commercial templates bad for the community?

That sounds great wul - I must admit I've been secretly hoping you would carry through your statement of intent in the enCHORD (sp?) thread to build and release an open version of the tool.

As for the "geek" thing, when you think a "normal" person is going to try to understand Lemur programming I think you make a big mistake.(I just declared myself "geek" just for trying I think ) For most people this is simply unthinkabe because of the complexity (I know everybody who understands Lemur or midi or osc does not feel this way, but let me ashure you for a beginner it is a huge mountain to "take", an enormous learning curve,this is what my non-geek friends keep telling me..). So when people offer "out of the box solutions " that will work for others, this will contribute to the spreading of Lemur in a great way. If I was running Lemur I would promote and support all great solutions, paid or unpaid no difference, and be proud.

This is what I have run into time and time again. My friends and contacts who are interested in scripting and midi cannot afford an iPad and the software. My friends who can afford an iPad, and find Lemurs potential interesting, are entirely intimidated by the scope of work involved. It is cake for us, no doubt. I'm a web developer who jumped the gap pretty easily. We've got a couple talented people for whom Lemur is their first language. If your mind is highly logic oriented, as in a heavy left brain kind of person, this is practically like inhaling and exhaling, but a lot of musicians are right brained... And that is the role I see robust, pre packaged templates playing.

What you guys are in effect doing, is beginning to chase off some very talented people. Look at sequencomat, the various releases up to the current one, the time involved, the marketing put forth. That thing is outright amazing, and to belittle him for expecting compensation is ridiculous. I don't see where anyone us are refusing to contribute to the community, we're just not supplying the kingdom. Would you rather these templates not get released at all, potentially missing out on the inspiration and new approaches to manipulating the platform that they provide? Do you honestly not want people like that around, however in frequent their advice may be?

Do you think everyone on stack overflow releases all of their software for free on those forums? Hell no, but they still have a great community. I learned PHP, MySQL, and a good portion of CSS from that site and I've never had an account. Their community is so solid that damn near every question I've had has been asked, answered and recorded. At worst I have to abstract and combine 3 or 4 answers. Peoples bits of code get reused and re sold all the time, but if that bit gets too big, some compensation is generally in order.

We all agree, there is an etiquette to it: don't steal, and I think this is a two way street. If someone is selling a template and you make a free clone, don't expect them to contribute to that project, or even be surprised when they incorporated some of your ideas into their version. This isn't me making a threat or accusation anywhere, just an extrapolation based on brief observations.

And to say that Live Control 2 is free is the say as saying Mail in OSX is free. It is free for the user but somebody gets paid for doing it.

How about the fact that it *was* for touchOSC, whence it magically moved to a more expensive platform, and at the same time, updates to TouchOSC basically stopped. I don't want to insinuate anything, but I DO want to know the details of that story regarding what was coincidence and what wasn't... Either way I think we all look forward to the finished product.

Tell you what, if Lemur was a free app, I would be a bit more hesitant to charge or pay for anything built. I mean, it would have to be through the roof either way (I would have paid $10 to $15 for Live Control on Touch OSC). However it is, as apps stand, on the higher end of prices, and liine uses this community and it's library as a selling point. I'm not going to work my ass off to build something that helps them get paid while I, at best, get a bit of SEO to my site. I will pay my dues to the community, but I'm not laying over the barbed wire just to be recognized as a hero. This isn't bitterness towards Liine either, as far as I can tell they remain neutral on the whole subject and sensibly so. Free stuff is great for their product, but to demand it is bad business sense, so as far as PR goes it is a good subject to avoid. Add to that the free marketing they receive, as I've mentioned in earlier posts. At the same time, its asinine to go up to them and demand they pay you for a template you think is phenomenal. So what is there to do but let the market decide?

@Wul - I don't quite get you - it is you who seems to be showing your daddy is bigger and stronger. enChord seems to be a amazing tool and there wasn't anything like it before. And now instead of thinking out something creative you are determined to show it can be done free. Oh my... and instead of just paying $26 to have a great tool and support the guy who has done it, you will spend hours just to prove it. It is your time, though.

I can't get over this general idea: I have given something free so others should do it as well. Is it your good will/free decision/grace (out of abundance, as somebody said) or indirect extortion - I give free so you should do as well.

