The possibility of a OS 3.0

Hello,

First of all I would love to say I love the 5000 far as the hardware. It is potentially the greatest MPC of all time IF akai will keep on upgrading it.

Anyone else noticed, when you send a question to akai about Open source OS or new OS you get an automatic reply
"hello, as for now theres no current plans for releasing mpc 5000 open source, what comes to the new os, we dont know yet since its all made in the "batcave"" or crap like that.

Im believing there wont be a 3.0, only new midi controllers, which is shame since the hardware itself is great.

There has to be another update... I am pretty sure there will be one.

What they should really do is freaking tell their customers what is going on!!!!!!!!! I hate spending 2500 and not being told what the hell is going to happen or what is happening.


As far as customer service Akai gets an F. there should a representative in this forum reading it and answering questions every so often. or they should have a forum at akaipro.com or something.

Open source it up and they save development $$$ and can continue to sell the hardware... a win win for both!! it baffels me why that is not something akai would want to do. If people want to work on the os for free why not? it adds value, hype and longevity to a product

they want to have full control over what the machine can do. if next year they feel like releasing another mpc with the same spec except more features... for sure nobody will buy it when this machine is being kept up to par by 3rd parties. look at the 1000/2500. Why is there so many 1000's out there and why have so many 1000 users stuck to their machines instead of getting the 2500? same features, same specs, and in the end they would have been spending the extra grand on full size pads and a tilt screen.


open source = free.. if they made the code for the 2500 open source, that would mean anyone in the world would be allowd to make an OS and they would not be allowd to charge for it. that of course would never happen, and people would steal the OS followed by charging for it. I think the best 3rd party OS route would be for akai to licence the rights to specific people allowing them to create an OS or OS series for 5000. the thing is, i doubt any company would want to invest that much money having their OS fit the specs of the machine and I dont think akai wants to design a machine with the possibility of feature variability in mind... if they plan everything the machine can potentially do then they can cut corners and cheap out on parts. that is what they have been doing anyways.

'open source' doesn't mean free, it just means the source code is available, out in the open.

There is no difference in the possible licensing schemes if the source is open or not. A company can ship the source code along with a product and still keep it protected legally.

The benefit of opening the source code is that people who bought the product can customize it, increasing the personal value. You could make the MPC work better for you.

Akai could release the source code with a license restriction requiring their approval and fees paid before a third-party developer has the legal right to sell it.

Since I bought a MPC500 first, and saw how Akai does things, there was no way I was buying the 5000. Their slow and poor firmware updates is why I bought the 2500 + JJ OS.

With the way they handled the 500, I wouldn't be so sure there will be a 5000 3.0 OS. You're lucky if they fix all the major bugs, and just have to leave it at that.

Jamon wrote:'open source' doesn't mean free, it just means the source code is available, out in the open.

first of all, since we are talking about a piece of hardware and not a piece of software, there is no real source code for it to be any type of source. however I think we all understand that we are talking about the "guidelines" needed to write software for the hardware.

second of all, the defacto guidelines for open source is as follows:

The guidelines

1. Free redistribution.
2. Inclusion of source code.
3. Allowing for modifications and derived works.
4. Integrity of the author's source code (as a compromise for the likes of TeX).
5. No discrimination against persons or groups.
6. No discrimination against fields of endeavor, like commercial use.
7. The license needs to apply to all to whom the program is redistributed.
8. License must not be specific to Debian, basically a reiteration of the last point.
9. License must not contaminate other software.
10. The GPL, BSD, and Artistic licenses are examples of licenses considered free.

All software runs on hardware. The MPC OS is software like any other. Someone could even write an MPC emulator so you could run it virtually on your PC.

"Open Source Software" is a fork of the "Free Software" movement of the early '80s. "Free Software" is what must be free to modify and distribute. "Open Source Software" simply means the source code is publicly available to view, and usually modify. But the terms of modification and distribution are diverse, there is no requirement for OSS to be free.

Some companies release OSS with license restrictions so you must pay them for rights of distribution. Some require you distribute the source along with any modifications. Some have dual licenses so commercial distribution costs money, and non-profit is free. The OSS philosophy is about making the software better, FOSS is about freedom.