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Re: Another happy lilypond user


From: James Harkins
Subject: Re: Another happy lilypond user
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2013 01:35:21 +0000 (UTC)
User-agent: Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/)

David Kastrup <dak <at> gnu.org> writes:

> James Harkins <jamshark70 <at> gmail.com> writes:
> > Last week, I got a message inviting me to pay my Finale tax. I was
> > very happy to delete it, but not before a good larf.
> 
> Well, I am somewhat unhappy with that focus on the pricing of Finale as
> my own work is being funded by LilyPond users who are typically paying
> somewhat more to substantially more than the "Finale tax" would entail.
> 
> For them, the important difference obviously is not that Finale costs
> money to use.  On the one hand, they get quite more in return for their
> payment than the right to run a single copy.  On the other hand,
> everybody else gets the same, without paying.

This is an excellent point... thanks for the reminder.

I've been using Lilypond for about two years now (though not heavily, as most 
of my music is electronic with an improvisatory element). Finale asks for 
US$100-120 every year. (This might actually be a bit high for me; I haven't 
upgraded Finale since, oh, 2009.) If I transfer my Finale tax to David, 
that's US$300 to cover the last 2 years of use plus the next year in advance. 
For myself, I have to weigh that against the fact that most of my 
compositions don't involve a printed score. This is one of the reasons why I 
stopped paying the Finale people. Since I don't use notation software daily, 
it didn't make sense to keep investing the same amount as someone whose 
entire oeuvre depends on it. (My daily-use musical tool is SuperCollider, but 
there, I contribute code fixes, documentation and occasionally features.)

(That's apart from the fact that they *still* can't fix their ridiculous 
collision detection failures. In some ways, I think they should charge for 
the Garritan instrument library, and then give you a discount for being 
forced to suffer Finale's notation mistakes.)

But... when I need a printed score, I *really* need it, and I'm glad to be 
using the best. I do feel I should pay something, appropriate for the amount 
I actually use it. It's very easy to forget that.

I managed to mess up my PayPal account somehow (it was not clear what to do 
if your bank is in the US but you live in China). I'll come back to that 
after I've got it sorted.

hjh




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