We (I) went over all these points a week ago...m127 wrote: 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.
Traxus wrote: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?
Many of us agree, it might benefit from further attention.
I'm sorry, do you know how floored I would be to have 100 users who paid $10 a pop for my product? Let alone if Mat had 100 at £100 pounds, gross profit of £10,000? So basiclly 1/20th of the 2,000 lemur users (don't know where that number came from but lets roll with it) bought is product? If that is the case, that is ****ing awesome Mat, but I somehow doubt it, nor do I expect him to reveal any numbers.m127 wrote: As far as I know, templates for sale have hundreds of users, Mat does too. This means without doubt that people, not you two or Wul, people in general (those several hundreds users of paid templates) are willing to pay for good templates and resources.
This thread has jumped the shark several times, most recently:
Everything worth pulling from this discussion is up there. What we have now is the degradation of a 13+ page thread into intellectual pissing match between two talented people who are stinking the entire forum up with their argument. *Please* take it else where. Hire an attorney or something. Since the inception of this thread, the quality of posts on the forum have plummeted as has our collective productivity. As a moderator for other forums myself, I can say one thing, what this thread has become is absolutely bad for the community. For the love of god, behave yourselves and find another medium to resolve your conflict, please stop bumping this thread.Joe Soap wrote: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.
