The Octa spiders know everything about the code.
Just ask them.
https://www.elektronauts.com/uploads/default/original/3X/4/c/4ce6ba2875422c9bd4df368f84ac9af8fcae7fc9.jpg
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Thatās quite a visionary idea there! Happy!
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I will repeat what I said before (and you should probably read Simonās post as well (#18 in this thread):
Simon - thanks for speaking up with that point of view. I will add - even though āeveryoneā wants code to be open source so that āwe allā can fix bugs and add much desired features, my question is - how many of these people have actually downloaded an open source project for music equipment and tried to do anything with it?
I have and itās non-trivial.
2 projects come to mind (both developed from the beginning as open source) - the GenoQs Octopus hardware sequencer and the Roger Linn Linnstrument. Iāve built the GenoQs code and did some minor tweaks when I owned one and I have customized my Linnstrument with functionality that Roger and Geert considered to be bugs or unintended features as well as a couple other UI tweaks.
I have the benefit of being a software developer in the real world for 30 years and have worked on everything from mainframes to embedded systems to web UIs. Even with all that background, doing something non-trivial like adding a new feature is extremely time consuming and intense to work on, and thatās with code designed to be shared from the beginning.
Folks severely underestimate the skill and time required to fix bugs and add features to code that you didnāt personally develop.
This is not to stop the effort. Rather it is to make you more aware of whatās involved. For contrast, look around Gearslutz/Twitter for someone called J#Minor who is reverse engineering the Andromeda OS. Take a look at how far along he is and how many years heās been working on that.
In many ways, the money part of it is the easiest. Finding someone with the time and knowledge and desire to take apart the OS is completely different. Are you willing to pay a seasoned disassembler $100+/hr to work on the project for an unknown amount of time?
You may be enthusiastic about it, but can you personally jump in and trace disassembled code and make sense of what you see? If you get anyone interested in helping, I suggest downloading and making changes to either the Linnstrument or GenoQs projects I mentioned above and see what happens.
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Actually, i currently am industry partner of a university project and we have a working prototype of a stompbox format realtime audio processing platform. Stereo IN/OUT, MIDI, low latency processing, based on an STM32 no secrets, currently capable of running a small collection of rudimentary DAFX implementations, has even seen some gigs already 
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Beside a vast arsenal of software only instruments and effects for the DAW that i developed over the yearsā¦
I mainly use vintage synths and my own software for my musicā¦
So, concerning my own liberty i really cant complain, except for the time and effort i had to investā¦ its close to the 10000 man hours, really hurts if you actually want to make music lol.
No, my vision is one of digital, sampler based āsound machineā which can be transformed into totally different beasts using customized firmware. Ultimate freedom for the users, if you imagine a feature, you can implement it yourself or ask a friend. Maybe resulting into small companies offering customizations or their own firmware.
ALL of the firmware, concepts, paradigms, core focus and features can be community defined. The key to be most successfull firmware company then, will be, to be one that interacts best with their users and is best in delivering what is requested by the users.
The popular OT, or popular Elektron gear in general would be an awesome starting point for such a hardware and software
platform.
I seriously think that, by employing such a user driven development cycle AND providing an open architecture as an opportunity for other dependent businesses to provide alternatives for the software side they would secure themselves a leading position in the market that has a future. AND, most important, it would increase the freedom of the user by magnitudes!
And freedom is what we want, no?
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honestly its just a question of timeā¦ because freedom of use is key to the worth of everything.
Thanks a lot for your elaborate answer. couple interesting pointers in there!
it is non-trivial, thats why companies can treat their customers for foolsā¦ i want power to the people. its about time.
Yes my profile is comparable to yours, 25+ exp sw dev. banking to embedded engineering, and you are totally right about how underestimated the dev efforts usually are.
Its a bit annoying that my orig thread i created today got merged into this one, as i wanted to have a focused discussion where we leave out all the worst case guerilla methods like disassembling reverse engineering and such, as i would rather invest these efforts to develop a HW/SW platform from scratch, maybe even less hours in total plus you have what you wantā¦ please see my latest post on my current development state
To be more, my idea was to raise money, this money we use to pay the elektrons so that they release the source of the latest working revision of the firmware to the public. (From there on they can do whatever they want again, realease new firmware closed source that people have to pay for and what not)
But the firmware race would be onā¦ everything from minor tweaks, and bugfixes to total ācreativityā like an OT as a 4ch 16bit stepper motor controllerā¦ basically ADDA DSP platform with 100% freedom of useā¦ haha would be so freaked out!
