Ladies and Gents, I can hack specimen while working full time. And, I can hack specimen while studying full time. But, and this is empirically verifiable, I can't hack specimen while both working and studying full time. And my situation is not likely to change for another year or so. What this means is that I'm just not cut out to run a project right now, unless I want to put it into maintenance mode. Really, that's where specimen has been for the past six months anyway, and I've been doing a rather piss poor job at that modest role! My efforts are better applied to tasks where smaller chunks of time can go a greater distance. I don't have any regrets --- this was my first real programming project, and I learned a lot. But the truth is that LMMS is more specimen than specimen right now, and it has an active development and user community surrounding it. Plus, I've always been a musician and an artist first, and a programmer second. All told, it's time to throw in the towel on this one. In a way, this is a bummer --- I've put a lot of sweat and tears (literally) into this project over the past couple of years, and it has come an incredible distance. But I'd be a fool to think that I'm better off keeping it afloat than making music and contributing to other projects. And truthfully, it's a huge relief to get this announcement out. A sense of obligation is what kept me from making it sooner, but in retrospect, that's pretty ridiculous. Considering that I'm an "open source, just for fun" guy, and not a "free software, as in freedom" type, it doesn't make a lot of sense to keep going when pain exceeds pleasure. This isn't the end of my open source music development, however. I hope to help take LMMS to the next level, and contribute to other projects that will help make Linux a competitor in the music industry. Things like ardour2, lash, jack-midi, vst, dssi, ladspa et al are the keys to our future in this regard. And I look forward to getting back to hardcore hacking in a few years, when I've got my life settled down and I'm not putting in 80 hours of work and school a week. Take care everybody, and may the funk be with you. -- Pete Bessman http://gazuga.net "So this baby seal walks into a club."
