This. Of the long-term devs, it seems there’s just a handful who continue to be active. My most-used modules that are still in active development (Befaco, Vult, BogAudio, Impromptu, Nysthi, Squinky et al) fall to just a handful of talented people. It’d be interesting to know why so many others drop off. I suspect it’s something of the nature of open-source/free? Plus maybe a mix of community dynamics here, as well as a bit of the attraction of a shiny new platform wearing off? I’m not sure.
i very much agree with @Patheros. most plugin devs are one person, doing stuff for free. so it depends on one’s interests, motivation, energy, etc. and people are likely to jump onto the next shiny new thing that grabs their attention. that the pace of development for vcv rack as a platform itself has slowed down significantly is likely also a factor.
personally, i’m not much of a coder. i’m a teacher who makes music as a hobby, for which motivation comes and goes. most of my energy is taken by my job, and doing coding honestly feels mostly like another job. there is an aspect of solving an interesting problem to it, but i need to find the time and energy for it. and i have other hobbies too…
For me it was the realization that you could work almost fully time on making these free modules, and even then you can’t really get that many ppl to use them, or get a kind word from VCV. Just not much in it for a lot of ppl. Whereas a programming job will pay you giant gobs of money for that effort.
Oh no, your inventiveness would be sorely missed. I certainly appreciate all the time and effort you put into your modules. I have bought all your ‘paid for’ ones as well.
That’s unfortunate. Most of the jobs I’ve had were pretty fun, and I did pretty well, had friendly co-workers, etc… But there’s all kind of people out there and all kinds of jobs. I’m sorry it has been unpleasant for you.
well, it would affect most people’s decision, I think. I know for me I’ve always assumed the income from VCV modules would be extremely small. If it rivaled what a job pays, that would be more interesting.
I estimate it took me 1000 hours to make my modules (I’m not super speedy). So if I make $1k on selling modules, that’s wouldn’t be a great hourly rate of pay. Although it for sure would be more than $100, it that’s what you are saying.
That’s a shame, as I’ve been working on a set of modules which (if I ever get to the point where I am totally happy) I was hoping to sell (and keep open source). I guess I can either go the way of @slimechildaudio and release open source version after a year (say) or go to the donation model (which I think would make less to be honest).
I’m in not motivated by money to continue as a VCV dev, just a little appreciation as others have mentioned (or even just seeing modules pop up in peoples patches). @Squinky - I often get the impression you feel under-valued/under-appreciated (this being part of why you stopped dev) but I always saw a lot of praise for your modules (and saw them in many patches). This includes the Squinkytronix line, which had healthy dev/feedback threads. In case it’s not clear, I’m part of the crowd that values and reguarly uses your modules.
Back to selling - I do however have a (hardware) Eurorack habit that burns a hole in my pocket so having a little VCV side-hussle to fund GAS seems a fitting match, and if I do end up selling modules here this is probably mostly where that would go…
yes, that was a good thread. And I don’t really want to sound like a cry baby. I think I could make it work for me if I were better at figuring out what people actually want, and if I stopped writing manuals, optimizing the performance, getting rid of audio artifacts, and writing so many unit tests. But that’s not really what I want to do, so better to just drop it.