markski wrote:Regardless, there is notihing stopping someeone else 'in the know' from picking up the reigns, unless there were legal ramifications, which if the MPC 5000 is as dead as Akai are making it shouldnt be an issue for them. Just open source that **** or allow the authors to independently continue development via Kickstarter etc.
Yes in theory that would be great, but there's probably also a lot of trade secrets in that 5000 OS that Akai may want to use again in the future, so I doubt they would just publicly release the code.
And again I think we go back to the whole 'they want you to buy an MPC Touch' bit. They probably dont really want people making do with old second hand MPCs that Akai no longer make money off, they want people buying all their new products. Which, generally speaking, is fair enough, although there's certainly long term 'goodwill' milage in them giving something back to the legacy community.
But let's face it, they don't even support legacy MPCs in their current 'expansion packs',which IMO would be a great way for them to still make money from their legacy MPC customers, so I really don't think the old school guys are even on the radar, except when they want to bleat on about the 'iconic MPC legacy' in marketing materials.
Anyway, I happily support all legacy MPCs over at
MPC-Samples.com