I’m not sure I understand your reasoning.
I think Andrew has said that it takes longer to brief and review other people’s code than it does to just write it himself.
Who knows what’s going on though… I wish communications with the community and 3rd party developers were better.
Yep. And while the Open-ish source status of the project has been a pain point for the community before, I do even somewhat understand this. Unless a project has been developed with co-devs from the start, making sure that someone understands the code base well enough to not do something wrong or that it’s a way that aligns with your future goals can be difficult.
That said, I am still bothered by it. I submitted two PRs in the past to the VCV Manual and both have just sat in limbo despite it saying
Send a pull request to this repository with your edits. Major changes like new pages and complete overhauls are welcome, as well as minor fixes like grammar, spelling, and reorganization. Your PR will be accepted if it is a net positive benefit to readers.
So I just gave up and started writing my own musical guide that’s focused on VCV: https://opguides.info/music/music-getting-started (for which I am VERY open to contributions ^-^ )
Similarly, I talked with Aria Salvatrice a lot when that whole ordeal was going down and though her, saw message threads with other devs expressing similar sentiment of being frustrated by the unbalanced relationship of their code being open and Rack’s being closed during dev. I’m not sure I side with either here. Andrew definitely has the right to do it as he’s doing, and it’s still better than many other platforms which are reliant on user generated content. Similarly, devs don’t have to make their modules FOSS either, though I’m forever grateful that so many do. I don’t really want this to turn into another community relations thread though. I know we’re all appreciative of the work from both Andrew and the various devs that have made all the cool modules we love. <3
Ultimately, what I’d really like is an up to date ETA, a list of changes that developers should be aware of that might act as potential tripping hazards for updating or making new modules, and some details on things like will the VST expect to be ran as a single session with one window in common, will the VST support multi channel out, will VCV host still work in side VCV-VST etc. - things that might affect other planned purchases or the direction of people’s setups with regards to MIDI controllers, what DAW to buy/learn, what Eurorack hardware to get, etc.
I know this position. It is really hard to get someone up to speed and will usually really slow you down (or so it seems). I do think that having someone on board will slow you down very much at first, but will ultimately benefit you. Maybe this person will challenge your believes and open new doors, maybe this person can help with the important stuff that’s not your core strength (such as communications, legal stuff, prioritising issues, etc.).
At the very least it will help keep you sane, with all this pressure from the entire community, whichever problems are holding you back ánd the rest of your life in these weird times (hope Andrew’s ok).
What about this commit? Have you heard of any licensing/ownership changes?
just looks like a move to a more professional business structure.
At the risk of getting on Andrew Belt’s sh-t list, in my opinion, every three to six months is a bit too much time to pass between development progress updates, especially for those in the community who have materially supported the project.
On the other hand, whatever. I’ll go away and come back in six months to see if anything has changed.
The reason I am anxious for 2.0, vs. happily humming along with 1.6: I am looking forward to better MIDI-out timing with external devices.
Interesting… Maybe Andrew is selling VCV and the Grayscale assets are a part of the deal. Happens a lot with successful products with huge communities. Might not be a bad thing either, if it’s a good company, could speed up development a lot. Sorry, not meaning to spread a rumor
If I had to guess (and it’s a complete guess) I think that this reflects a new corporate instantiation of VCV which purchased Andrew’s non-corporate (and Grayscale’s corporate) IP. I don’t see anything to suggest that Andrew’s not still in full control of VCV–this just looks like a reorganization.
(I suspect this is what @almostEric had in mind above).
That’s a perfectly plausible theory. My thought only came about because long periods of near-silence rhymes with a long period of negotiating the right deal with another company. But then, it rhymes with lots of other things as well, so… I should just stop speculating
But then again, the longer the silence, the more speculating will naturally happen as well…
And progress/news on vcv 2 & rack for daws has been frustratingly thin again as this thread shows, especially for those that desperately hope for it to arrive since the original 2019 planned release.
Alas, not much we can do than hope and wait, still.
c.
I hope that’s not the case. Many years ago, I bought a Slim Devices Squeezebox network music player. It was a garage operation headed by a brilliant developer, Sean Adams, with a vibrant community of users. I really enjoyed the project. I spent a lot of effort on my own putting together an app that displayed song information as it was playing on a digital frame.