I am sure there will be more and more commercial templates appearing and this discussion should lead rather to some directions regarding:

- can developers "advertise" their payable content on this forum - if not, just make it clear in the regulations of this forum.
- what to do if I want to use free code/ideas/solutions in paid content - what should I do to be fair.

I will do my best to participate and help (if I can and I don't know it it will be of any value to the community) and publish some free bits.

Okay . . . as concisely as possible, because I've spent too much time and mental energy thinking about this.

Firstly - I don't think there's any putting the genie back in the bottle or dissuading the commercial guys from attempting to establish a market for their efforts.

Secondly - I don't disagree on principle that they have every right in a free society do do so . . . but as has become abundantly clear, this development isn't without issues or complications, especially around a product of this nature.

Art meets Commerce . . . it's a bit like drums, bass, guitar et vox. It's all been done before, John.

And so it is what it is - the market will decide, and we will either figure out how to peacefully and hopefully fruitfully co-exist as a community of artists or we won't.

Whole lotta silly bullshyte went down in this thread, I will put my hand up and take responsibility for my part in that. I urge people now to examine their own motivations, as I have mine (conclusion: not entirely selfless . . . ) and let's move on.

Fundamentally, I don't have a problem with people making a buck from their hard work, if they think there's a market there and they can defend it from being eaten from the bottom up by genuine community effort well then fair play.

While acknowledging Macciza's arguments about quality concerns re: bad commercial templates reflecting poorly on Lemur as a product or platform - I think any such concern appears misplaced when directed toward aU. His stuff absolutely shows off Lemur, regardless of whether there's any truly advanced scripting involved or not. I used Cubendo for years - and his work looks like fantastic value.

Much of what the commercial guys use as justification for their actions rings true - the cupboard is a bit bare in terms of plug n' play content. Liine haven't really addressed this and I've come to accept that given the size and makeup of the company . . . as I perceive it, but I have no insider knowledge . . .they probably can't - relying instead on a groundswell of community support.

The commercial experiment . . . who knows, as distasteful as some find it, might be the shot in the arm the platform needs (and I think it needs one, as things stand).

Far more distasteful than the act of selling templates itself . . . have been some of the underlying attitudes and assumptions underpinning certain arguments in support of commercialisation.

That cuts both ways, to a certain degree.

So there it is.

Actually aU, enChord isn't exactly "new" now is it.

Stuff like it has been around in one form or another for as long as I can remember - unless you buy into the whole concept of "on a computer!" or "on the internet!" as sufficient grounds to classify an idea as something truly new, and not an iteration of previous work or ideas.

But also you may have missed the comments of the enChord dev pre-emptively warning us all of impending legal doom if we copied anything about his latest iteration on this old idea, nevermind that his UI relied heavily on work directly lifted from the manual examples.

I can think of only a single (public) commercial template developer who hasn't absolutely sha*t the bed in terms of community relations and PR in all of this and that's Mat.

Joe Soap wrote: Far more distasteful than the act of selling templates itself . . . have been some of the underlying attitudes and assumptions underpinning certain arguments in support of commercialisation.

That cuts both ways, to a certain degree.

How could you follow up such a well written and thought out post as the above, by immediately following with the below?

I can think of only a single (public) commercial template developer who hasn't absolutely sha*t the bed in terms of community relations and PR in all of this and that's Mat.

Spare an in depth discussion on the ethics of it all, everything that can be said about this thread has been said:

And so it is what it is - the market will decide, and we will either figure out how to peacefully and hopefully fruitfully co-exist as a community of artists or we won't.

Whole lotta silly bullshyte went down in this thread, I will put my hand up and take responsibility for my part in that. I urge people now to examine their own motivations, as I have mine (conclusion: not entirely selfless . . . ) and let's move on.

Fundamentally, I don't have a problem with people making a buck from their hard work, if they think there's a market there and they can defend it from being eaten from the bottom up by genuine community effort well then fair play.

While acknowledging Macciza's arguments about quality concerns re: bad commercial templates reflecting poorly on Lemur as a product or platform - I think any such concern appears misplaced when directed toward aU. His stuff absolutely shows off Lemur, regardless of whether there's any truly advanced scripting involved or not. I used Cubendo for years - and his work looks like fantastic value.

Much of what the commercial guys use as justification for their actions rings true - the cupboard is a bit bare in terms of plug n' play content. Liine haven't really addressed this and I've come to accept that given the size and makeup of the company . . . as I perceive it, but I have no insider knowledge . . .they probably can't - relying instead on a groundswell of community support.

