It’s too tempting to claim the correct version of events. Trouble is everyone thinks they are also the one with the true version of the story.
moralizing this is only going to help complicate it and lead folks to take sides. Is it a moral issue, or a legal one?
Vitaly has posted something quite agressive on this thread a while ago, of course the moderation team took it down and he was banned following this. We are not censoring, just following the community rules. Everyone can talk as long as it follows the community rules.
The anxiety these licensing issues cause is really baffling to me. These two guys, Andrew and Wes; they made something. It’s theirs. They decided to share it with the world to whatever degree. But it’s still THEIRS.
I own a house. Sometimes I invite people into it. Even strangers, but no, random folks are not free to camp here indefinitely, or paint the walls, or charge rent to other random people.
Another analogy is if I took the fantastic https://www.glfw.org/ project (liberally licensed for anyone to use for their commercial or non-commercial applications), made a fork “GLFW Pro” and sold royalty licenses for it. Even though the software is licensed under zlib, the community/user group would be a bit of a warzone for a few weeks. The license is there to make using the software legally easy to use in applications, not so someone can make some bucks selling the software itself.
Rack’s “GPLv3 + VCV Rack Non-Commercial Plugin License Exception + commercial options” license is definitely more complicated than the simple BSD license, but it’s what we must do now.
Or it’s as though being disrespectful to someone entitled me to their respect!
I think the core of the issue is that VCV Rack provides only half the value out of a VCV system, and that this half is complex enough to be a full time job that must pay a living wage to its maintainer, without angering or scattering an ecosystem of hobbyist developers who shouldn’t expect more than a slow trickle of side-income for work that requires expert niche skills in efficient C code and DSP.
VCV is quite close in spirit to videogames with an open-source engine, proprietary assets, and a thriving modding ecosystem.
With the upcoming official VST, and VeeSeeVST having been asked to discontinue their project, Andrew gets to put a pricetag on access to the free community modules.
Now, a well-made VST is absolutely worth $100 to me, if that’s money spent to fund the engineering that goes into making that VST reliable.
But another way to look at the price tag is as a toll gate to be granted convenient access to the fantastic free modules other people made, without those people seeing any of that money.
If forks are made practically impossible through various forms of lock-in and trademark minefields, then an open-source license is little more than a marketing gimmick to grow the user community and monetize its free labor, while making it impossible for it to pack up and leave for greener pastures should it prove necessary.
Which license is actually used is less important than a leadership that doesn’t get locked into an adversarial relationship with the developer and user community after those kinds of incidents: we’re asked to support financially a single person to steward the free labor of a hobbyist community.
I think it’s good to think of the official VST (and some of the licensing around it) as just one small part of a big ecosystem. Right now that ecosystem is healthy.
As a half-assed-probably-mediocre-but-do-the-best-I can-designer myself, that statement super annoys me…
Is it? How long would it take you to make those exact curves? Do you know how it would be done? Have you watched any media or done any study into how they designed the swoop?
Ok, sure… whatever.
Well, with all due respect… you are a self admitted half-assed-probably-mediocre-but-do-the-best-I can-designer. I can think of a number of reasons why that might annoy you… don’t care about any of them.
I think that’s an opinion. You are welcome to it.
Sorry to correct your grammar, by you forgot the dash between ‘self’ and ‘admitted.’
except, it isn’t. anyone can have full access to the fantastic free modules totally for free, by using the main product: standalone rack, which is and always will be free.
as a maker of some of those fantastic free modules myself, i am all for a model that keeps the main product free and open source, while offering a side-product which many people want in a way that keeps the core developers fed and working on the continued stability and quality of vcv rack and its ecosystem.
and any third-party module developer who wants to have a slice of the money can easily offer commercial modules. if the quality is high enough, people are perfectly willing to pay for them.
i’ve been around open source projects for close to two decades now, with many years as an unpaid volunteer amateur developer or moderator. i’ve seen my share of leaders, leadership styles, and communities. and leading a project like this, doing technical development, while fostering a healthy community, is a balancing act that not every coder is cut out for.
i think we are very lucky to have a developer at the helm who does possess this particular skill set and vision. in my opinion andrew is doing a really great job. he may not be perfect, but he gives transparency about his mistakes and why he makes the leadership decisions to address problems the project comes across, while trying to keep the community drama to a minimum. i may not agree with his every decision, but i agree with his vision and leadership style.
let’s all do our part in fostering a healthy community and keeping the drama to a minimum.
Yes, Rack for DAWs will not a “toll gate” because you can step right around it by downloading Rack v2. It restricts the use of plugins no more than it does right now by not existing. After its release, no liberties will be taken from users or developers.
Rack for DAWs came about by a decision to support a very large feature request “I want to use VCV Rack in Ableton, Cubase, Logic, Pro Tools, etc”. Since this feature takes a very large chunk out of a year, it would be unfair to other VCV Rack users who do not need the feature but would be paying with it through purchasing VCV plugins. Therefore, for those who need it, it will be around $99 and will be funded 100% on this investment. For those who don’t need it, Rack will be developed with the pool of funds raised without Rack for DAWs. I haven’t heard from an open-source developer yet who expressed discomfort with this upcoming product.
nope
I am not a graphic designer and although I have even had some successes helping with some panels, I would not dare to actively offer myself as a vcvrack panel designer, It seems simple to you and that’s where the magic is
Show us your design work then. If you know so much about it you’re probably very good at it, this is open source, make a pull request instead of criticizing.
this sounds quite arrogant to my ears, you might technically be right, but don’t forget: the sum is more than just adding up parts.
copying is indeed easy, but designing isn’t, the art of designing is not always to make something outstanding, the simple things take a lot more time
A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the French writer, pilot, and aircraft designer
You are right, making something simple is easy.
But, anybody with a vector graphics program and a couple of graphic design school credits knows how hard it is to make something both simple AND good looking, AND well balanced, AND functional.
In your defense, I admit it’s something very complicated to explain… The best way to understand why is to try by yourself 
Personaly I couldn’t do something as nice as Wes did if you give me only grey circles and black rectangles.