d.healey
Libre Wave
Hey I just saw this. My desire isn't to take down anyone, I think I understand the animosity toward my previous post now. My desire is to encourage developers to release free software instead of proprietary software.
Universal Sampler
- Thread starter nusonik.com
- Start date
INCIRIOS
(aka 'Light and Sound')
At no point did I ever say look how simple this is compared to code. All of the points I've made have been about how things can be simplified when thinking about things in a particular way.
I feel I've been quite polite in presenting my arguments as an option here, and at no point have I ever even put forward incirios as an option for this thread, because that's not what this thread is for, I just jumped in to show that these node graphs can be neat, since your original argument was that they become messy and hard to maintain.
If you have a vendetta against OOP and node graphs, fine, go nuts, but don't be rude and suggest I don't know what real programming is.
pinki
Senior Member
I applaud the fact that you started this thread and I too am a bit sick of the "Hise already does this" long long comments. Your key point, it seems to me, is about ownership and Hise is..effectively...owned by one person, open source or not, so that is not what this thread was about.
I would encourage you to carry on fighting your corner!
d.healey
Libre Wave
There seems to be a misunderstanding. HISE as whole is not owned by anyone. The copyright to parts of HISE's source code is owned by various people and some of that code has been licensed to Christoph to include in the upstream version with permission that he can sub-license it to other people for proprietary projects.
You can go to the HISE github page now, download the source code, and you own that copy, and no one can take it away from you. You can do absolutely anything you want with it, with the 1 restriction that you can't restrict other people.
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I think it's clear that most of the ideals could maybe be achieved with an Open Source sample engine, under an MIT license, as a CLAP plugin.
The main challenge would be... finding enough capable developers willing to donate enough time and organising them towards a shared vision (once again, not understating the huge amounts of work that u-he/surge/bitwig and others have put in to get CLAP where it is today).
It's possible, and if it got off the ground, I'm sure there would be more interest from those wanting to create sample libraries but not be nickle-and-dimed on the licensing.
The question is, whether the OP would be happy with that, and how they intend to start the initiative, as it's pretty clear that if it was as desirable to those capable of organising it already, they would have done so, and perhaps that speaks to why it doesn't exist.
It's possible, but somebody needs the drive and commitment to start it and follow it through.
The main challenge would be... finding enough capable developers willing to donate enough time and organising them towards a shared vision (once again, not understating the huge amounts of work that u-he/surge/bitwig and others have put in to get CLAP where it is today).
It's possible, and if it got off the ground, I'm sure there would be more interest from those wanting to create sample libraries but not be nickle-and-dimed on the licensing.
The question is, whether the OP would be happy with that, and how they intend to start the initiative, as it's pretty clear that if it was as desirable to those capable of organising it already, they would have done so, and perhaps that speaks to why it doesn't exist.
It's possible, but somebody needs the drive and commitment to start it and follow it through.
d.healey
Libre Wave
If you make it MIT I believe the community will fragment as developers (especially those with more resources) will take the communal code and release their own proprietary version.
aldous
Senior Member
I'm catching up, and the moment may have passed, but...
In crash logs - alongside JUCE, a bunch of UI stuff and various data formats (they acknowledge BFDLAC somewhere) - I remember seeing references to a "merlin" namespace involved in sample-wrangling. It didn't seem relevant to the fault so I didn't think much of it. Now you say "engine", though, I recall that the Spitfire (aircraft, not Audio) used Merlin engines.
I reckon that at least suggests an engine built for/by SA, but not sure it gets you to 100%: it could be a framework that's been rather aggressively renamed; or just a hell of a coincidence
pinki
Senior Member
But the OP's point is that all that "debunking", as you call it, is coming from people who have a relationship to HISE... like yourself.
It's easy to take an idea and trash it blow by blow before it's born, but that's hardly very creative. Many successful ideas throughout history a born out of a 'must-do-despite-what-they-say" attitude.
EvilDragon
KSP Wizard
Spitfire's sampler is indeed their own engine, it's not Gorilla or HISE or anything else.
aldous
Senior Member
OK, but I didn't say they'd shipped debug symbols...? (AFAIK they haven't, but I don't see why it'd make a significant difference to their copy-protection; an attacker is going to need to read some assembler and spend time with a debugger either way.)
TriangleSection
Member
+1
I see it more or less like the OP. I'm a Cinesamples customer not interested in Musio. No one knows which of the new players will survive long term. I'm really cautious investing in any of them.
What we need is kind of an open standard patch/script format any sampler could interpret. That way multiple companies could develop players and load that standard format. That would be the best scenario for us (customers) because if a company/player goes bust there will be another able to load our expensive samples.
I see it more or less like the OP. I'm a Cinesamples customer not interested in Musio. No one knows which of the new players will survive long term. I'm really cautious investing in any of them.
What we need is kind of an open standard patch/script format any sampler could interpret. That way multiple companies could develop players and load that standard format. That would be the best scenario for us (customers) because if a company/player goes bust there will be another able to load our expensive samples.
pinki
Senior Member
Granted.
Your experience has been made very clear now!
Nico5
…
I think this entire discussion is really all about inherent and unsolved fundamental issues, and what we’re seeing is the clash of an idealized world with the real world. I’ll try to simplify:
Software (including libraries) has a difficult challenge when trying to meet both objectives:
To satisfy objective 2, IP (intellectual property) is typically protected (and thus giving opportunity for income) by two very different methods:
Sample library developers using platforms have one leg in each camp of objectives:
Using a proprietary platform makes objective 2 difficult.
And therefore I think, this entire discussion boils down to the impossibility to fully resolve the conflict between user freedom and creator need to have an income.
The examples where the GPL works well for both creators and users are limited. And the areas where proprietary works well for both are also limited.