The commercial experiment . . . who knows, as distasteful as some find it, might be the shot in the arm the platform needs (and I think it needs one, as things stand).

That is the long and short of it as I see it.

Traxus, I can say it because it's how I see it.

People have endeavored to improve their track record of course, and we'll see how that all goes.

Personal opinion only, not the King etc.

Here's the deal though - I'm prepared to reach my own personal detente in that I won't harbour any ongoing grudge based on purely the premise that someone is commercially-minded when it comes to Lemur content.

How someone goes about selling or promoting their content however - can and sometimes does get right up my nose.

And I'll lay off the one-liners when you drop the amateur psychology. Fair?

Au:- you don't quite get me, eh? But what you would get, when uploaded, is a template which you can pull to bits, compare ,learn from, disregard , or do what you will with, and with that you will have me at a disadvantage.
We are all wasting time and energy arguing etc. on a subject that's not going to get resolved
I really think its about time Liine jumped off the fence , and either reiterated what I received in the email, and /or came up with a solution . Till then I'm off. Tara

we the community reap what we sow. I don't think Liine has any obligation to say something to this matter.

Besides, the Jazzmutant community appears to be quite different . . .

Eheheheh . . . I think the two-bit hustlers were somewhat priced out of the Jazzmutant community.

How is Bjork these days anyway Phil? I simply haven't had time to catch up in yonks dahlink!

Hey Guys,

just some thoughts about it, as I read it in an internet cafe in Thailand, where I stay for holiday in march...
I had this discussion - also with a bit aggression - in Jazzmutant times and I see it a bit relaxed but also bored

In short:
- nobody will make enough money to live from that by Lemur templates or maxpatches. I am personally get lucky if I sell 1 full license sequencomat per month....
- From some point of complexity, tools can not be developed in sparetime. Sequencomat is very complex, and it took me over 8 month full time (!) to develop it to that point. So I sure ask for money for the full license.
- smaller projects - whch are sometimes equal helpfull, but developed in 3 days - are great....I shared a lot.
- support and documentation takes a lot of time. It is spare on some free templates and I understand that - they developed just for theirself and where fair enough to share...whz now also sit down and take days for documentation? Here an important reason on commercial way comes in.
- I prefer higher prices not only cause I think my tool is worth it, but also to get rid of a kind of users that think 10 Euro is much money and ask why that patch can not cook coffee.... sorry, know this sounds harsh, but some users have strange ideas... now I got only professionals and they know the borders of a tool (and actually, as I heard during the last update - they all think it was worth the money)
- I would prefer if Liine push a bit more effort in documentation, examples and tutorials.... as JM did in the beginning. Because it is true: there is still a kind of border for musicans to get into programming a module - if it is more than just adding a fader.

As said, just some spontainious thoughts from the beach.
I hope community will understand and dont take it personally

all the best and hear from you in april
mat

Joe Soap wrote:And I'll lay off the one-liners when you drop the amateur psychology. Fair?

I mean, *teeeeechnically* that could be called a one-liner; but sure.

Phil999 wrote:we the community reap what we sow. I don't think Liine has any obligation to say something to this matter.

Besides, the Jazzmutant community appears to be quite different . . .

Like I said, it is probably very wise of them to stay out of this debate, as either way we are making their product more viable.

Did liine buy lemur from jazzmutant, or what is the story behind that? I've been trying to figure out what happened there.

mat wrote: - nobody will make enough money to live from that by Lemur templates or maxpatches. I am personally get lucky if I sell 1 full license sequencomat per month....
- From some point of complexity, tools can not be developed in sparetime. Sequencomat is very complex, and it took me over 8 month full time (!) to develop it to that point. So I sure ask for money for the full license.
- smaller projects - whch are sometimes equal helpfull, but developed in 3 days - are great....I shared a lot.
- support and documentation takes a lot of time. It is spare on some free templates and I understand that - they developed just for theirself and where fair enough to share...whz now also sit down and take days for documentation? Here an important reason on commercial way comes in.
- I prefer higher prices not only cause I think my tool is worth it, but also to get rid of a kind of users that think 10 Euro is much money and ask why that patch can not cook coffee.... sorry, know this sounds harsh, but some users have strange ideas... now I got only professionals and they know the borders of a tool (and actually, as I heard during the last update - they all think it was worth the money)
- I would prefer if Liine push a bit more effort in documentation, examples and tutorials.... as JM did in the beginning. Because it is true: there is still a kind of border for musicans to get into programming a module - if it is more than just adding a fader.

