create copyrighted editions.


Nor did I say you did.
"If and when "big" publishers use LilyPond, the result will be more
restricted access (through cost) to culture (because they won't release
their proprietary contents)."
What should this be other than bringing up "that adoption of LilyPond by publishers would restrict access to culture" and that we should not invest efforts in that direction? 



Quite the contrary, I of course agree that having _any_ edition use
LilyPond for engraving will increase awareness.


OK, then we agree here ;-)




Second:
A commercial edition of a public domain work does not restrict access
to the work in any way. It just doesn't provide improved free access.


That argument I indeed made.
Improved and increased access to free contents (Creative Commons) created
by LilyPond is another way to increase awareness of it.


So from the perspective of free culture is simply doesn't matter if
the publisher produces this edition or not.


The point is not to try and prevent publishers to do whatever they want.
It is rather what _we_ (or at least some of the users of free software)
would like to foster (creating free edition of public domain contents),
independently of other, equally valid and respectable, endeavours.
So it boils down to the fact that we have different interests here: Some people are mainly interested in FLOSS and using LilyPond for propagating free culture. Others are interested in using LilyPond for their professional needs, regardless of the copyright issues.
I am convinced that both are valid approaches, and I would not call either clearly superior. It's just that I personally have only capacities to pursue one. A significant amount of the music I am dealing with professionally happens to be under copyright, and although I have some less and some more severe reservations against the situation, I won't let that affect my choice of subject (by avoiding copyrighted material). Also I am ready to work with or for commercial publishers and have done so. And I'm sure there are other LilyPond users who do so. 




Additionally, new editions often *do* improve access to the
compositions, by means of an improved editorial quality. As a
professional musician, I'd nearly always prefer paying for a
commercial edition over printing an outdated 19th century edition from
the internet.


And wouldn't you prefer even more that a fellow LilyPonder had
encoded it for you to enjoy?


Yes, I would do that.
But as a professional musician I can't wait for that to happen. And on the long run I would require that my "fellow LilyPonder" would be an educated and skilled musicologist because I don't believe that community efforts will ever be able to achieve (if not "by accident") editions that are reliably on the standard I expect and need. Wikipedia may be an example that is able to provide good information, but firstly this is a different thing than creating a musical edition (I wouldn't rely on an airplane constructed by a community of volunteers either, or with any other item of "engineering" that requires such a specific set of knowledge). And I have seen too often that students start to rely on Wikipedia and even defend any stupid statements in their papers referring to that. 





It has been stated that commercial publishers produce editions that
suck for their editorial quality and that therefore these publishers
are not worth being convinced of using LilyPond. Sorry, but this
really not very helpful. I didn't perform a qualified comparison, but
I can't imagine that the average and overall editorial quality of
"free" editions comes even close to what commercial publishers have
achieved over the centuries.


Apples and oranges.
Maybe, but it was brought up in the sense of "why should we help publishers produce their editions that suck anyway". 




And did anybody think about the fact that
nearly all of these "model" editions have simply run out of copyright
and wouldn't exist if they hadn't been produced by commercial
publishers in the first place?


IIRC, it has been mentioned on this ML (quite some time ago) that new
editions with minute changes are published to ever extend the copyright
limit.
It is good (IMO) that at some point, public domain contents really
becomes free, even if it originates from the work of an engraver who
lived 100 years ago and did live from his engraving work.
To extend the copyright period (which *is* an interest of publishers) changes must be "significant". But (IANAL) however loosely this may be interpreted in practice this copyright only affects the reissue and not the old copies which are out of copyright anyway. So despite the imprint that often says that copying is a criminal act you can simply ignore that for out-of-date editions. OTOH, assuming that the changes are improvements, these improvements are still not present in the free editions. 




Truly Free editions would require
people going to the archives and producing new editions from the
original sources. Then we can start talking about *their* quality ...


That's a valid concern.

If the editor does a bad job, it's a bad job.
But, with a free edition, anybody can improve it (if some part of
work is worth using it) and share the now good edition.

Not so with a "new" commercial edition of "old" public stuff.
As said I don't believe in free editions (in the sense of being the product of a free community effort) to achieve sufficient scholarly standards. And as said also the new commercial edition doesn't rule out the use and improvement of the old edition.
A Truly Free edition can IMO only be the result from a professional editor's board that works basically as editors work now, being paid for their professional work. If that money comes from sources that allow the result to be Free, then this would be great. To some extent this is the case or at least the tendency with today's publicly funded digital edition projects. 




