When the founders are also the lead engineers, incentives are aligned. I asked the Ableton CEO at multiple events and expos to fix repeatable bugs, and add proper PDC, and he mocked me.
Yeah, I think four of the founders/initial employees were ex-Ableton people, it was a thing that was highlighted when Bitwig first launched (around 2014 maybe?), together with that they were also Berlin-based (because that matters...) and it had Linux support from day one :)
I'm not finding any first-hand sources about it, but remember that most articles at the time mentioned it one way or another.
On the other hand I once opened a ticket for Ableton Live 9 asking to fix an extremely annoying windows-only race condition when using midi at the same time from a Komplete Kontrol Instance and a regular track session session using an M-series Native Instruments keyboard, and they fixed it after a few weeks.
I did the same with Bitwig in 2022 and the bug it's still there.
He mocked you? Well, I am sure we would like to know more. In another comment someone said "at least developers have thought of others" because they dump their stuff in plaintext, but then you come out with such a story which makes me want to stay away from anything related to Ableton.
>but then you come out with such a story which makes me want to stay away from anything related to Ableton.
Knee-jerk responding like that to a random anecdotes by a random person on the internet, who might as well be total bullshit, is not exactly the most prudent software evaluation path.
Perhaps the "mocking" was just the CEO not placing the importance that the person thinks their request should. Or the CEO responded to rude incessant tone. Or the CEO had a bad day, and the parent was like the 10th person nagging their balls with their pet peeves at that show.
The amount of information to that comment is almost zero, and we don't know tons of context.
Seconded, I think even one such a story on HN for this specific topic, where big tech incentives aren’t that high, is a high quality signal of company rot.
wsintra2022|6 months ago
diggan|6 months ago
I'm not finding any first-hand sources about it, but remember that most articles at the time mentioned it one way or another.
earthnail|6 months ago
Not saying your experience wasn’t as you describe it, just want to say that I personally rate him highly and was surprised to read it.
easyThrowaway|6 months ago
I did the same with Bitwig in 2022 and the bug it's still there.
johnisgood|6 months ago
coldtea|6 months ago
Knee-jerk responding like that to a random anecdotes by a random person on the internet, who might as well be total bullshit, is not exactly the most prudent software evaluation path.
Perhaps the "mocking" was just the CEO not placing the importance that the person thinks their request should. Or the CEO responded to rude incessant tone. Or the CEO had a bad day, and the parent was like the 10th person nagging their balls with their pet peeves at that show.
The amount of information to that comment is almost zero, and we don't know tons of context.
mettamage|6 months ago
I’m staying away from Ableton.