A Year Later
From JackLab UserWiki
Here's a rough manual translation of the eXT2 chapter. Neither English nor German are my mother tongue, so please bear with me. I hope it's more intelligible than the babelfish translation
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As an owner of the Windows version of EXT 1.3, I am entitled to an upgrade/crossgrade to EXT2. Furthermore, Jorgen Aase is in permanent contact with his user-community and accepts 'feature requests'. If possible, he will incorporate these in EXT. When I learned that he will release EXT2 for Linux with support for the obsolete OSS-audio interface only, while leaving the audio interface open otherwise, I was a little disappointed at first. In my opinion, a professional application only has a serious chance on the Linux platform if it supports JACK. Jorgen then disputed the importance of JACK, since EXT2 alpha already provided a low internal latency. He did not comment at all on the features of JACK, like synchronization and routing between applications. Later, after I convinced him to, he took a good look at the JACK API and noticed that it would be easy to integrate.
Another feature of the Windows version of EXT is the support of VST instruments and effects. Because of this feature, EXT has become big and universally usable. Since this is not in Steinberg's interest, there is no natve Linux VST-interface, so I wondered how Jorgen would solve this problem. He then announced that he plans to natively compile VST plugins on Linux. This is an absolute sensation. Never before has an individual dared to take such an important and decisive step, because with this, the VST interface would establish itself on Linux, independent of the creator of the interface, namely Steinberg.
Expectations are high from my side. If Jorgen Aase delivers, then Audio-Linux will also be noticed by creative users. That will be the breakthrough. I think that many freeware VST creators would also like to offer a Linux version of their plugins.
It will be a small revolution, that will eliminate a lot of criticism and will be a thorn in the side of the big companies, like Apple and Yamaha, who dominate the music production and sofware industry these days. They will rethink their prices, company policies and their attitude towards Open Source software. But revolutions always start at the bottom, and will be ignored by the ruling class until it's too late.
Clearly, Jorgen Aase is not an Open Source programmer, but he has the courage to say that he wants to make a living from his progamming and wants to do a good job at the same time. His decision to create EXT2 for Linux was based on the fact that he likes to use Linux, Ubuntu in particular.
When EXT2 is released, it will be stable and one can work with it - immediately. EXT2 will deliver what Ardour, Rosegarden and MusE have been promising for years. Jorgen Aase is indepenent of the "everthing free, Open Source" ideology and admits that he can make a good living from the 39 Euro per license; he has even been on vacation to Italy this year, even though there is a cracked version of EXT available on the net.
