Please refer for this to the project, I’m not going to play liaison and it’s wildly off-topic for this forum imho.
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ok
Can we keep it civil in here.
For an example, above @synthi and @almostEric disagreed about how useful the VST was to them, yet not once did they attack each other.
@almostEric I understand the frustration with those two projects.
It’s easy to get heated especially given this thread is talking about ethics, but I think if we’re not trying to suggest genuine ways forward, this thread will quickly turn ugly.
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Well said, @pgatt, and thanks for the reminder to everyone (myself included). These topics come with a lot of strong feelings attached.
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How about trying to actually answer the questions? You seem to want to go into a lot of detail about hypothetical VCV licensing concerns, but suddenly become quite evasive when questioned on subjects relating to your own agenda?
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I’m not sure we need to go into the agenda or otherwise of other software here. Can we keep it on track to discussing the model for VCV developers.
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Don’t want to interupt the discussion, but I just want to say that you have a really nice and calm way of moderating this discussion. 
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Appreciate that Markus.
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As an end-user, I’d love to see more developers releasing killer paid modules. I probably should be better about donating for free modules, but sometimes it just doesn’t occur to me, then if I do think about it, the question is: which ones? Who to donate to? I’m pretty sure I’ve donated to some developers (certainly bought lots of modules), but I’m probably in the minority. Paid modules kind of solve that problem. If they’re good, and reasonably priced, I almost prefer to pay for modules. I’m happy to support good work. Example: if Impromptu just released a “Clocked Pro” with a single extra output, and changed for it, I’d buy just support them because Clocked gets used all the time here.
So if one set of developer concerns had to do with providing support with a much larger user base and/or providing free modules for use in a commercial product, then I don’t think it would be the worst idea in the world to release paid modules. Maybe too many modules are free! 
But seriously, if one concern is the sheer number of users reporting issues, one way to address that may be to charge for modules. It will cut down the user base and probably attract more serious, experienced users. Something to think about.
@Aria_Salvatrice Nice seeing you back here even if briefly. Sorry to hear that the experience put you off making modules, but you should absolutely be made to feel welcome, as should any other LGBTQ+ Rack users or developers. If the forum is going to be moderated, it should be moderated towards inclusion. Anyway, your modules were creative, fun, wonderfully documented, and it’s shocking to me that someone who didn’t know C+ (prior) was able to put release things that were that good. Shocking in a good way of course. Thanks for them!
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But I don’t.
I don’t know the developer behind miRack but I read some of his stuff about the conflict and I’m not impressed — to put it mildly.
However, I took some time to ask Filipe about his reasoning for creating Cardinal and actually listened to what he had to say.
I don’t really agree with him about CLA and networking and I don’t understand all the technical details, but I’m fairly certain that there is zero malice in his actions. He doesn’t make any profit off this either. He doesn’t sell Cardinal. And while he has a Patreon, it’s ca. $150 a month and he’s mostly known for his other stuff like Carla. You know, the stuff he has spent most of his time on for the past well over 10 years.
If anything, he’s giving @almostEric 's modules to a potentially wider audience and he’s keeping all the donation links in modules intact. I kinda checked that, y’know.
Just like @dreamer, I have no intention to be liason between Filipe and you, but I can’t help myself wondering if this community has the maturity to act on knowledge rather than assumptions of someone else’s motives.
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I wasn’t casting judgements on those projects.
The two projects may be very different cases.
I wrote that I understand the devs frustrations because they thought they were writing plugins just for VCV and not to be adapted into other software (without being asked as far as I know of but I’m happy to be corrected there). If that’s legal and above board, great but I can still understand their frustration.
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Please don’t lump everyone together and diss them as an entire community. Thanks.
I’m also more than happy to act on knowledge and not assumptions. If anyone wants to message me or write something on here I’m happy to read it.
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Can we keep it polite?
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Sure. Edited.
I have always been wondering about this odd vibe I got from Rack. VCV had already been most peculiar when I first ‘joined’ the community. I come from a perspective of political activism (analog&digital) and underground rave culture and have stumbled through a lot of groups, communities and projects before. But I have never seen anything like this. I immediately felt this double-sensation which to this day persists:
- this here was sensational. after two short weeks it was obvious for an on-looker like me how much ingenuity, skill, ideas and concepts were just flooding in.
- that the software (mostly) held up to this , made it clear that andrew kept working it out.
