I’m good friends with many of the old VCV devs, and Andrew and I have had long talks about this on Discord and the continued double standard here (VCV itself is open source, after all) is maddening. I want to be able to share my source code for others to build off of, and I don’t care if someone starts to distribute binaries. That’s inconvient enough compared to just using the library I think most would pay - or, we could do Pay what you want, as suggest above.
This is the biggest thing that has kept me from wanting to do more VCV dev after releasing LyraeModules and the Pink Trombone port - I wanted my next set to net some cash, but still be open source.
Edit: On my lurch break so I haven’t read past the comment this in reply to. I’ll catch up and read Aria’s comment when I get back.
All caught up and ready to reply with more detail:
I can’t help but feel there is a very awkward power imbalance in what is allowed for plugin devs. Yes, it’s Andrew’s project, he maintains the library, etc. - but, as has been said a million times - much of the success of VCV is clearly owed to third party plugin devs. Bogaudio, Valley, Geodesics, this goes on - they’re as much required for use at this point as the core.
I don’t think Cardnial, which I’m sure is still a pain point to Andrew and the VCV company, would even exist if this power imbalance were better handled. To be clear, I’m not hating on Andrew with this. Everything he’s done seems rational from his perspective. I think what’s been lacking is this open dialouge of why some devs are frustrated.
From what I can tell it’s mostly people who find the current system not flexible enough and some people not feeling welcome.
As for the first point:
Some people want it to be possible to have open source, paid plugins. To not allow this when VCV itself is open source but Pro is paid feels … slimey? I agree that releasing a plugin as paid and then suddenly making it open could make users feel like they got screwed, but at the very least allowing for open source from the start but not free-to-use graphics sounds like it’s reasonable (The SlimeChild agreement, if I understand correctly). Given it seems most plugins are already open source code but no-derivitive graphics, this seems like a natural direction, and an option I would take given the chance.
As for the not feeling welcome, I again don’t want to attribute that entirely on mods - in fact, I think they generally do a good job around here. I also don’t want to blame the community. I don’t know who to blame, and ultimately I don’t think blame even helps much. Plus, frankly, I am one of the well off white guys - at least on the surface. I’m also bi, a furry, and probably a dozen other things people could find reason to attack me for. Do I feel welcome in this community always? No.
But that’s because this community doesn’t have much to tie it together. It’s for VCV rack. That’s it. Because of that, it’s full of all types, including a lot of people I myself don’t particularly want to hang out with. But that’s true of any online community without a narrow enough focus. I mainly spend my days hanging out in chats full of furry engineers that into modular synths. That’s a pretty narrow, small group, and also means I feel immensely welcome because we all know each other and think alike. Asking for a community as broad as this is like asking for everyone current in a supermarket to be friends - They’re their for groceries, not to socialize. The fact that things even go as smoothly and stay as friendly as they do around here is honestly a bit impressive.
Let me tie this in with another hobby of mine: Ham radio. It’s almost exclusively Trump supporting old while males. Now, I don’t want to get into politics, but I am not a trump supporting old … well I am a white male. I couldn’t feel any less welcome at HAM events. But does that mean I don’t enjoy the hobby? no. Does it mean there aren’t others like me in the hobby? also no. I just have to look harder for those groups. And I did find one (Ham Furs).
I’m not saying we shouldn’t strive for a better community, but I think having a reasonable expectation of what this place is and encouraging to find better niches is wise.
@slimechildaudio - if you’re looking for a group to kick it with and the following sounds good (I don’t know anything about what you’re looking for) shoot me a message: @Aria_Salvatrice is already in mine where we hang out with a bunch hardware and software modular devs that also happen to be predominately furry, LGBT, and nerdy as hell. We’d love to have you.
I just want to echo Steve’s answer as my own. I did read your blog post Aria. I would never have thought to fork your collection after reading that. I admire your collections very much.
The author of the Mog collection also left the community over your blog post. They made it even clearer they did not want their collection in the VCV Library. Despite how much I loved that collection, rather than forking it I took inspiration from it when making my own modules.
FWIW. It makes me sad that this community makes people feel excluded. I hope through my actions I can make it better.
I wouldn’t say it’s “why” I left VCV dev, but I do believe that the value proposition of VCV pro is “pay a small amount to VCV, get access to thousands of free modules”. I certainly feel VCV deserves every dollar they can get for the excellent VCV stuff, but it does leave a little bit of a bad taste to be a provider of the free modules.
@Vega - Wow! That really is a novella - and well thought out and well written. Thank you for providing a balanced view point from multiple perspectives.
