Deployment, etc.

[Rangarajan]

Since Opusmodus has matured quite a bit since its initial release several years ago, I would like to dev team to think about the following useful ideas:

1) Deployment:

Let us suppose I have been able to create an interesting approach to music synthesis on top of Opusmodus. I now want to make money using this approach. For example, I might want to implement a Web App or a an API service that takes some inputs from users and generates a song (only music , or both lyrics and music complete). How can I do this? In other words, is there a "deployment" model for my idea implemented in Opusmodus? What about copyrights and licensing issues, including royalty, if any?

 

2) Paid plug-ins/libraries:

This is a slight variant of (1). Let us say I have developed some good techniques for music synthesis. I want to "sell" this library to other users of Opusmodus (not end users). How do I do that? I want to protect my IP, so I don't want to share my source code. This is like a "Marketplace" where there are many sellers like me offering service to other buyers.

 

3) Full Application:

How can I build a full-fledged application with GUI, etc. in Opusmodus?

 

Hope you will consider these points in future.

 

Regards,

Rangarajan

[Stephane Boussuge]

Dear Rangarajan,

 

that's indeed a really good point I'm dreamed about from long time.

 

Hope Janusz will find a bit of time to focus on this aspect

 

I suppose a first solution would be to do a lisp Library from OM.

 

But you are a specialist of development (and not me) , so your ideas are welcome in this domain.

Best wishes

 

Stéphane

 

[Rangarajan]

Thanks Stephane! I am sure Janusz will come up with some solutions for my points.

 

Regards,

Rangarajan

[Rangarajan]

Is it now possible to build a stand-alone executable from within Opusmodus environment? Let us assume the app will only be command line driven, no GUI. The app must be able to make use of most of the OM library, excepting those functions that might involve UI (e.g. drawing plots, rendering MIDI or MusicXML). Has anyone tried this?

 

- Rangarajan

[opmo]

 

[Rangarajan]

That is a useful addition to the OM environment, but how does that facilitate creating a stand-alone executable?

 

- Rangarajan

[torstenanders]

I cannot answer this for Janusz, but I can provide some further reflection on this.

 

You could investigate how the Emacs-Slime interface talks to the CCL compiler, on which Opusmodus is based, and then use that same protocol for your purposes. Of course, this will always only work if on the machine in question Opusmodus is installed. Also, Opusmodus must be started first (which currently always starts the full IDE as well, AFAIK -- at least it does for me, and I use Opusmodus meanwhile mainly via  the Slime interface). It is likely possible in principle to get around starting the full IDE each time and instead only start CCL with the relevant Opusmodus definitions, but users of your plugins or custom applications will always need to buy Opusmodus themselves, so this is pretty much a niche in a niche market...

 

Not sure whether there is a market here for Opusmodus Inc. to spend development resources, which would make this more suitable for your purposes. Obviously, this company is not someone like Apple. It cannot afford  throwing out development tools for free, I guess. 

 

Perhaps Opusmodus Inc. could ask for a licence fee from developers who build applications based on Opusmodus definitions. That might open a market that would pay Opusmodus for investing the necessary development resources for something like that. If there are a few developers willing to pay such a fee, this might actually be quite workable for both sides, the developers and Opusmodus Inc. It then might be possible to use Opusmodus definitions in a "normal" Common Lisp application (perhaps even supporting tools like roswell for easy executable creation). 

 

Just my 2 Euro-cent on this question...

[torstenanders]

Concerning own GUI applications: you can already do that. This is independent of Opusmodus. 

 

For example, on a Mac CCL (the Lisp compiler on which Opusmodus is built) has a built-in Cocoa Interface  and Objective-C bridge. There also exist other GUI libraries for Lisp. For example, check out 

GUI toolkits

LISPCOOKBOOK.GITHUB.IO

---

A collection of examples of using Common Lisp

 

[Rangarajan]

Thanks! I fully agree with your view on license fee, etc. 

 

I guess it is possible to view OM as a Lisp-based Library for music synthesis, if you exclude the IDE, etc. It is perfectly reasonable for the library vendor to charge developers a "royalty", based on the number of copies of their application sold, in addition to the one-time license fee for purchasing the library.

 

- Rangarajan

[Stephane Boussuge]

Opusmodus as a library sound perfect for me. Opusmodus ltd may sell separately from Opusmodus the library but without asking any fee to developers. I think this will be the best solution, it will increase the sales for Opusmodus and motivate the developers to use Opusmodus as the best platform / library for development of musical applications.
 

Also, it will allow people to use Opusmodus on Linux and Windows.

 

s.