Interesting thoughts. Especially on your price point. I do find myself playing a lot of tech support at my $10 price point but I spent about a month and a half on it, not 8. For me it just came to a point where, if I opt to stay home from a bar to work on something, it is time to get some compensation (like you said, spare time).

I have no problem when someone charges some money for a complex map. As i see it the artsunmuted stuff looks very thought out and pretty complex. If i would use Cubase or S1 i would have probably bought some of them.
Sure it is nice to have stuff for free but i don't expect people to hand out everything for free especially when alot of work has been put into it.
I have bought Sequencomat and had no problems with it as you can clearly see it is well done. You could even test the free version beforehand.
So if it is not a rip off i am totally fine with charging money for templates.

artsUNMUTED wrote: Now back to Lemur...
Today I got an email from a well known French composer who bought reCHORDER. He was angry at me because...

Or perhaps he was angry at you because you are a copycat that shamelessly copied Avantagarde Audio''s featured concept called ChordBank to save chord presets from their template named enChord which is the FIRST chord design tool for Lemur

enchord video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-jZjvJOpdo (see video release date)
enchord website http://www.avantgardesound.com/

It's a annoying because I am an enChord user, and what you did has a lot to do precisely with what Macciza and others were pointing out. Copying someone else's work does NOT contribute to the community despite your hypocritical claims. Not only copying, you are selling and making profits from others' ideas. Even though you just shamelessly copied the concept, it is very clear enChord's additional concepts and overall workflow are far superior to your copycat attempt... sorry, but I tell it like it is.

Regarding the topic in question, I am all for quality commercial templates, but come on!, at least sell your own ideas and creativity, not those of others!

Macciza wrote: It seems odd that straight after a commercial chord project is released another similar commercial one gets released - how long before the next one I wonder

This is what 'stealing' is, taking others work ands representing it as your own and charging for it. Opensource generally views this as 'bad' and if it has been 'copylefted' then it is even more wrong.
This is where it potentially becomes 'bad for the community' if it is left unquestioned/ unchecked - it makes people think twice about posting stuff for fear it will be ripped off and capitalised upon

Exactly right.

lABl wrote: Sorry, but I am have not anything against of people selling templates (as i said before and several times), I found a bit "disrecpecting " some actitudes

@Antonio Blanca: No, your understanding is correct. Arts Muted called our user library as full of "mediocrity" in this same thread.
At least most of the library content is mostly original. Further, the user library contains templates created by you AB, and your templates ARE original and helpful. Nothing mediocre about them. Far from that! On the other hand, copying others' concepts IS what's mediocre and lame to say the least.

Just so you know, I would have paid for many of the templates you posted for free, because they are useful and innovative in several ways. Hope you create more. We at the studio bought Sequencomat, and I also personally bought enChord. Great and truly innovative stuff!

Are you labouring under the misapprehension that Avantagarde Audio (sic) invented chord presets or something?

Don't be fooled by the assclownery in the hilarious marketing spam.

Joe Soap wrote:Are you labouring under the misapprehension that Avantagarde Audio (sic) invented chord presets or something?
Don't be fooled by the assclownery in the hilarious marketing spam.

I am experienced enough and have a good understanding of the market and tools available after decades of dedication to this business to clearly see how AvantGarde Sound (or "Audio", first name I think) approach to their chord design app is innovative vs to what was done BEFORE their enChord product. The creative concepts behind enChord are FAR beyond just chord presets as you are trying to oversimplify. I have studied the app deeply. On the other hand, Muted Arts shamelessly copied the enchord's chordbank (chord memories) concept/workflow, and many of the workflow procedures. Still, it's not even a good copy as enChord is way faster and has way more features as far as I can see, and trust me my friend, I do can see far.

However, as I said, it just bothers me that this guy comes here talking about "contributing" and also complains, yet he said in his video that *he* "came up with the idea" to save the chord presets... ala enChord's chordbank. Also very stupidly, he said that it took him *two* months to "create" his copycat, but he actually published it THREE months or more after enChord was released to the public. On top of that, he also put down the user community library, which contains many of AB's and Mat's designs, and called it "mediocre"... really?

