That’s great to hear - thank you 
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Unfortunately anything that delivers money based on usage metrics, downloads, usage time etc will just be abused by bots.
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This is true for the code-part (vast majority of opensource licenses allow this), however for the Non-Commercial clause in many of the artwork licenses this is arguably disputable (as discussed in another topic).
At minimum this kind of artwork should not be used for any promotional material, screenshots or showcases as this directly conflicts such clauses. It’s up to legal scholars to interpret whether the distribution in a commercial product (that essentially uses the exact same infrastructure as the opensource product) is allowed.
Okay but that would probably significantly increase the price as well. Is the community willing to pay for that?
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I’m not sure how one could argue this given the developer has to manually submit their plugin for inclusion in the library - therefore making an active choice that they want their work to be used this way.
“you don’t have the right to have my plugin in your library that I just submitted to you for inclusion in your library”
Can’t really see that argument having legs.
Exactly. This is all based on the assumption that VCV makes a profit.
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Not necessarily, they could take out a loan 
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Again, the difference here is clearly between the free and opensource product and the commercial one.
Promoting the commercial product with images of Non-Commercial plugins would clearly be wrong, you see that I hope?
Oh I see - you are suggesting that if a developer wanted their plugin to be only available in the free version, then they could use the NC cause of the graphics license to prevent it being used in the VST version? Yes, I guess they probably could. Are there any devs who actually want to do that? And of course there would be nothing to stop VCV from just removing their plugin altogether then - there is no right to inclusion in the library iirc.
We have an NC clause in our graphics license which is intended to prevent someone taking our open source modules and using them in a commercial product against our will.
Yeah I would be uncomfortable with that - mostly because it may make users think they are paying for those plugins when they are not. Which in turn may make them feel entitled to complain about them, expect a high level of support for them from the developer, and (even) less likely to donate towards them.
Do you have an example of this being done? The images i’ve seen promoting the commercial version so far have just included Fundamental, Audible and Befaco. And I’m under the impression that VCV has a long standing ‘special’ relationship with Audible and Befaco that may make this OK.
I have not collected all of vcv promotional material to cross-compare to all NC-claused modules etc. of course.
It was somewhat hypothetical, but I think “morally” that would be the best: make sure that NC-claused modules are not used to promote the commercial product.
Fair enough - but if you make statements like:
without making clear you are making a hypothetical argument, then some people might naturally presume that is something that must be happening now (I initially did). I don’t know if it is happening or not. I haven’t seen it myself. And it would probably be best to save such arguments for if/when there is actually some evidence of it.
Sorry but this says more about your interpretation than what I actually said.
It is wrong whether it happens now or not.
It would also be wrong if VCV used a virus in Rack to infect everyone’s computer and start mining bitcoin.
Shall we discuss that too?
What about if VCV ran off with all the money from 3rd party developers commercial plugins - that would definitely be wrong!
Which has absolutely nothing to do with this topic …
It is very likely that modules with NC license end up in some promotional material. I just want to point out that this directly conflicts with their panel licensing and it should be avoided.
Stop giving useless examples that are completely irrelevant.
Why is it ‘very likely’ that this will happen? - what are you basing this assumption on?
Because there are thousands of modules and a large percentage of them (many very popular) has the NC clause.
Make an example patch using a random selection of those and you very easily end up using these. This is not completely unthinkable, therefor a heed of warning for any such potential material.
As said this would be the absolute minimum to adhere to the NC clause. Potentially there are other implications, but it seems that nobody even cares about this. (which makes me wonder what the point of this clause is in the first place, maybe I should just start selling such modules to test this out?)
Yes - but that’s quite different from knowingly then using such an image or video in marketing promotions.
I would say, from the evidence I’ve seen so far (ie the images promoting Rack Pro on the website etc) that VCV has been quite careful about the modules they have shown. They have certainly not just taken a ‘random selection’ from the library and used those. Like I said - so far I’ve just seen Fundamental, Audible and Befaco.
I don’t really want to waste any more time discussing hypothetical situations that may never happen, so until I see some evidence to the contrary, I’m done here. Plenty of real problems to worry about.
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From a user perspective, if the libraries were separated to the extent where certain plugins were only available for use in standalone VCV Rack and not in the VST version, I would probably just unsubscribe from those plugins so I never ran into the frustration of moving a patch from standalone to my DAW and discovering it no longer worked. I would be far more likely to pay $20-30 for a plugin than to subscribe to one I couldn’t use in both contexts.
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If they charged $20 - in general wouldn’t you just find a free alternative?
It’s hard to make a generalization, because some of this software performs extremely specific tasks. If it was just a bare-bones VCO? Probably I’d just use a different one.
On the other hand, I bought a premium version of an available-as-free module (Shapemaster) SPECIFICALLY because I wanted its functionality in my DAW.
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