- the small but growing user-base was literally fighting it out with the module releases, experimenting as best they could while trying to make a home for themselves in this wonderful mess.
it was then that I, hopeful to find more than “strange attractor” or “blabla operation as proposed by MIT graduate”, “envelope stages … with a twist” (WHAT IS THE TWIST?)… kept churning through github repositories, MD & cpp files, youtube and forums looking for manuals… first asked how? and why?
some where asking at the bottom of their absence of explanation for donations by writing their paypak e-mail. A look at the non-descript and lazy library/module browser. At the half page long manual and one and a half page of a compiling and coding tutorial. There we were: all enthusiastic and constantly at work in our corners with great sincerity && between us this provisional and impersonal “hand-off space”. Why doesn’t he try to centralize the donation system with 1-click integrated payment in the library and the software to make donating a pleasant eperience? why not add a 1-page “developer & collection” page that pops up when you click the developer name? one where developers would gladly write on, because ithey see that donations are coming in? why not feature modules on a regular basis, get some community managers on board who would provide a platform? where is the community driven “manual”-wiki and the expanding coding database with snippets and quick-guides to make modules easy on the hardware with a bit of copy+spit+paste?
It is unthinkable how scattered everyones work, knowledge and priorities are. Community-wise we are still mainly kept together by the same 4 guys who more or less professionalised their torch-bearing roles. The VCV site is still a junkyard where the only thing that’s remotely convenient is to pick modules for their panel design. It wouldn’t have been that much work to make chances to bring it all together.
I am still very bitter about this. For the developers most of all - but also for the unseemly amount of time and energy I spent trying to learn about their modules, their work while spending another unseemly while trying to get better. To keep making music that incorporates, tackles and works with the traits, strengths and oddness of this environment - to make sense of it all.
This situation we’re in, has been in the making since 0.6 - and we all have a part in it. We knew that Rack would try to move to the professional stage (and would have to) for 2 years, as many have stated already. I think the question shouldn’t be wether to split the library or placing an obvious donation button on it. It should be time to tackle the long overdue problem of access.
There is still no other source to learn about the Rack SDK than dissecting other peoples modules. When you want to learn about VCV modules and patching your big hpe is Omri. Maybe VCV Rack Ideas and Artem.
When you visit the homepage here for the first time - you will not leave informed.
The whole approach: design, language, emphasis,must change if this transition to a “market contender” is supposed to become a good thing for all involved. VCV can’t keepshandling itself like a public library with a flashy poster at the entrance. We need centralized information, a consise donation system (i.e. opt for monthly auto-withdrawals or instant mini-donations) and an atmosphere that is informing, teaching and open to get involved…
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There’s a lot to unpack there Johann, but I want to try. I’ve read it all through, but it’s going to take a while to process. Can I get back to you when I have a bit more time? I’m glad to see your enthusiasm for this community, and a deep desire to make it stronger and better.
THIS.
I have considered trying to start the trend myself on my already open source knowledge dump site https://opguides.info but I just can’t do it alone. I have a decent “getting started with VCV” on the site, but it’s not what I want, and I haven’t even tried to start the development guides.
We really need a central community place people can help document the API and talk about how to actually make things work. I feel like all the new developers are currently fighting an uphill battle because the documentation is “Read the code” right now, and as you said,
this means either VCV’s code or other 3rd party module’s code. This I think is a large part of the reason so many of rack’s modules are GPL’d (not that that’s a bad thing!) - because we need to look at other GPL code to figure out what’s going on
This also bothers me. I feel like there could be a lot better discoverability (maybe fuzzy search on module descriptions, with modules getting longer descriptions and more keywords?) and we could stand to have community showcase stuff exactly as you mentioned. There’s a lot of cool options here, like adding Valley’s Topograph could come up with “Pairs well with VCV Drums, Hora Drums, ___ Logic module, etc.”
YES YES YES
You make some very good points Johann - it would be great to have all those things. But there’s not one of them I would swap for v2 and Rack running as a VST.
Point being I’m sure there are many ideas and plans that Andrew has for VCV but he can’t work on everything at once and certain things need to be prioritised - for the last 2 years that has meant getting v2 out of the door.
Now that v2 is here, and once things have calmed down a bit after the release and everything is working properly, then perhaps it would indeed be time to take a look at some of this stuff. I think the community could be leveraged here to some extent and hopefully now VCV has a better income stream some investment and resources put into these aspects of the product experience might be possible.
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We have atleast two wikis you can build on.
They allready have links to programming topics - docs by Squinky.Labs and video from Leonardo Laguna Ruiz
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