@Aria_Salvatrice, @slimechildaudio - It hurts to read how you feel unwelcome, in multiple ways - both from a sense of empathy toward you, but also from a sense of feeling attacked by you. I am in that hetero privileged white male group, but I have nothing but respect and admiration for the polished VCV work you have done, and am saddened that you feel unwelcome and find yourselves not wanting to continue participation with VCV - it is definitely an unfortunate loss for all. And I have seen many posts from others voicing similar sentiments, and lots of support given. So if you indiscriminately rant about the community at large, it hurts and puts me in a defensive posture - it is hard to remain empathetic and supportive while feeling attacked and defensive.
I am not trying to invalidate or reject how you feel - I have no doubt your feelings are genuine, intense, and well earned (an odd phrase, but I hope you understand what I mean). But I think (or at least hope) that your intent is not to antagonize the many (probably the majority of) people in this community that support and respect you. Whether in the privileged majority, or the vulnerable minority, the words we use matter.
Coriander - I am gladdened by recent posts from you offering a glimmer of hope that you may return to regular contributions to VCV. If you do, I genuinely hope your experience returns to being a positive one.
I ported your plugin and some others to Rack 2 based on the repos for Cardinale (I did not ask you for your permission because of GPL3).
I did not implement “requested features” because I was not aware of any feature request (beside the fact that I’m primarily working on my own modules).
I did not fix “graphical bugs” because I was not aware of them.
And I did not update widgets to the new “skeuomorphic visual style” because I don’t like this style. I also did not update the GUI of my own modules.
Personally, I’m not an old man, I don’t have money left to buy modular hardware. I’m focused on my own modules (beneath my job for living) and I use this community to share knowledge and other fun stuff.
Hi Aria. I would love to see you return here as a developer and be a role model for inclusiveness, kindness, helpfulness to and share your wonderful modules.
As you know, I left at the same time as you two years ago, over the same issues. I came back a year ago to port Meander to V2 after grieving for a year that I had abandoned the VCV implementation of Meander. I was very cautious before coming back but decided from a non-technical side, VCV had improved. There is now an ethics guideline regarding abandoned plugins and the adoption of such modules. There is less overt toxic behavior towards open source developers.
But, not all problems have been resolved, and probably they never will as it seems like most online communities still have a lot “flame-wars”. That doesn’t make toxic and uncivil behavior right and I still have to ignore a lot of crap.
Personally, before coming back here, I made a promise to myself to try to be a role model for civil, kind and helpful behavior and to try to not make problems worse by reacting to bad behavior, but I still do point out that there is much room for improvement here and I try to post things that try to call out uncivil behavior, without being uncivil myself.
Meander is now the best version it has ever been over its 34+ year history. I’m glad I came back even though I don’t always enjoy the community or leadership. I try to focus on making Meander better, making music with Meander and other modules and communicating what is possible, by example. I still have some self-esteem wounds that resulted from unkind words here regarding my approach to R&D that I have chosen based on my 50 years of modular experience and my 50 years of computer programming experience, including 40 years of professional experience.
It thrills me to see musicians use Meander in their music and publish to YouTube or SoundCloud. I focus on that evidence that my work is of value and appreciated by the user community.
Anyway, I would love to have you return here and port your modules to V2. The port effort is pretty much trivial. But, I understand if you do not want to return.
This is a slight break in topic, but I’m finally taking a few steps towards taking up the dev shortage- I just submitted my first bugfix pull request to @giovanni.ghisleni . I squashed a rather annoying bug in the Rene sequencer, and it’s much more enjoyable to use now. It’s not much, but I’m still proud of it nonetheless.
I’m definitely not even close to releasing a working module, but hopefully I’ll get there someday.
I maintain a good chunk of open source software and few things bring me more joy in that activity than a bug report accompanied by a pull request. Don’t short change your work! It’s awesome and the first step is always to take the first step
Typo, my mistake. Bene would use “outdated” matrix data for the trigger outputs, meaning it wouldn’t respond to tweaks until the next cycle. It has some slightly unorthodox code (doesn’t utilize Schmitt triggers for gate generation) so it took a while to figure out how to fix it, but I somehow got it to work. The gate and v/oct outputs would update fine, but only the trigger sequence wouldn’t update.
That’s great. It is probably a good idea to confirm that the developer accepts pull requests before putting a lot of time and effort into chasing down a bug and fixing it. I do not accept PR for my plugin. But that is just part of my personal security strategy. I do respond to Github issues, including suggestions as to where the problem lies and how to fix. I’m not sure how common my approach is amongst developers.
Most active projects fall into one of three categories as far as I’ve seen
don’t take PRs
Take PRs but require a CLA of some form (and often rewrite them anyway)
Take PRs after careful review for first few times
It really seems to amount to whether or not you want a group of devs in your code or not; and how you want to manage the tail of support. I don’t think there’s any good or bad about any of them. We run surge in camp 3.
I would be mortified, obviously. It’s libre software so others can hack it, learn form it, create variants. Not because I sought to make it easier to take me out of the picture.
