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Garritan Purchases Giga

The fact they announced this on April Fools Day is unsettling, and Garritans intentions are as usual ambiguous.
Gigastudio's advantage of 64bit and also hosting was it's biggest advantage, now it appears that idea is actively being pursued by Vienna.
I hope Garritan didn't spend too much.
I do applaud someone using it's best features and Frankensteining it somehow.
 
Nick Batzdorf @ Fri Apr 03 said:
Until I see a post from Garritan saying that his only intention is to develop the Giga technology for peaceful purposes, I'll remain considerably less sanguine than you.
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I'm just saying that the post coming down does not a conspiracy make.

I have no idea what Gary's plans might be, and I have no idea if he has purchased the rights to the patent. I do believe that the patent is defensible though...
 
Even if Gary had evil on his mind, and even in the doubtful event that an audio streaming patent would hold up in court, I don't think there's a lot of trouble he could cause.

I'm not an expert on patent law, but I do know that with copyright law, you only have three years to file suit if there's an infringement. And in California at least, if a neighbor builds a barn that extends partly into your property and you don't make him move it, then after some amount of time, you've given up your rights to that part of your property.

I would imagine that you can't sit on a patent (especially one as questionable as this) for this long and then arbitrarily start enforcing it, essentially crippling an industry. With the rare headline-grabbing exceptions, courts are reasonable.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say it would be a really dumb move for Gary to start causing trouble, because I would bet Gary would then find himself as a defendant in a case of Malicious Prosecution. And I'd bet he'd be more likely to lose big on that (especially with Apple's legal resources) than he would on winning a patent enforcement.
 
I'm not a lawyer, Mike, but what I wonder is whether you can try and enforce your exclusive right to use the patent without bringing up the patent itself. The case would then be about a simple license violation, and it might not be so easy to use the questionable nature of the patent itself as a defense. Or more importantly it might get very expensive to defend against that kind of a charge.

You wouldn't have to start with Apple, you could start by taking on a small defenseless developer who has a streaming engine. And the entire user community, who I'd hope would be outraged once wind of this got around the internet.

Frankly I'd be surprised if Giga*Studio* itself - the program that uses the kernel level stuff - could be resuscitated after this long when all the developers are gone. Giga GVI is more possible, but really it's the convolution processing and sophisticated filtering in Giga that could still be interesting from a technological point of view. So could the Giga editor, I suppose.

But I don't want it to sound like I know what I'm talking about - this is all speculation.
 
Exactly....
Speculation is good, but one fact remains.
Nothing will be done with this anytime soon, and other developers are marching ahead with some very specified apps.
GVI is the only part of GS I still use because it maintains the sound that makes Giga so useful for us guys that appreciate quality low end percsussion, and bass.
When and if GG ever gets around to implementing the technology he spent his money on, I will check it out then, but announcements from most developers don't hold water.
I don't base my purchases on the estimated release dates, etc.
I make my money now, and to replace content I already use isn't wise, as my recent purchase of K 3.0 demonstrated.
Add 1 year to developers announcements and that usually equates into a working product.
Anyone can release a product to try and satisfy their announced time schedule, but it's the whole....oooops, we forgot the pedals.......or oooops, sorry we missed that bug....
I'll check out this thread again after NAMM '10....that way I won't waste any more time on this speculative chit chat..

I do wish them well though.
 
You know that I'm usually a 'defender' of Garritan in this forum...

Half of Garritan products were very small, in comparison to what's out there, and intended for the lower class amateur composers. GPO, JABB and the rest. He decided to 'dominate' that market and seems like a clever move indeed. Not after the glory but the money and market domination (sort of). He also moved towards bundles: Makemusic, Microsoft, etc. It seems like a great marketing move to me.

But he's also done some marvelous instruments, if you ask me: GOS, the Steinway, the strad and goffriler; the latter two being killed for some reason.

Enough of "defending" though.

Buying Giga seems like a weird move really. Especially after having developed the ARIA engine for his own creations. I would have to think that it's a matter of trying to take it away from other developers, or maybe use some of the technology on it. But one cannot be sure really.

So until he reveals what he has done/plans to do, there's little to assume from my end really. :-/
 
nikolas @ Mon Apr 06 said:
Buying Giga seems like a weird move really. Especially after having developed the ARIA engine for his own creations.
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Then again the sf format is pretty limited. I don't know that they compress the samples. There's probably strength in using tricks from the Giga format.

I'm wondering if Gary doesn't plan to make a bigger storefront. If Aria II supports the Giga format, he could potentially buy up a bunch of older libs, repackage them, and offer them for sale with a modest premium.

In fact, Giga's DEF technology can bring small libs with only one or two layers back to life. For instance, I've applied DEF to QL Brass. It used to play melodies in two variants: too loud or too soft. Now it sings melodically.

This approach can give Aria II a heritage that it could never establish on its own.
 
The server is still running. We don't have any plans to shut it down, although it is getting old. If anyone has a problem registering, please let me know through PM. And yes, there is a secret "unlock" which we can pass on to customers if it comes to that.
 
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