Relicensing VCV Rack to GPLv3 with freeware/commercial exceptions?

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Those numbers definitely surpass the maintenace costs of running their stores. The majority is profit, otherwise those companies wouldn’t use it as such a large investor pivot. Of course, Apple etc have expenses for developing the platforms themselves in order to make those stores exist, but in Apple’s case, they sell hardware to access the platform in the first place, so I agree it’s a bit obscene. In Google’s case, it makes a bit more sense because they are primary contributers to the Android operating system, which is licensed to Samsung, Motorola, etc. (and Google Pixel, but that’s a fraction of total Android sales.)

Anyway, I was just curious of app store pricing and thought it was relevant to this thread. Who knows, maybe I’ll use this information for an iOS port in X years if enough people stop using PCs.

In other news, it may happen sooner than later, due to the many suggestions in this thread, to post an “advertisement” page on the vcvrack.com website for potential Rack commercial plugin developers which will list guidelines, benefits, and a subset of terms for adding your plugin to the VCV Plugin Manager and/or licensing for outside distribution. I don’t see a desperate need to onboard a bunch of new commercial developers in the next couple months because a steady stream of open-source, freeware, and commercial plugins will be released by VCV and others after the v1 release which might even be overwhelming for me and users, but maybe later in the year I’ll start appealing to new companies via a website rather than private solicitation. Just a thought, not a guarantee. VCV emailing developers (and developers emailing VCV) has given us more than enough commercial plugins in the last year, and I don’t see the “private solicitation” method declining in success soon.

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Copying https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt to LICENSE.txt in your repository is what most people do.

You don’t have to choose GPLv3 though. You can use an open-source license of your choice. Your plugin STS is licensed BSD 3-clause, which is fine. No change required unless you want.

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Updated https://vcvrack.com/manual/PluginLicensing.html with changes:

  • Added reminder that GPLv3 allows commercial distribution if the source is released under GPLv3.
  • Addressed forks of Rack plugins used in non-Rack plugin contexts.
  • Added VCV Rack Plugin Ethics Standard for commercial plugin licenses.
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:rofl::joy::rofl::joy::rofl::joy::rofl::joy::rofl::joy:

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You’re laughing now, but you just wait! (But yeah, this probably won’t happen.)

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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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

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THATS A MAC GORRAMIT :stuck_out_tongue:

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As a user, I’ll add my own views which may or may not coincide with others.

First, I see nothing wrong with Andrew changing the licensing. It is his product mainly, and he has every right to secure it and secure funds for further developing. Whether or not others concur is a moot point, it isn’t a democracy. As users, we have the right to choose to use a product, choose a different product, illegally “hack” a product and take our risks, etc. DAW’s and Developers come and go, sell off their product, give it away free, or simply fold. We users merely skate along until we find another product that we can afford, that is stable and suits our purposes.

Second, as far as Developers and Licensing goes, my main concern is what will happen to pricing of what currently is the best, and most reasonably affordable, modular system. The Developers I have seen so far seem to be either users with their own needs sharing their results with others, or “small business” or “niche” developers who may or may not have hardware modules also. Yes, there are a couple larger names, but the vast majority especially in freeware modules, comes from the former. Now that Andrew has stated that other Developers may be forthcoming, and the licensing is changing, I am concerned that the affordability will be changing as well. Larger businesses are NOT known for their generosity, and if for example, everyone is only purchasing the lower-priced software and not the hardware versions, will those Developers pull out? Jack their prices up to make up for loss of hardware sales? Will they attempt to swallow up the smaller Developers, as Sony and others have done in the past? And, how will that affect the users?

Finally, as to the “Hot Bunny” issue- All I can do is hope that Matthew and Andrew work something out, but I will keep Rack .60+ around on at least one of my machines, as I purchased a new system in order to take advantage of the upcoming V1 improvements. As for offers of VST plugins and such, that doesn’t cut it for me, I have tons of vst’s as well as programs for making random, fractal, and generative music (what brought me to Rack in the first place), and I have no real need for Host or to bring VSTs into Rack. I will definitely not buy one module in order to use another set of modules I have already paid for in a roundabout circumventing way.

In summary, I enjoy the hell out of VCV Rack, and I see no problems with the license change. My only concerns are where Developers and larger businesses come into play, and by whose set of rules and pricing. If it starts getting pricey and no longer affordable, I’m out. There’s a reason I don’t use Reason, or Blocks, or Kontact, or what-have-you. I’m poor. When it is no longer affordable or enjoyable to me, I’ll go elsewhere as will my support.

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@Vortico
Bad timing on my part. It was seeing Hot Bunny listed in the Rack Plugin Manager recently that nudged me into purchasing both it and Floats.