In general I only use these free resources to get a first impression
- which is of course an example use case for the free distribution of
culture. But edition quality is an aspect that is somewhat at odds
with the free distribution, and I would not accept sacrifying this
part of the equation.


"quality is [...] at odds with free distribution"
???
OK, the wording was sort of abysmal. But I think the previous comments in the current post make clear what I meant. 




###

Now to the aspect of "convincing" publishers.





But most others I have talked with have been seriously interested and
grasped quite clearly what I am talking about. They asked exactly the
right questions and saw potentials and problems quite clearly too.

But that's not enough to consider a change.
When a business is proposed a new technology I think there are
basically three considerations:
a) The suggestion promises solutions for problems the business is
actually and significantly suffering from
b) The suggestion promises (mostly financial) benefits that outweigh
the investment.
c) The risk of failure seems overseeable.

ad a)
Most people clearly see the advantages.
Notably engraving quality is one of the least in this regard. Most
publishing houses are satisfied with their output because they have
either invested quite some effort in it or they simply don't care.


So: "commercial" and "don't care [about the quality]".
Well, this mainly applies to small publisher who either don't know better or simply don't have the means to care (I mean if you are going to release 900 editions over several decades you *can* consider investing time and effort in providing the best engraving and printing quality while if you don't know what will be next year, you'll be happy to have *anything* printable). OK, you *can* apply the highest demands even on a single publication, but most won't to that. 



 From a long time subscriber's to this list, it seems that engraving
quality was _primarily_ why users of other softwares switched to
LilyPond.  [Making them willing to overcome their possible initial
wondering at the textual input.]
This may be true, but other aspects of the text based data management are equally true. In my opinion the project management and customization features are really killer arguments, much more than the actual engraving quality. In the end one must admit that there are many publishers who are producing really beautiful scores, regardless of which notation programs they use. 




There is one point that can be made here, and that is the
out-of-the-box quality, which can be of interest when it comes to
producing performance material on short notice and only later refine
that to publication quality.
The most compelling points seem to be the potentials of project
management/documentation through version control and the option of
distributing work over arbitrary numbers of collaborators. The Grid
approach made quite some impression particularly.
As mentioned I have the impression that the overall issues of data
integrity and the risks of relying on commercial software have become
more present in publishers' minds by now.


Imagine your suffering if the Sibelius case did not happen... :-)


Yes, in a way that was "just-in-time".
Add to that the "Finale Case" and the "Steinberg Case"
[presumably this is much less known, and it may not be a "case" after all. But in the meantime Steinberg has been bought by Yamaha, which doesn't have to be a bad thing, as Yamaha claims their interest is in providing outstanding integration between their hardware and Steinberg's software (of course notation is the least part in this equation). So it doesn't necessarily mean a threat to the new notation program, but I could convincingly make a point that commercial products are subject to such arbitrary economic decisions at any time. And it may of course have an impact on the development of the new software. When I talked about their long development time with Daniel Spreadbury he said that they are of course under pressure to deliver within a reasonable amount of time. But as Steinberg still is/was an "engineer-owned company" the responsible people still had a good understaning of the case (producing quality from the ground up). Of course this may be quite different when Steinberg is only a smaller part of a large corporation, and their heads have to report back to the mother corporation instead of being independent. 




b) and c) are the problematic parts. And here I think the "risk" part
is more of an issue thant the "investment". People can't really
oversee how the new technology can fit into their existing
infrastructure, particularly given the fact that they do and will
always have contributions by numerous people from outside that have to
be integrated. Add to this the question if we can reliably enough
convince anybody that "we" will be around in a few years and that
there is a sufficient user base to guarantee that they will always
find someone to get "tech support" from.


The problem is that they don't grasp what "free software" is.
If they want to, "tech support" will be there, thanks to them.
You cannot promise that it will be there, if they don't become
involved in and concerned about the (evolving) "community".

And as noted earlier, they have demonstrably wrong expectations
that tech support for commercial will always be there!
That's true, and that's part of my strategy. However, it's only one building block of the larger jigsaw puzzle. In a way I'm feeling like having to solve five equations with five variables, and only if all five pieces fit together it will move forward. 

Urs
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