I mean, unMuted ars wants to make his case, but shamelessly copying and disrespecting others' hard work in the user library won't take him far at least with me.

About "assclownery"... call it as you wish, but the fact is that there was nothing like enChord before its release. There still isn't. I am a very satisfied enchord user. Now I compose better and have a better understanding and retention levels of scales, chords and their relationships, let alone the chord and scale analysis features, which the copycats will have to spend a long time on. I too hope AB starts charging for his templates. He deserves at least a symbolic income for his work, just as Mat. I doubt they will get rich or even make a living, but their contributions are very valuable. Fact of the matter is the whole Lemur thing would be way less if it wasn't for their work. Liine and JazzMutant on the other hand HAVE capitalized from their work as well as others' in several ways, and AB has seen nothing other than mere props from his hard work.

Liine definitely must take care of the advanced users that are making the Lemur a better platform and overall product. It's in their interest do so. If they are disabled from seeing the advantages of power users creating powerful/professional templates, I guarantee this Liine incarnation of the Lemur project will fail due to lack of commercial strategy and vision, just like JazzMutant did. Bottom line is we do not live in a world of sharing and love, and this does not put food on anyone's table. What Muted Ars did is nothing vs what the BIG corporate asl's will do just copying and grabbing concepts developed by Lemur users.

Making Lemur a highly monetized environment is KEY for its success, particularly in the long run. Commercially speaking, all the work dedicated to in-app editing will not pay off as they expected, guaranteed. Monetizing the platform, investing in it, taking care of the actual creative individuals here, ie. making it commercially viable is what will make Lemur into a massive success. How many Lemur users are out there? 2000? We should be 200,000 by now, which signifies nearly 10 million dollars just from direct users.

Apple takes 30% from Lemur sales though, bottom line is that people deserve money for their work. The last time I checked, Lemur was not and still is not a communist subsystem within the wild capitalism system that Apple clearly exercises.

It's just plain retarded to expect people to just give away their hard work; but it's also pathetic to shamelessly copy others' work and yet call us "mediocre" as Unmuted ars did.

I hope you realise of course that matters like this put Liine in the unpleasant position of a "referee" (who stole whose idea,at whatpointit was stealing and at what point its anoriginal idea) and other implications. These are only some of the reasons I found the whole "commercial idea" weird in the first place!!!!

Also, I dont agree that it is retarded to give away your hard work.....it makes you feel a sucker though when others dont and you do.....if thats what you are saying I agree......AB and others who gave for free must feel very retarded now that everyone puts a price tag on templates - 3 or 5 euros i read somewhere, but somehow this is not retarded....giving away is....

Anyways.....I do agree however that a few, very few creators of templates do deserve some monetisation because innovative ideas in their templates cannot be questioned....but the conversation here reached to an ugly point of comparing templates, trying to find who's the King and what not.....

Pfffff.........

By the way, in the same fashion I could say it is retarded to sell Lemur templates - that doesnt mean I expect or demand them to be given away for free.....if you dont feel like sharing it, nobody is forcing you to....

Just as it is upsetting to read that "selling templates is retarded" for some, it may be equally upsetting to others stating that it is retarded to share in a community with a common interest....

This of course wouldnt be beneficial for Lemur and the users.....but Im just mentioning it because the logic
" disagree with selling templates = demand stuff for free" is faulty!!! I, for one, do not demand or expect anything!!!

But before buying Lemur, a critical factor was the fact that it had a user library with free templates to use and learn from and a forum to ask and learn....had it been all about paying for in-app addons or whatnot, I might have looked elsewhere....Would I find what is possible with Lemur? Perhaps not - but I wouldnt know it,would I?

Copying good ideas is how we evolve better tools.

That's why I'm in allignment with Softcore on the commercial issue - this sort of asshattery.

Just to let y'all know, I'll be copying the shi*t out of anything and everything in sight if it makes sense to. Hopefully, I can make some incremental improvements, or some novel synthesis.

With any luck the enChord guy will copy the aM guy - they get into a pricewar . . . at some point they're paying us to DL their stuff. Win win!

Or we'll all be reduced to releasing Youtube vids of the cool shit we can't release instead of filling up the Lib.

Hush . . . whisper it . . . an underground Lemur scene.