I've tried, in numerous times, to contact different audio companies and get them to develop their products for GNU & Linux. These companies are: http://www.m-audio.com/, http://www.propellerheads.se/, http://www.ableton.com/, and http://www.avid.com/.
The petition, usually, was that they should count us in... and, that, didn't work.
Ok, here's a new approach. What if we, all, collaborate on a charity project to produce Free and Open Source audio software?
You could centralize in a non-profit organization with the following commitments:
Develop Free and Open Source Software for those who can't afford your products
Look at this as a charity project. You could try and develop, alongside with your fellow competitors, a piece of software that would let people with low resources, to be creative and produce high-quality music.
Join forces with the competition and learn from each other
Ok, so you compete... right. What if you let your developers work together? I'm sure you could learn a lot from each other and gain ideas for new products.
Provide ground for testing and experimental design
You know your devs have millions of great ideas! Why not let them implement them on their free time; on a pice of software that would have tons of people providing feedback and working along with all of you to make round up these new features? Come on, you could get great code!
Besides, you have the possibility of learning from new technologies like Lv2, jack and others. I'm sure you would expand your horizons as a company and would have happy developers; working for a better world!.. a more musical one at least ;)
Give back, the Community, and let them give you
This spells benefit for all sides; all the time. People with look at you as better companies and, the Community, takes care of their companies! We support them and we develop with them; we stay with them when software fails and help them repair it; we rejoice and make parties when victorious! We rule!
Conclusions
I'm sure and, if your leaders read this, they will see the great benefit in working together with your fellow competitors. The Community can give back a lot of man power to you and you could expand the knowledge and horizons. The benefit goes back to your products, the community and the users!
Please, consider on making a non-profit organization where multiple audio companies can work together. I'm sure you can see benefit in the near future.