If this is a revenue-generating product for Zygoat, I'd doubt that the open source model would be in the company's best interest. Doggiebox is positioned as a "flagship product" on the Zygoat website. It's unlikely that turning over code to the community would turn out to be a fiscally solid move.

I ask myself: If Doggiebox went no further, would I still use it? The answer is yes. Quirky, sometimes lacking key productivity features (export instruments - or even one of the five drum "rows" as separate tracks) but still the current best solution.

Until something better comes along, take what you've got and squeeze the most out of it, I say.

Nothing wrong with being a vocal user/evangelist and expressing oneself, of course. And kudos to Sterling for a well-said essay, below.

Sterling Beckwith wrote:

Hey guys, that's a good start! Some key issues affecting all users of "homemade" special-purpose software are already surfacing here.

For example, how many of us tend to assume that just because we happen to use a particular program, we are somehow entitled to receive regular updates from some unseen hand, preferably without charge? Or that the process of improving any software program is mostly a matter of adding a few more cool features?

How many users, let alone user communities, actually feel some responsibility for assuring the survival of "their" program on the software market, or have any appreciation of what establishing and maintaining the marketability of such a specialized software product as this one entails?

Theses days we are used to taking our clean water for granted, without ever coming anywhere near knowing or paying its actual costs. We are used to grabbing lots of "free" software off the internet, and lots of "free" music and video and images too. Good tools are however seldom free, and they tend to evolve slowly, with significant amounts of help from their earliest users. We may lose this one if we cannot figure out together how to keep it alive.

-Sterling

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