The dark age...

Today I see at Buzmachines that Oskari Tammelin, the creator of BUZZ , is rebuilding Buzz from his old backups. For that people that don't know what is buzz , is a free modular software based synthesizer. Buzz is the initiator of the "3rd tracker generation" and halted its development on 2000 because the creator lost all the code in a hard disk ( we can say a heart attack) and the backups that he had were old. Now he is redevelopment it. 8 years later....

I used it since 2000, and I stopped to use it few years ago. However, I always considered about why the author didn't make free its sources (even if they were an old backup). Now appeared a lot of Buzz Clones, and always we have the fantastic Psycle. One thing is sure, if Oscari could free the sources, probably we had now the most used, engineered and tested tracker programme.



I suppose ( and it's an assumption of mine that can be really far from the reality ) that he wanted to commercialise it. Of course on 2000, commercialise as open source wasn't common. Only some visionaries look that this could be and option. Even so, I don't want to speak about this today. Even if I don't understand its decision then (and one thing is sure, was his decision, and we must respect it).

Buzz was a programme in an ice case. Nobody touched it's code in 8 years. We had only the binaries. One music file made it on 2000 will play today in buzz ( of course, if you have the necessaries pluggings). Always Buzz was beta but for the most users, with some workarounds, this was fine. Furthermore, this thing was really good and arrives here, on 2008, like a first class tracker, and very used.

I'm a sporadic music composer. Usually, when the planets are in the correct position, I download buzz for make some noise. The best is that I have it like always: same icons, same look&feel and able to play any music track that I made before. This is really fantastic. Of course, buzz didn't became more usable ( well, a bit thanks to Cyanphase and others) but the core didn't progress like other applications. I could play any song and start to compose without learn tones of features. For me is very usable , then ;)

I can play any song and change it. It's a different case that my lovely ST3 or Impulse Tracker. It happens to me with some other kind of files. Because the file format is not supported. Because the programme company was bought and the buyer kill it. Because the cd where was the data is broken or because was in a floppy. Because I don't find the client for my current operating system... The result Is that I lost a lot of content , maps, images,thoughts, video and data. Perhaps the Greek temple that I made it in 3dstudio 2.0 for MSdos wasn't IMPORTANT. But I spend about two weeks of my life, and I would like to see it another time.

And this is only my case. We can't imagine how many data will be lost these years by the world. Really, when one boy on 2100 will study the amateur music,by example, what will find ?

- One floppy of 5/4
- One CD "Best before 2008"
- One strange format that is not compatible with the mp67 file format apps ?
- One paged called "not found on this server"


Paradoxically, the information age will be a dark era for the future. Perhaps, will be easier for him find a Gregorian pattern. Fortunately, at the industrial world, now there are some other practices. The PDF/A is a good solution. We hope. And here we find a point where we must have an effort the use of standards. Standards that will apply for ours structures ( such JSR-170 ) , but the file formats that we support ( such pdf/A). We have a lot of content, but, at these moments, with a very short live cycle.

Normally, when we are speaking about losing data, we are considering in viruses, hardware problems, corruption or even natural disasters. However, we forget that there are enemies of our data called time and the proprietary data formats.

About trying of convert data, an example could be trying to convert old MS Word documents from a server side to another standard format. Depending of the docs, can be a nightmare. Probably, if you could do it easily , I will be making music with buzz, and the planets will be at the correct position.

One thing is sure. This post will not be read by my nephews.