So we each end up just choosing different trade-offs.
But since we’re human, some of us like to think “our way” is clearly superior and should be adopted by everyone.
I prefer to think, that we should rather celebrate the diversity of available paths.
Software (including libraries) has a difficult challenge when trying to meet both objectives:
- provide freedom to users to adapt the software to their own needs
- provide income (incentive) for its creators
To satisfy objective 2, IP (intellectual property) is typically protected (and thus giving opportunity for income) by two very different methods:
- Legal - via laws (copyrights, patents, trademarks) and contracts (licenses) building on those laws.
- Secrecy (closed source software, encrypted libraries, DRM, trade secrets, the recipe for Coca Cola, etc)
Sample library developers using platforms have one leg in each camp of objectives:
- They’re creators wishing/needing to protect their work in order to make income
- They’re platform users who want/need freedom
Using a proprietary platform makes objective 2 difficult.
And therefore I think, this entire discussion boils down to the impossibility to fully resolve the conflict between user freedom and creator need to have an income.
The examples where the GPL works well for both creators and users are limited. And the areas where proprietary works well for both are also limited.
So we each end up just choosing different trade-offs.
But since we’re human, some of us like to think “our way” is clearly superior and should be adopted by everyone.
I prefer to think, that we should rather celebrate the diversity of available paths.
oepion
G.A.S. Guzzler
I'm late to the party and just finished reading the entire thread, so my apologies for commenting on something that was written a few days ago. But I do want to say I've already debunked that argument a few times in the past and I think people are just using that as an excuse to justify the current state of the economics surrounding plugins and libraries.
It is perfectly doable to implement regional pricing and, as a matter of fact, it is already done by a number of developers who force you to pay a given amount in a set currency based on your real location. The way to do this is to use a platform like Fastspring which allows you to proceed to check out only if your PayPal account/bank details match your IP location. You can try using a VPN and locate yourself in a different place while browsing and adding items to your cart, but that would be useless. You won't be able to proceed to check out so you're forced to deactivate your VPN (or simply pick your country where your bank account is on said VPN). For example, if I try checking out from Cinesamples' website, I can only pay in AUD. If I use a VPN and locate myself in NY, I see prices in USD but Fastspring doesn't let me check out because my PayPal is Australian and it specifically request a US PayPal as long as I'm locating myself in the US via VPN. So I am literally forced to change to Australia on my VPN to proceed and there is no way to cheat the system via VPN.
The only way to trick this system is if you have bank accounts in multiple countries, which arguably would be the case for only a really small minority of people. I don't think a lot of say US citizens will go and open a bank account in Mozambique because they plan on using their Mozambican bank account to get plugins and libraries for less. Of course if someone happens to be a dual citizen and has ties to both countries, it is very possible that they do have bank accounts in each. And if someone from Mozambique live and earn their money in the US, yes they could be eligible for massive discounts by paying with their Mozambican PayPal even though they really shouldn't be entitled to. But that would be such a small minority, compared to all the people living in Mozambique who would actually be able to afford plugins and libraries for the first time as the prices are adjusted to their income.
The reality is regional pricing isn't done not because it's not technically feasible, but because it is not part of any developer's business strategy (my guess is it's too much efforts for a market they're not sure about, lack of potential sales figures make it harder to warrant going through this process, plus calculating the "optimal" price for each country can be tedious and opens up the potential for customer complaints - why can X buy that for half what I'm paying for blahblahblah)
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I don't believe this to be the case in my experience. The reality is that, whist some 'less ethical' developer will certainly take the code - something like 80% of all proprietary software uses Open Source in this way - overall the community will stick with the original unless those 'orchestrating' it don't listen to feedback.
It doesn't matter if people release a proprietary version, as the whole point is to provide a common base. Look at something like React - a slightly popular framework.
If nothing else, if it inspires other projects to fork it and become 'better' whilst still open to the community, that is a win.
The attitude being shown, whilst offering a lot of sage advice, is part of the reason why we are stuck with a monopoly... until the alternatives are offered, there are no alternatives.
Yes, it is difficult to build such a community and gain support, but the vast majority of Open Source projects have gone through this. Certainly, many are 'donations' from companies, but there are still many many projects that have simply been built by those who are frustrated with the lack of a solution and build one.
chrisboy
Active Member
Yes, this. I think the segmentation into different markets with varying prices is a step that is only done when there is a high pressure to get the most revenue out of the product because of a high competition, and the plugin market is not there yet (unlike eg. social media which had to reach out to those markets in order to keep the user base growing).
It's simply less effort (and a more enjoyable thing to do) to make the next sample library and sell it to the markets where you can squeeze the most revenue per sold unit instead of investigating the pricing structure of each region and trying to sell as much units as possible with diminuishing returns.
I'm not an advocate of neglecting markets with less financial power and in an ideal world I would love if every human on earth has the same possiblities regardless of the economic state of his region, all I was pointing out is that raising this argument in this discussion which was mainly based around "what I have to pay does feel like too much" felt like a straw man.
From my experience with working with MIT licensed codebases (and there are quite a few things included in HISE that are MIT licensed or similar), is that whenever I need to make changes to the codebase I'm too lazy to push them upstream, mostly because of the communication involved - if it's a critical issue, then yes, but most little additions or customizations doesn't feel . In my case it's not "ethically doubtful" (because my work is being published within the public HISE codebase anyways), but in a proprietary codebase its guaranteed that the changes (or improvements) will never be seen by the public.
This is why Open Source often doesn't benefit - people take it and don't give back. That doesn't mean the license is bad, just that you are not part of the community.
That's not a reason to not use the MIT license. It speaks volumes of developers that do this though.
