Ideas for making a bit of profit on a module?

Nobody wants a Bret Truchan Only Fans page, trust me. Unless you’re really into seborrheic keratosis. Ha ha ha.

This is exactly how I feel as well. :slight_smile:

Again, I don’t really see what the effort is compared to writing the modules themselves. It’s completely trivial no?

My only problem is all the limitations applied to “commercial” in the VCV Store. I don’t feel like going through the trouble of making any module, because I can’t choose to make it paid on equal terms.

As a user, I prefer that plugins either be free or paid, but not both. I’m fine with a plugin starting out commercial and changing to free, as long as the change is transparent in all ways and seamless in all ways.

As a developer, personally I feel that commercial plugins are antithetical to free and open source platforms. It is antithetical to a sharing, teaching and learning environment. I may choose to purchase commercial plugins and have done so, but I am reluctant to use them in any project that I might want to share the patch for.

I have the luxury of being retired and having no need to supplement my retirement income. But, having been a professional software and hardware systems engineer and R&D(eveloper) since 1985, I have come to the personal conclusion that monetizing my projects would bring in insignificant income. In the end, just about the only way to bring in significant income is to hire myself out to successful employers. But, the best years of my careers were from 1998 through 2004 where I was “self employed” as PurrSoftware and never made a penny off of my 3D game engine developments, supported by stock day-trading until the dot-com crash around 2007. Then I had to go back to work for someone else, outside the house. From 2004-2008, I worked remotely for a 3D modelling and animation tool company and never set foot in the state where that company was incorporated. But, we developers all got laid off in 2007, thus cementing my need to re-enter the traditional workforce. Working remotely for 4 years spoiled me though.

I have little interest in money, but I am comfortable enough to not have to worry about earning money. I get my professional satisfaction through providing my 34 year old Meander as an opensource gift to the world, even though I have literally years of development effort in that software. There is no greater satisfaction for me than seeing artists using Meander to do things I never even thought of. Well, I also get great satisfaction from being Meander’s biggest user for making music. But, that is why I developed Meander 34 years ago, to help me make music. I have been doing “opensource” for more than 40 years now, including sharing my software worldwide via mainframe(!) prior to the WWW. All of that has been extremely satisfying and I wouldn’t do it any differently if I had it to do over. But, that is just my personal perspective and my personal approach to the advice of “Follow your bliss” (Joseph Campbell). .

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Even though commercial sale is one of the FOSS freedoms? :thinking:

Remember that Free does not mean “free as in beer/candy”.

I would like to write foss modules and sell them, but this is not allowed here so not worth going through the trouble for me.

Of course I could sell my own binaries via gumroad.com or something, but that would be even more hassle.

I think it is important to include my full sentence for context as I say this is a personal feeling.

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@k-chaffin your post really resonates with me. It is very satisfying to be able to create tools people use in all senses of the word - tools which are accessible to them financially, intellectually, musically, and operationally.

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I love you you put it. I’m generally the same way. The only downfall about not making money is that I can’t reinvest that money into more professional front panel designs, especially for the modules that might be more unique like the Groovebox module. Perhaps I’ll do some contract work with the specific intention of using the money to hire talent. I have to learn Ruby and React.js, and maybe I can offer someone from highly discounted work in those languages. :thinking:

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Or look for others with the same desire to share their work. I have years of experience in vector graphics + SVG, and I’d be interested in helping out.

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Yeah, I was going to suggest fundraising for the development costs then making it free after that. Didn’t VCV do this with the Mutable Liquid filter and a few other ones? I would definitely chip in a few quid for some more ambitious modules from Brett.

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And believe me, they do. I’ve dreamed of a stereo version of Thorns for forever, and I’m planning to buy it as soon as I can. I remember the good old days of using a Stoermelder Sync module to crossmap a pair of Thorns for stereo processing.

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You could consider what we did with ShapeMaster as an option - there is free version and a paid version that adds some useful extras.

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