Then one day, out of the blue, Sean announced that he had sold the whole operation to Logitech. Once folks got over the initial shock, anger and dismay, there was hope that with a large company with resources behind it, that the project would continue to flourish. And it did, in some ways, for a while. But after a few years, Logitech lost interest or failed to see a return on investment, and the project died.
I can imagine that at this point, Andrew and Wes and whoever else is an “owner” have had offers. The project has been wildly successful by any measure.
And I couldn’t fault a guy for saying, “hey, I put in a ton of work, and I’d like to reap some rewards.” It’s easy for me to say “money’s not everything,” when I’m not staring at a giant box of money. Still, I hope, selfishly, that doesn’t happen. I hope Andrew and Wes maintain the project and their interest in it.
But some sort — any — sort of message from Andrew about the state of the project would be awesome.
I just had another horrible thought: The deal’s already essentially done, but Andrew is forbidden by contract to say anything until all the legalities are finalized.
OK. I’m done wringing my hands over this for now. There are bigger issues in the world.
I came across an article today that seems relevant to this thread: https://snarky.ca/the-social-contract-of-open-source. (Disclaimer: the examples the writer gives are more extreme than anything I’ve seen in the VCV community, but the principles still apply).
At the end of the day, Andrew doesn’t really owe us anything. Sure, as a user and a developer, it would be nice to have an update (heck, it’d be nice if Rack for DAWs was released tomorrow), but we don’t always get what we want.
We’ve been given an awesome gift in that Rack is free and open-source software. Let’s appreciate that gift and make the most of it.
We also need to have a little trust in Andrew, and that he’ll steer Rack in a direction that is positive for the folks currently using Rack and developing for Rack, and hopefully attracts new users as well. From everything that I’ve seen so far in Rack v1, I think that trust has been earned.
Finally, I believe Andrew should be encouraged to be making money from Rack. Maintaining a large open-source project can be very challenging both for a person’s financial circumstances and mental health. As a community, if we want future VCV softwares to be free and open-source, we need to support VCV and Andrew in being compensated for their work. Sure, other people’s money can mean that other people’s interests come into play, but if Andrew was doing all this just to “sell out” or “make a quick buck”, I don’t think he would have made Rack open-source in the first place.
Anyway, enough of my opinions… time to get back to making music.
Logitech would be weird indeed. I wonder what a company like Arturia or Behringer would do if they acquired vcv.
As a developer of some small modules for the Rack I felt the “pressure” that came from the community after I posted a preview of an unfinished module. In my case, this pressure encouraged me to finish this particular module.
In case of the Rack, after announcing version 2 for early 2020 the “pressure” from the community had to come up. Of course, an open source developer gives a gift to the community. But the community behaves a bit like children waiting for Santa Claus. And now we want to know the new date for our X-Mas party.
Instead of sayng that he Is selling vcv, why you Just don’t ask him? as far as i know vcv will always be free and there will be vst version 99€ wich Is fair price and other amazing premium modules. I never heard of selling so i don’t think It will happen
Has anyone thought of asking @Vortico instead of speculating?
If only he had a forum where he could publish blog posts and otherwise communicate with the user base
Doing a partnership with a bigger company isn’t a bad thing. It seems he needs resources, and help to get the ball rolling with VCV. The time it takes between updates is really long. I think its not a bad idea to consider working with a company that can push this thing along
Oh, he’s definitely read this thread. Up above I said:
and only a few days later that call for contributions on the manual’s README.md was removed and my PR’s closed almost as rudely as possible
So, I’m pretty sure he didn’t even read the PR, at least that’s how it sounds.
I don’t know if he’s not responding by choice of because maybe some of the ideas above are correct, that he may be selling VCV and might be under NDA. Hoenstly, I don’t care. This is just getting ridiculous.
As an open source project, no, he doesn’t owe use anything. As a paying customer, someone that contributes in the forum, runs a large modular/vcv/eurorack chat on telegram, and who tried to contribute to the manual he does. I don’t want to burn any bridges, I love VCV as software, that’s why I’m still here, but it’s almost like he’s intentionally burning bridges to the most passionate users whenever he can.
I’m beginning to see why some developers have gotten fed up and left.