When I quit, Andrew Belt made it clear that it’s all business, we’re not here to make friends around here, I remember he told me to cover my own bases. I covered them by quitting: it would be extremely hard to find a developer who is both willing to start an hostile fork, and who has the skills, taste, and dedication required to uphold my quality standards.
Mog’s a long time friend, someone similar to me in many ways, and a very private person without much of a public internet presence. I just wish to set the record straight on this: they didn’t quit in reaction to what I said. They had actually quit before me, for the same reasons. Like most people who quit, they did so silently at first.
I think you’re accidentally making the point I was trying to make far better than I did: you see a developer state that the current version has severe UI issues, yet you will tell her you have the skills and the credentials to second-guess what she said about her own software!
A simple visual comparison with v1 will surface many issues (you don’t even need to run it, you can cross-reference with the docs). The specular highlight layer on the jacks is entirely missing. The status LEDs are offset from their sockets noticeably, and when dimmed, their light blending mode makes them too desaturated. Backlit knobs lack their two-tone bezel, and their tick should be pink with a blue outline instead of black (which is a legacy codepath for Lights Off support, that no longer serves any purpose). The exact colors, along with the rest of conventions the design system and provisions made for colorblind accessibility, are documented in doc/design.md.
You tell me “Job’s done”? I tell you I would be ashamed of releasing UI in this state. No job has been done, a minimal compatibility hack has been applied. That’s not meant as a slight against Falk, it’s just a factual description of what is offered.
That’s what VCV loses by treating developers as disposable: their software, in turn, becomes treated as disposable.
I certainly would love to, too. I can’t help but feel great regret looking back at what I released: I quit before I got to get started. Starting this without experience in C++, audio development, or owning any modular hardware, made me face an uphill battle. But by the time of my last release, I no longer felt limited by my C++ skills. Were VCV a different environment, I would have achieved so much in it.
But we all know what the problem is, don’t we? It doesn’t matter one bit how nice we might be to each other. The Code of Conduct doesn’t apply to the one person who makes it miserable. And after my participations were erased, it was changed specifically to forbid such discussions.
In fact, the only reason I checked out the community a few days ago is that I received yet another private message informing me someone chose to discontinue their involvement with VCV, for the usual reasons. I wanted to take the pulse, so to speak. I have not used VCV at all in two years, just tried out Cardinal a few times, so I don’t follow closely what happens.
Anyway, I have not disappeared, those days you’ll catch me in every friendly hardware synth DIY place. Cool people there, even some fellow ex VCV module developers.
There are several contributors to DBiz and there have been a bunch of merged pull requests in the past. Even if it won’t be officially integrated, I’m keeping it as my own version because the bug is that damn annoying.
Honestly, Aria, as a trans woman myself, your blog post scared me away from VCV as a whole for a very long time. I’ve since come back and am even learning to develop now, mainly just because the community here is incredible.
I really, really hope someday we get a “perfect” modular platform: VCV has all kinds of behind-the-scenes problems, Softube Modular sounds good but it’s limited and largely abandoned, and Voltage Modular is a mostly premium-only ecosystem (with small module collections costing much more than those in VCV.)
Those issues sound a lot more deep than I thought on your modules, thanks for describing them.
I never used them on the official Rack (with that I mean v1.x, I lost interest on VCV things when github issues/tickets were still a thing, “fun” times…) so I was not even aware how they were suppose to really look like.
To be fair, for an unexperienced user, they look fine and do their job as modules. Obviously it is sad a lot of small details were lost along the way, didnt know it was the case until now.
Did an officially apology from VCV ever happened?
At least for the smug remarks on the VCV Rack issue tracker there was no such thing.
Even disregarding the lack of respect and general personal behaviour, on a pure technical level I think it really sucks that opensource modules are not allowed to be commercial.
I thought it was more of a fringe case from my side, but quite a few people here mentioned having similar thoughts.
It is quite a lose-lose situation in my view. I can imagine commercial modules having a higher quality due to work/time being reimbursed in a monetary way, which in turn gives incentive to work on them even more.
Existing opensource modules would benefit simply by having great sources to borrow code or be inspired by.
Could also attract external developers if they know there is a bit of money to be made, even if small.
I understand what you are saying, but open source free modules require just as much effort to create and an equal attention to quality. Many years ago there was a book “Quality is Free”. There was a lot of truth in that. At that time, American semiconductor companies liked to charge extra for quality, whereas the Japanese followed the teachings of Deming and Juran (and later Crosby, the Quality is Free author) to make companies customer centric and continuous improvement the way of life, with quality circles empowering the workers to improve things.
I’ve been working on my open source Meander module for 34 years now. I dare say there is no commercial module here with that level of effort and time put into it.
Of course I may be an outlier, but it is my experienced opinion that overall the open source modules here are as high quality as the commercial modules.
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