Subject:i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Posted by: Walterius

Date:2/22/2001 3:20:05 AM

Hi!
A friend of mine, a programmer, told me that he could try
to mange CDA into SF5.0, what about trying him?
thanks for replys
Walter

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: sreams

Date:2/22/2001 3:36:14 AM

Well, have him do it then!

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: studioman3

Date:2/22/2001 10:11:44 AM

...and send us all a free copy.

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: Ted_H

Date:2/22/2001 11:22:51 AM

Hello,

Please refer to the terms of licensing agreement that you
agreed to when you installed our software. If you were to
combine Sound Forge 5.0 with CD Architect, I'm pretty sure
that this would be a clear violation of that agreement.

Ted

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: sreams

Date:2/22/2001 12:52:12 PM

That may be true, Ted, but where would the sanity be in
stopping someone from doing this? Wouldn't it ensure more
sales for Sonic Foundry? Why is SF so determined to prevent
this from happening, even if someone else does it for them?

-S

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: Ted_H

Date:2/22/2001 2:46:52 PM

Hello,

CD Architect has been discontinued. The program is gone
and it is not going to be resurrected any time soon, if
ever. Copyright laws are stopping your programmer friend
from doing merging the programs, not us.

Ted

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: sreams

Date:2/22/2001 2:58:05 PM

Ted,

I understand quite well that CDA has been discontinued.
When I was talking about sales I was referring to SF5. If
people knew they could have CDA installed and SF5 WITHOUT
having two versions of SF installed, I think it would be
more appealing. Perhaps this is technically not allowed,
but I don't see any other reason why it shouldn't be. It
wasn't me who suggested this idea (I think you may have
thought it was), but I sure am in support of it.

---- BTW, I know all of this discussion can get somewhat
heated at times. Don't take it personally. Many of us have
gripes with Sonic Foundry, and you are the only person we
have to relay them to. Personally, I think all of this is
healthy as long as people remain civilized (and you have).

-S

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: studioman3

Date:2/22/2001 11:38:49 PM

I believe the law basically prevents our genius friend from
making a profit by integrating the software. If he either
a.) gives us all a free copy on a one to one basis (not
public distribution) or, b.) provides us with the
information or tools to do it ourselves for free under the
same non-public-distribution scenario, none of it is truly
illegal, and the only harm done is to break the agreement
with sonic foundry which does what? leaves us without tech
support (like we need it)? Voids the warranty (like it was
expensive)? Am I wrong here? I could be. I don't know.
I don't thinks so.

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: studioman3

Date:2/22/2001 11:39:59 PM

and thanks for fixin' the apostrophes! ' ' ' ' ' ' '

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: DataCowboy

Date:2/23/2001 5:07:45 PM

As far as copyright, licensing agreements, etc., there's
three ways as I see it to try to integrate CDA, and as a
completely academic discussion and for anyone who has the
free time, I'll toss them out:

If the user can figure out a way to convince/trick SF 5.0
into allowing the use of CDA without altering the binaries,
then that would not be a violation of any agreement unless
it explicitly specified the use of CDA within the SF5 was
prohibited.

If the user modifies the binaries of either SF or CDA to
get the results, then that would violate their warranty and
support. It also may violate the licensing agreement,
depending on whether the agreement covered such things. It
would not violate any copyright law.
Distributing the modified binary itself *would almost
assuredly* violate copyright law, even if the user made no
profit because the program would contain copyrighted code.
Distributing instructions to others on how to modify the
binaries would not violate anything.
Additionally, distributing a utility that made small
changes to the SF or CDA binary would be legal, unless the
utility's changes created a change to the binary that
represented an implementation of a (very unlikely to exist)
patent. Though still, using such an application would void
warranty.

While reverse engineering and decompilation is usually
prohibited in all sorts of licensing agreements, I can not
recall any case that was successful and can find no authors
who can cite a case that indicates reverse engineering or
decompilation is illegal. There appears to be a valid
argument and case history that reverse engineering and
decompilation falls under "acceptable use" provisions of
copyright law. Even if the goal is for profit, reverse
engineering appears to be legally protected. Improper
(i.e., patent infringing) use of information gained from
such procedures is not protected.

Legality aside (wasn't this fun?), it'd be nifty and nice
if someone could make it do that, and I'd love to see how.

But I'd still probably be a conservative weenie about it
and just use CDA with 4.5 to avoid using an unsupported
integration.

Hex
who isn't a lawyer, but plays one on tv

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: Szep_X

Date:2/23/2001 8:17:32 PM

This is getting to be nonsense. Why doesn't someone with
some money buy CDA from Sonic Foundry and release it as a
stand alone program!

