commercial templates bad for the community?

[Joe Soap]

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.

[Traxus]

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?

[artsUNMUTED]

@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.

[Joe Soap]

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.

[Joe Soap]

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.

[Traxus]

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.

[Joe Soap]

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?

[wul]

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

[Phil999]

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 . . .

[Joe Soap]

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!