Thatās assuming there is an amount of money that Elektron are willing to support your cause for. It might be reasonable to ask them first, because if the answer is no, all other points are moot. Maybe theyāre not even able to make their code available, because they use closed source libraries that they donāt have the source code for or that come under a license that doesnāt permit redistribution.
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Thanks! not too bad of a resource, yes i am very RMS influenced indeed. buuut its not too relevant to fight about these semantics now given the current state of the discussionā¦ very important though for the actual negotioations what license the open sourced software will be release with.
All that said what do you think about the ideas that i outlined. (With open source i dont really refer to this licence or that license, i refer to the technical necessecity of having access to the source code āopenedā to the public in order to have the full freedom of use)
and arhmm i just checked and i thing i didnt use the term open source once in the post you are replying toā¦ erm?
exaclty. thats the assumption. But you also have to present an convincing public interest so they actually start to take it seriously and consider any negotioations to be potentially beneficial for their company.
Yes, your point with the 3rd party lib i sth. i didnt realize yet. you rightā¦ i know of rumors that the timestretch algo is izotope IP, chances are that even all of the FXs are 3rd party libsā¦ hmm.
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The problem there is that elektrons user base doesnāt consist of tons of coders, and then an even smaller percentage of those that would be willing to work on OT for free, and then those that are capable of deciphering the code to start with. There isnāt a huge public interest cause thatās a niche within a niche within a niche, itās niches all the way down. It would actually be easier to make your own box, all it is is a box with buttons and faders and a custom OS, if youāre capable of cracking OT then that shouldnāt really be out of your reach
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ā¦and depending on the kind of hardware the OT uses, there might be even more proprietary stuff built into the OS to which the component manufacturers have the distribution rights.
Iād like to point out Iām not trying to rain on your parade here. Itās just that I deliver software to customers for a living and this is one of the topics that keeps coming up and it gets messy quickly, even (or especially) with a bunch of hand picked, well paid lawyers involved.
Itāll be interesting to see what the real demand for (and willingness to back) this effort is going to be. OT has been around for a long time and users have either abandoned it or made their peace with how it works today. Especially those using their machines for playing live, maybe even for money, might be reluctant to put their trust in something other than the official Elektron OS.
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you are right, the OT users themselves wont code anything, but you the ability to change the firmware could open up a small market for bespoke individual changes, and totally alternative firmwaresā¦
Reverse engineering/ disassembling not in scope here. (i dont consider)
Scope is: gather enough users to gather enough money to pay elektron to publicly release the code.
Niche point, i dont think so, JJOS on MPC huge fanbase, EVERY OT users has his āaw i wish i could do this or thatā. The forum to a large extent IS a huge wishlistā¦ not niche at all
Its based on a freescale arm if i remember correctly, i am current building own boxā¦
please read my other posts for more infoā¦
I know like the raspi peripherals binary peripherals drivers, or middleware and so called eco-system stuffā¦ this could be a killer.
totally agreeā¦ hardware is getting dated as wellā¦
as foolish this mindset is as realistic is your assumptionā¦ unfortunately
Thanks so far for all constructive contributions to the tought!
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Schizophrenic 1/2 off topic fun fact of the day:
I am using the OT BECAUSE of its limitations! 
Thanks for reading through the different responses and providing thoughtful counterpoints.
I use the OT because it does exactly what i wanted in a sampler - mangle source in a way that no other hardware box has been capable of doing before (and very few since).
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Nah man Iām a JJOS user, itās made by one of the original team who wrote the akai OS from scratch, he got shafted by akai so went rogue and made his own OS which he charges for, ending up the standard on practically every MPC1000/2500 has made him some solid money and continues to 10 years on. Its a different game completely. Iām not trying to burst your bubble, Iād love to see these things but they just arenāt realistic, Iām genuinely serious when I say it would be easier to start from scratch, it really depends if your hobby is making music or making instruments. It would take me many years but if I put my mind to it Iām sure Iād be capable of producing a custom electronic instrument to my own specifications, but honestly Iād prefer to make music over learning electrical engineering. Iām super thankful that people out there have already done the legwork for me so Iām not surprised that they donāt want to freely release the code for anyone to rip apart
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Imagine Organelle and Octatrack having babies. A device with a framework of solid UIs and all the low level stuff like interfacing with the hardware provided with the ability to load FX/synth/sequencer/audio processiong implementations into some sort of user space while still being reliable and ergonomic. It would have to be developed with just that in mind, though.