Oh well. Not a problem though, I was always surprised that you allowed 3rd parties to sell products outside of the plugin manager. And much as I recently purchased Mathews plugins, I do agree that it’s only proper that a code of practice exists for developers to follow, and that code should advise strongly against blatant IP theft.

Modules that are a carbon copy of someone elses IP with nomenclature chosen to tickle potential customers neurons into action isn’t ideal; but Eurorack is chock full of major name developers that do exactly the same thing - exhibit number one, Korgasmatron (which had to change it’s name for infringing Korg’s IP), and the Make Noise Math’s unit itself is loosely bases on the Buchla 281, Buchla 257 and the Serge DUSG units so there’s an element of ‘people in glass houses’ to this discussion too. I don’t mean that to dis Make Noise (as there’s a huge difference between inspiration and facsimile with a new faceplate). My own rack is populated with a fair bit of Make Noise kit (and Mark Verbos stuff too) because it’s inspired by Buchla and Serge.

Not so long ago there was a Google Sheet doing the rounds of the VCV community detailing exactly which modules are based on which manufacturers so it’s maybe a little unfair to single Mathew out on this. At the moment many of these IP infringements are flying under the radar as those developers don’t PR their activities to the same extent as Mathew, but as VCV Rack grows in popularity, even more hardware manufactures will be keeping an eye on the VCV Rack plugin manager to see if their IP has fallen foul to dubious developer activity. So now’s as good a time as any to start enforcing consistency with regards to that code of practice.

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So does this change prevent people from cloning the repo and releasing vcv it without these changes so they could carry on as it was but with them at the helm rather than Andrew?

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I’m not sure why it would. Commercial developers on the VCV Plugin Manager are uneffected by this change, since a commercial plugin license for Rack v1’s new license is included with the deal. Will the relicense affect the pricing of the ~5 plugins outside the plugin manager? Probably not, since buyers drive price markets, not sellers. The goal of a seller is find the right price so that price * buyers is maximized. Royalties do not play a factor because maximizing price * buyers * (1 - royalty) will give you the same price as above.

The difference is “idea” vs “implementation of idea”. There are an infinite number of ways to implement a dual function generator, but only one of them looks like Make Noise Maths (well, two of them since there are two Maths versions). If you’re a hardware manufacturer, you should follow a similar rule: You can clone a filter or oscillator topology since it’s just a mathematical concept, but you have to lay out your own schematic and PCB, since that requires creative engineering and design. The only exception to this rule is when the idea you’re implementing is patented. I’m not sure if any analog synthesizer circuit patents are active anymore.

Functional clones in VCV are as welcome as any other module, but they must not attempt to explot the success of other people’s work by associating themselves with a particular brand/model, by creating a likeness of panel design, name, etc.

Anyone can fork VCV Rack as long as they license their fork under GPLv3 and rename the software, since “VCV” is trademarked.

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Because of the technical challenge of splitting Rack’s DSP library into a separate library, I’ve decided to keep it in the Rack repository. I don’t think this should be much of a problem because it’s rare that plugins need to copy code from this anyway. If plugin developers need a specific DSP feature, they can either implement it themselves with an API that most serves their specific needs, or request it to be added to the DSP library.

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I plan to make the full terms for commercial licensing publicaly available, including pricing. I aim to charge X% of profit (after payment processor fees), minus $Y of “free/exempt fees”, per calendar quarter per vendor, where X will be somewhere between 12-18% and Y between $100-200.

If you prefer DSP, this would be max(foreign_exchange(profit * X) - Y, 0). :stuck_out_tongue:

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I think you mean this, it had been mentioned in another thread: https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=F3390877F5DE871D!236571&ithint=file%2Cxlsx&authkey=!AN-8s9VqOBqv5xo

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That’s the one I had put together, but I (temporarily) stopped updating it when the newer one came along and was very active. My last update of it was in mid January.

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@mixer Thanks. That was the one I was referring to.
@PaulPiko Could you point me in the direction of the newer one (thanks in advance for that too!)?

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Sorry, I wasn’t keeping track of it. The new one isn’t available in its original location, though I think someone posted a new link in the facebook group… just checked, here it is

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VCV Rack v1 has been relicensed.
See https://github.com/VCVRack/Rack/blob/v1/LICENSE.md for the complete license text and link to the GPLv3 text.

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Forgive me for being an idiot but what does the copyright mean in this context, just that you are the author of the code and that legal issues can be pursued by you? I’ve seen it before in free software like zynaddsubfx but never really questioned what it meant in terms of the license it has.

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“Copyright Andrew Belt” in that context means that I’m asserting that I’m the copyright holder and have legal right to apply the license that follows. Open-source licenses aren’t valid unless its license is claimed by the person/organization who wrote the software. (Otherwise I could declare that Microsoft Windows is now released under the public domain.)

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