I dunno . . . there's a pretty big difference between giving something the same keyboard commands and this. This looks an awful lot like blatant theft.

I have seen many audio apps that have a similar appearance. I think they all borrow from each other.

But VEGAS doesn't have the ROUTING MATRIX or a MIDI editor.

Dave T2

Unless he somehow managed to steal the Vegas source code how can one say 'theft'?
For example MySQL works almost exactly the same as MS's SQL server, do you think MS would let that steal their revenue if they thought it was theft? Way, way more money at stake in that case than with Vegas.

For that matter almost everything in Vegas is built on prior look and feel developed by others, do you think Vegas was 'stolen'?

Bob.

There are numerous points of similarity which appear to me to go beyond independent implementation of the same idea.

> Unless he somehow managed to steal the Vegas source code how can one say 'theft'?

It’s theft of intellectual property if Sony has patents on its user interface interactions. For example: IBM holds the patent for the blinking cursor. That’s right, something as simple as a blinking cursor today was patented when CRT’s were brand new. So if Sony has a patent for the way you apply fades by directly manipulating event edges, they could require a royalty be paid for using this technique.

> For example MySQL works almost exactly the same as MS's SQL server, do you think MS would let that steal their revenue if they thought it was theft?

Not the same thing. Structured Query Language is an industry standard and can be implemented by anyone royalty free. IBM’s DB2 database has been around and implementing SQL long before Microsoft was even a company so they have NOTHING to say about it.

> For that matter almost everything in Vegas is built on prior look and feel developed by others, do you think Vegas was 'stolen'?

Nope. Once again Vegas mostly uses standard Windows GUI interactions which cannot be patented (or stolen) because they were also part of a standard called CUA (Common User Access, also started by IBM).

Someone who directly copies the “look and feel” of another application can be treading on thin ice if there are patents involved. Anyone complying with industry standards is safe. Theft of actual code to implement the standard is still theft but that’s hard to prove without seeing the actual source code.

~jr

Little gossip, the author of Reaper is no other than Justin Frankel, the guy who did Winamp....

I think you're getting at a point that I was thinking about with "look and feel". It could very well be that this person is using the same authoring tools that are used for Vegas, in which case a lot of things would look similar.

Actual patent enfringement can be tricky because sometimes very minute things are patented. It might very well be that this guy will have to do a lot of auditing soon.

I see that he includes an navigator window. Looks a lot like something I'd seen in Media100. Vegas doesn't have it, but maybe they did a patent search...

Rob Mack

this has much better (imho) UI then Vegas. You get more info in less windows which is real nice. No "hello kitty" XP theme crap to fill us usefull pixels (more like V4, a plus to me).

vegas has aa much more accurate waveform while recording files though. You can zoom in/out, pan across tracks, etc. with vegas & it always slows ~the last 10 minutes in waveform. This goes blank & starts anew every time you try to zoom/pan the tl.

try right clicking on the volume/pan sliders. :) aparently it supports mant channels per track.

Do I see this as ripping off vegas? No. I see it as no different then Vegas ripping off Avid or Premiere. IMHO, this is what V5/6 should of looked & acted like. Sony spent to much time on the look of the UI & not actual improvements. I find the look of the UI much more functional the my copy of Vegas 6. Again, like V4 was, before they changed the icons to fancy looking buttons. Another good example is if you right click on the media in Reaper & select properties it's much of the same info as Vegas, but in 1 window instead of multiple tabs

if this did video too as good as it does audio, i'd start playing with it more. I'm going to recomend it to several people I know who don't have a multitrack editor.

v1.0 & up will be shareware but the pre 1 builds are free. Good deal. This could be the next Vegas. :D (again, I've never like the look of the Vegas UI since v4 & this gives you much more info. The Sony team should look at this & say "he's done it right."

Well you sure cannot complain about the price and the developer listens to users, fixes bugs and adds features in hours not years.

Not sure if Justin Frankel (of Winamp fame), is worried about keeping his belly fed. He's already made ten's of millions, from selling his company (including Winamp which he developed) to AOL.
It's more of a labor of love than to make a profit and he will be selling Reaper, on the honor system, for around $40 (non-commercial use) with no intrusive copy protection. Supposedly, a commercial license can be had for $200, after the official release.
The amazing thing about Reaper is that the excutable program file fits on a floppy disk (about 1.07MB). Yes, it does borrow a lot of what Vegas & ACID does, but it also has a lot of very innvovative Reaper centric features, as well.

Cheers,

Billy Buck

Hmmm. Gearshift. Steering Wheel. Gas Pedal. Four Wheels. Gas cap an right side. Leather seats. Power window switch. Cup Holder. Rear View Mirror.

"There are numerous points of similarity which appear to me to go beyond independent implementation of the same idea."

I guess he might well grab a lot of the Vegas audio folk who were disappointed at the lack of progress when Vegas 6 came out, especially if he implements Rewire support.

"Hmmm. Gearshift. Steering Wheel. Gas Pedal. Four Wheels. Gas cap an right side. Leather seats. Power window switch. Cup Holder. Rear View Mirror."

You quoted it, but apparently still missed it: "beyond independent implementation of the same idea."