Reposting from the Facebook VCV User Group in case anyone’s not a member, since it’s relevant to this thread. Apologies for the novel.
Here is my Matthew Friedrich’s FAQ which addresses several questions I’ve received about his status.
Why is Matthew banned from the VCV Facebook Group?
There is no single reason but a combination of many reasons.
-
He entered the VCV scene by showing absolutely no respect for others’ designs and intellectual property. Many of you recall his Make Noise clone, which pissed off Tony Rolando from Make Noise, but many don’t know that he cloned Frap Tools Falistri, which also pissed off Simone Fabbri from Frap Tools. Both Eurorack manufacturers reached out to me to complain, which took several email exchanges to convince them that VCV had nothing to do with what should be Matthew’s responsibility.
-
Tony made a polite request to change his panel, and he handled the situation extremely poorly and unprofessionally. It took weeks for him to finally comply to Tony’s kind request to change the panel, he never apologized, and he continued to sell his clone and advertise it on the VCV communities. VCV has always encouraged original designs, and in 99.9% of cases, each module that is announced on these forums is the fruit of creativity, programming skill, and design expertise. One person committing intellectual property theft devalues the achievements of honest developers.
-
I finally came to my senses a year after his Floats release when I noticed his weekly use of VCV community as a marketing platform for his unlicensed Make Noise port. I removed his two most recent posts, he immediately posted one more with an unprofessional snarky remark, and it became evident to me that Matthew had no interesting in changing his behavior and had no place in the VCV community. If you search for “Floats” in this community now, you will no longer find his threads.
I hereby publicly apologize to all VCV Rack users and developers, as well as Make Noise and Frap Tools, for allowing this go on as long as it did, not implementing better community standards, and failing to take actions for these events.
This experience gives me major deja-vu of the Blue Lantern drama ~8-10 years ago in the Eurorack community. I forgot his name, but the guy showed complete disregard for other Eurorack manufacturers (in a time when there are only ~20 companies) by plagiarizing existing designs and circuits. He was banned from the Muff Wiggler forum and was eventually welcomed back years later after a public apology to the community. He even showcased some of his new original designs he had been working on, and the last time I checked, he’s still regularly releasing cool new Eurorack modules. I met him in 2017, and he’s a fantastic guy, so we have to understand that people make mistakes, and we should allow their reputation to be rebuilt with time.
What will happen to my Hot Bunny / Floats / whatever purchase after Rack v1 releases?
As many already know, VCV will make a change to Rack v1’s license which will not affect open-source and freeware plugins, or commercial plugins sold in the VCV Plugin Manager. Its goal is to require all commercial plugin sold outside the Plugin Manager to follow the same standards and support VCV Rack development, as plugins inside the Plugin Manager. This was a difficult and controversial decision to make, but it was clear that there are developers out there that will work against the progress of the several man/woman-years spent developing this platform and its modules.
Back to the question: If Matthew contacts me via email for licensing, I will give him a reasonable royalty offer so he can continue selling his plugins, and I will work with him to make sure his modules follow the “VCV Rack Plugin Ethics Standard” at the bottom of Plugin Licensing - VCV Rack Manual. I’m sure everyone would agree that his customers should not be penalized for his actions.
If Matthew’s plugins eventually become licensed, I would urge potential future customers to follow the “buyer beware” principle. That is all I have to say.