JACK as a Plugin

Commercial Open source exists, i don’t have examples in mind right now, but i already saw that on the internet.

  • Aseprite used to be GPL with commercial binaries.
  • Caddy uses this model as well (have to pay for licenses to use official pre-made binaries and support, but the code is Apache so if you bake it yourself it’s open season.)
  • Ardour “official” binaries used to be paywalled.
  • Tiled is also selling PWYW binaries through itch.io

I would rather not go that route if it can be avoided.

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yes I know it, my question is , it is compatible with the rack license exceptions ?

I think is fair pay for it

because and 50%i is for the graphics :grin: (joke)

Isn’t Andrew planning to remove jack output from the Audio device? Seems like it would be a bit unfair for linux users to be forced in to buying a plugin when (I assume) the equivalent function is free on other OSs.

Is this what you refer to?

I’ve since reversed this change since I’m not sure if SkJack will be available for v1. JACK will work as normal in VCV Core v1.

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I think is complete fair , you should read the slides and take in consideration the time that skrylar invest to develop, maintain the plugin update with rack and jack, the bug fixed etc. and the jack transport , the jack session and midi is an important feature of jack , without it the jack connections with core audio is like alsa and pulse audio jack sink.

it is similar to jack, the price of Mainstage 3 is around 30 usd

I don’t argue about what’s fair or not, but I’ve read those slides and I haven’t found those analysis and strategies proposals particularly convincing, even if I empathize with the author. Investing time on an open source project, not ready to be trusted for live use, led by a single other person, is known to be risky. A safe positive outcome can’t be assumed.

I appreciate enourmously open source developers’ work. I’d buy you all people a drink. A big problem is that I don’t do online micropayments or support crowdfunded projects. Maybe most other people do; maybe not…

The equivalent function as far as getting MIDI in over a single wire and two stereo outputs (with third party modules to get 16) is the baseline. It already existed on each platform.

What Linux (and mac, and Windows…) users receive through my plugin is a 1:1 (for whats implemented) mapping of anything JACK can do to a Rack module, which is a much tighter integration. This means port names and unlimited ports (up to what your computer can handle). I also had to write a special wrapper to connect with JACK, then debug that across three platforms (one of which I can’t use very well right now), so that you can have the module installed anywhere and if the computer you happen to run Rack on doesn’t have (or has a wrong version of) JACK, it doesn’t create mysterious errors or dependencies; it just doesn’t work until you do.

Core (and rm) do not support stacking multiple audio modules to get more channels. You need a special 16-channel extender module if you want more, and if your computer/desires are for more then you’re SOL. This plugin allows you to keep stacking extenders, name each port on the graph, and handles the book-keeping in the background.

In some cases the plugin even shows better performance characteristics (my laptop stutters with very few modules under ALSA+Pulseaudio, but can run an average size cabinet without any stuttering and without the multithreaded build. This might be buffering related, or Pulse related, but I’ve observed it.)

:thinking:

What would you suggest should be done, then? If you don’t think skilled work and an average bugfix time that is close to many enterprise SLA’s is even worth minimum wage, I’m not sure what to say.

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Yeah, it sounds like a contradiction, but it’s also the plain truth in my case. I’ve tried to, but I can’t be bothered to deal with all the problems that come with Kickstarter; and I haven’t used PayPal or a credit card online for a while. Maybe I’m the only one; I hope all your other potential customers are better than me with regard to this. If they’re not, you may have an additional problem.

Oh, I do think it’d be worth! It’d be fair for you to get that sum. But I don’t think it’s realistic, given the niche audience of the product, the issues that may come with a crowdfunding-based strategy, and the additional troubles that may result from avoiding the Plugin Manager.

I want to mention that I’m a Jack user. I’m replying in this thread because I’d like to see this product succeed. I can’t say I’m really enjoying the conversation here.

I didn’t mean to sound entitled in my last post and I certainly appreciate all the work that has gone in to it (it’s an incredible tool for jack users) but I thought at the time that Andrew was removing the jack option from Audio so to even get audio out of Rack we would be forced to use Alsa or pulseaudio, which is not great for many people, or pay for a plugin.

I’m certainly not against any kind of funding method you can come up with, it deserves everything and more that you listed in the slides.

To an extent, Rack didn’t exactly support JACK in the first place. It kind of did because RtAudio supports it, and people started distributing builds that had this patched in.

This is somewhat more clear :face_with_head_bandage:

I don’t plan on avoiding the plugin manager.

If the plugins can be upgraded to the backward-compatibility headers in <2hrs then I may go ahead and do that. Gestures of good faith work both ways. This would also help ensure the goal is understood as not “hold everyone hostage” but instead “being sustainable.”

I’m also now thinking of writing up some questions to send to our existing plugin sellers (at least the ones doing tiered free releases [Hora?]) to see in very broad terms if they are satisfied with that model. A model where the code is always GPL (so you can build it yourself, a la Ardour, or Aseprites private compilation clauses), but the binaries are segregated in to “latest stuff added (pro)” and “delayed release (free)” on the PM might also work. This is a very common model used by creators with Patreon.

Managed to get the 1.x dev branch to build (with some difficulty :sweat:)

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what did you decide? How can we contribute to the development of SKjack?

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:wink:

that is really nice, but I m talking about all the jack features (specially the jack transport ), the community must make that possible

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I absolutely rely on your JACK plugin, and would happily pay to support it.

Just wanted to get that out there.

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