Brian

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: Walterius

Date:3/1/2001 6:12:31 PM

integrating CDA will maybe possible by programming by a
friend of mine,
but he will only do it with a permission of SF and he has
to get paid by someone.
The best way to get that going is that SF would pay him.
On the other hand, if SF does not pay him, the user have to
pay him with the permission of SF.
"On the third hand" my friend could programm a similar
programm on his own but that would be much more expensive.
greetings
Walter

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: BrentA

Date:3/1/2001 7:21:13 PM

While I can certainly sympathize with wanting to access CDA
in 5.0, unless your friend or someone else wants to do it
for free as a learning exercise, I don't see this option
happening. If it was just a matter of modifying the UI and
adding the appropriate call for CD Architect, that would be
one thing and fairly quick to implement. But CD Architect
appears to be fairly reliant on the internal architecture
of 4.5 for audio playback functionality. Since I suspect
that the internal architecture was significantly rewritten
for 5.0 (for 32-bit support, etc) I think it would require
a fair amount of coding/testing/debugging (and thus $$) for
your friend to get CD Architect to function properly as
plug-in for SF5.0. Did your friend give an estimate of how
many hours he thinks this would take or how much he would
charge?

While having both 4.5 and 5.0 installed at the same time
seems duplicitous, the only thing you really lose is some
hard drive space which is quite cheap these days. I find
that after installing 5.0, I am continuing to work in 4.5
while at the same time enjoying all the DirectX plug-ins
that 5.0 installed. I'm not planning on doing any actual
editing in 5.0 until the first bug-fix release comes out
and fixes some of the bugs (particularly the long
Undo/restore bug and excessive peak file rebuilding). Even
after the bugs are fixed, I will probably only use 5.0 when
I need to work on 24-bit audio...for all 16-bit audio, I'll
continue to use the tried and true 4.5.

Regards, Brent

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: sreams

Date:3/1/2001 7:47:28 PM

Hard drive space is not the only thing you lose. You have
potential to lose all plugin capabilities in SF4.5 if you
use several plugins. Read my earlier post about that:

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?
MessageID=66132

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: Doug_Marshall

Date:3/1/2001 10:26:59 PM

It's a distant memory but I seem to recall that my original
installation of CDA offered the option to run CDA either as
a standalone app or as a tool within Sound Forge. If that
recollection is accurate we shouldn't need to keep 4.5 on
our machines to keep using CDA. Please correct me if I'm
wrong on this.

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: DataCowboy

Date:3/2/2001 12:30:07 AM

CDA doesn't run as a stand-alone. It does ship with a free
and basic version of Sound Forge (Sound Forge XP) that
provides the audio editor environment CDA needs. But you
must have either Sound Forge XP or 4/4.5 installed to use
it.

Hex
www.thefreeside.com

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: BrentA

Date:3/2/2001 3:14:33 AM

> Hard drive space is not the only thing
> you lose. You have potential to lose all
> plugin capabilities in SF4.5 if you use
> several plugins

That does sound like a nasty bug. Haven't run into
that one myself since I don't have nearly enough
DX effects to fill 3 columns...that's a whole lot of
effects! It's too bad there doesn't appear to be one
perfect solution here.

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: sreams

Date:3/2/2001 3:30:02 AM

There IS one perfect solution. Sonic Foundry should fix SF5
to allow CDArchitect to work with it. Don't make us install
two versions. That's just silly.

-S

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: grisamore

Date:3/3/2001 11:22:42 AM

Have to add my voice to this chorus. I just don't buy that
it's impossible to add CDA support to SF 5.0. I work for a
software company and I understand the reticence to invest
additional work in a discontinued product BUT I think Sonic
Foundry has lost their way. In their pursuit of online
multimedia products (where they are NOT the market leader),
they've pretty much alienated and abandoned their loyal
userbase (who now are eyeing Steinberg and other options to
satisfy their requirements).

C'mon guys, I upgraded to version 5.0 and it was a good
deal since it includes the plugins and adds some additional
stuff but there's just no darned reason to take away CDA
support and force us to maintain two versions on the hard
drive. Take a look at those financials -> anybody think
this "new strategy" is successful?

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: jdharris

Date:3/7/2001 5:46:45 PM

perhaps discontinuing CDA in the middle of its life cycle
purely for "business" reasons could constitute a violation
of license. If not, it should. We, as users could use
this example, and insist that, in the future, the
aggreements that we form with software companies by
purchasing thier software contain protections for us (the
consumer) as well as for the software company. This may
sound real "pie in the sky" to most, but if we all did it,
things would change.

Subject:RE: i checked somebody who could integrate CDA in 5.0 - so please let`s do that!

Reply by: DataCowboy

Date:3/7/2001 9:28:34 PM

Agreements of that nature are not unheard of, but seem to
be rare in any form of commercial packaged software.

Source code escrow (where if the company discontinues its
product or goes out of business the customers get rights to
the software) is very common now in healthcare software.
But it took a couple decades of hospitals getting hung out
to dry on big $ expenditures when software companies failed
or decided something wasn't going to be profitable for
hospitals to demand it or similar.

I would personally love to see it applied to commercial
software, especially in a case where the code appears to
have just been shelved.

Hex
if you're not using that, can I have it?