[coldtea]

>Far too much of Ableton's secret sauce is hidden away behind Max for Live

The other way around. Ableton exposes some internal modules to Max for Live as Max for Live modules.

What Ableton gets from Max for Live is not internals, but basically a few Ableton-only Max-built plugins, that could as well use VST underneath.

[peteforde]

I answered this in a different branch of the thread, but you're kind of missing my point. I don't own Max for Live, so the large ecosystem of useful tools that I'd enjoy trying out is unavailable to me.

It's not about special powers, just being forced to pay the gatekeeper to the otherwise free/OSS ecosystem.

[coldtea]

>I don't own Max for Live, so the large ecosystem of useful tools that I'd enjoy trying out is unavailable to me.

Well, it's not that difficult to purchase as an update to Suite or by itself, on a typical western salary.

The ecosystem has tons of free/open source devices. Is it that bad that Ableton doesn't make Max (which they had to buy the whole company for) free too?

I prefer they have actual product revenue like that, and don't go the VC route, gifting stuff to get market share, and then coasting and rent-seeking like NI and others.

[Slow_Hand]

Max/MSP has always been a paid tool. There was never a situation when you were going to be able to participate without paying.

This sounds a little like you're complaining that you cannot watch all of the free Youtube content because you don't want to pay for the device that will display it.

[peteforde]

That is... not a good analogy at all.

What it is, though, is a misguided attempt to move the goal posts on what I actually said, which is that a huge amount of the value of Ableton is gatekept behind paid addons.

If a DAW was structured like Blender or KiCAD and designed from the ground up to be extensible (or minimal!) then you wouldn't have any impetus to try to shame people who haven't paid a gate toll to execute software people have contributed to the public domain.

[Slow_Hand]

Agreed. It's not a great analogy.

I'm annoyed because you keep referring to the cost of a license as "gate-keeping" or somehow "hiding away" your ability to use the software. Pay the cost for a license or don't. It's a reasonable price for the tools.

> I don't own Max for Live, so the large ecosystem of useful tools that I'd enjoy trying out is unavailable to me. t's not about special powers, just being forced to pay the gatekeeper to the otherwise free/OSS ecosystem.

You seem mistaken about Max/MSP being free or open source, which it has never been. Certainly not in the last eighteen years since I've been using it.

You seem to be saying that it would be a whole lot nicer if Ableton were an open source tool that we didn't have to pay for and could develop ourselves. Maybe that WOULD be an improvement in some ways. It would at least be free. A lot of things might be better. Some things not so much.

But it's not. Live is a paid product. And so is Max/MSP. And I'm very happy to continue paying these developers to keep doing a great job because they make tools that are tremendously helpful to me and they don't abuse that relationship with things like monthly subscriptions or unreasonable restrictions. In many ways Ableton is a model company that is self-governed and largely free of outside influence like private equity. I want them to succeed and I want more companies like them to thrive.

-----

There is a free and open-sourced alternative to Max/MSP: Pure Data. If you think open-sourcing this type of software is such a great idea, then you should develop in Pure Data instead of Max/MSP. There are probably open-sourced DAW projects out there too that you can integrate into as well.

Maybe then you'll realize that Live and Max/MSP's asking price is not so high after all.

[peteforde]

That's actually exactly what I do! And I highly recommend it as a viable alternative to Max/MSP. It's the native way to create patches for the Organelle and many other instruments.

PlugData in particular has been a real joy to play around with.

I'm glad that your tools are working out well for you. I do reject the idea that I should STFU about being annoyed that I can't run Max for Live scripts, though. Native Instruments Kontakt isn't my favourite piece of software (or company) but at least they understood from early on that making the player free drastically increases the value of a paid license for the people who make content on that platform.

It's 2026. I'd hoped that we were well past needing to debate whether OSS is good or not. Apparently we're not!