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.
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.
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).
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.
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
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.
“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.)
There is much to be considered here, which I am certain you have been over and over in your mind for quite some time. Given what I have read in the replies to your original question, it appears that the majority of those who stand in opposition do so from a personal gain position and have not presented an overarching reason not to proceed based on a community-wide detriment to all. Therefore, I believe that since you will be the one shouldering the responsibility for what happens and understand what this may do to you, you should proceed as you have indicated you feel would be in the best interest of all. I do not believe that you could have come this far without community interest being the core of your work. There is no reason for me to change my mind at this point. Go forth, Andrew, and I sincerely hope you are successful in this endeavor.
I would be very wary of sampling bias before making statements like this.
Most of the affirmative comments are from people who
Don’t write plugins
Only wrote OSS plugins
Already have contracts
There were two people speaking on dissent, one from principle and one from negative experience negociating a deal. The likely third is banned.
Determining how this is received by future candidates is hard, because usually people just walk away and they don’t write you letters.
I’ve been reading Taleb’s Incerto series as of late, and he has many words and stresses to say about making firm decisions where survivorship and sampling biases are heavily at play. (Conceding of course, closed source intelligence is much different and perhaps people outside the usual circles were asked and responded privately.)
This seems extremely reasonable, and I especially like the lowering of the bar effect for the new and/or little guys there. I hope you’ve had your spreadsheet out Andrew, and that you have high confidence that this will be sufficient funding for you. It’s a lot harder to dial the numbers up than down.
Note that selling plugins through the VCV Plugin Manager will be a bit more than just the commercial license and will be handled case-by-case, since it’s a reselling deal rather than a licensing deal. It will also be quite a while before I can design/publish the “commercial developers’ portal” which includes those terms.
You are certainly correct here as to the demographics of this group. However, when I evaluate the responses, I am not looking at where the person(s) stand at present as much as how and how much they present to support their position. Even if a person doesn’t write plugins, they are many times capable of presenting evidence to support their position based on usage and the out come of changes in the past.
If I tell you that I feel it would be a bad decision and then show no tangible evidence that a similar change was detrimental in the past, it would hold less water with me than if you were able to show an even similar change and what problems it presented so that I could apply it to the current situation. I didn’t see a lot of that. While this is a relatively new project, there won’t be that much, but if there is any, it helps me to determined the credibility of their assessment. Please don’t take my original statement to be an indictment of anyone, simply a blanket observation of those who responded.
And now? Rack V1 is official - but no “commercial” (LOL) license?
Means - I can’t update my little shop.
As I remember this was to be arranged before the V1 launch …
