I am also interested in this topic.
Personally, i can see how it can be painful and knowing that the boss @mars is very busy now, i don’t want this to sound in any way offensive.
The fact is that Rebel Owl stuff is way more opensource than anything cycling '74 does. I think martin’s goal was always to get the community more involved in understanding how to flex the framework to our own unique needs. We don’t need special licenses or software, we just use what we can and in the end learn C++ that can benefit our careers without introducing the complexities of navigating licenses.
Cycling has a TINY userbase that even knows what gen~ is. In the grand scheme of this universe of sound engineers, the maxmsp userbase is quite small. So imo it doesn’t make sense to spend tons of time to rewrite gen~ support or add RNBO support if @Befaco won’t put some resources behind it and that there is a sure increasing in the OWL/LICH etc community growing significantly.
I feel the ethos of befaco and owl, is way more aligned with actual C++ programming or at least PD - since those things are free and depend on user skill and time to accomplish pretty much the same stuff gen users can after paying for a license, reading docs, taking a class, and pushing a few buttons to compile. No offense. Also knowing Befaco and Owl are programmers and electronics experts, they aren’t tied to specific hardware - while stuff like electrosmith daisy and RNBO is.
My hope is of course its JUST a 2 line magic sleepy keystroke from Martin or master @antisvin but it is probably beyond that. I know that a very big man in the Cycling community, Graham Wakefield is working with Electrosmith to further their creative platform but I have a feeling that it has slowed down in terms of evolution. Perhaps suffering from the same issues as Rebel Owl. It seems its 1-3 people maximum that are programming everything with very little return.
My main problem is why are they not getting more attention from media or the PD and Gen~ communities in the first place. Is it too difficult? Is the quality control too loose and there are tons of pitfalls? I guess i would attest to that since I am a power user and find a bunch of stuff annoying but I am too uneducated to do everything myself, so i need the tools and tool path to be almost perfect. So yeah I am gravitating to easy solutions like using Gen~ on Lich or now RNBO.
Another gripe I have with all this stuff is that in the end, everyone is using up their precious health and time to do this stuff and they want to be compensated. Piss easy maxmsp and gen~ things are being sold for 5-14 bucks. I’ve no idea about C and PD but maybe its the same. Just because this person paid 400 bucks for a license and spend 1 month reading documentation and finding examples to copy paste and improve on - they will put up a paywall. So the MaxMsp community is super weird and closed in some ways, but there are very bright, usually aligned with Cycling '74 individuals that push the whole concept along.
RNBO seems like a really strong statement from Cycling to all the makers and all the newcomers so I really do hope that @mars and @antisvin and @Befaco find interest in it. I’ll do what I can with connections but it also sometimes doesn’t work out - since Cycling 74 doesn’t really have infinite resources either and they just launched something that runs on the most accessible platforms.
Ironically…raspberry pis are unobtanium now.
Maybe it is the time to QUICKLY brainstorm for owl and befaco and to seriously consider maybe this the correct wave to jump on and surf into a more fun future for all.
)