helo everyone,
here is to talk about numbers once again.
We recently introduced you to vvvv gamma and what it will initially be about, but also what you can expect from it in the future. Now is the time to inform you about the licensing options we have planned for it.
Trust me, when I tell you that this is the most rewritten blog-post we ever published. Creating a suitable licensing model seems far more complex than creating the software itself. So initially this resulted in rather complex models that we were only able to boil down to the below by talking to some long-term commercial users and incorporating their (sometimes contradicting) feedback. So, many thanks to those who listened and engaged in a discussion with us!
Continuing the T.R.U.S.T model
Foremost it is important for us to keep our (pattern pending) T.R.U.S.T model, which means:
- No copy-protection
- No feature limitations
- No mandatory registration
- We trust you to declare your commercial use of vvvv correctly.
That’s the world we want to live in. We don’t believe in any form of copy-protection or artificial feature limitations that usually only restrict honest users. Others will always find a way around such restrictions and thus not be bothered anyway. We’re all grown-ups here. If vvvv helps you make a living, then help us make a living by providing vvvv for you. How simple is that?!
Education must be free
Same as above, this is what we believe in. In the end everything always comes down to education and equal access to it. We don’t want to be responsible for anyone to not have the pleasure of learning vvvv.
There are commercial educational institutions that could make us a lot of money indeed. But also we’re smart businessmen and know how to cash in on the free drugs we hand out now, later.
Further it is in the interest of any professional user of vvvv to quasi support the free educational use as this keeps the flow of new talents steady. WinWinWin.
Gamma over beta
So why not simply keep the existing licensing model? Indeed, to make this clear: The licensing for vvvv beta will not change! As long as you’re not interested in vvvv gamma, everything stays the same for you (but you’re missing out! Just sayin…).
But then, regarding vvvv gamma, there are a couple of reasons to adapt the licensing model:
- The existing model is simple to explain, but just does not fit well to different use-cases. We’ve heard of people not using vvvv for certain smaller tasks because they didn’t justify a whole license
- With its possibility to export executables, vvvv gamma becomes a different type of product. It allows you to distribute and run your projects as self-contained programs without the need to install and run vvvv on every machine. Like this, vvvv becomes closer to more traditional development environments where it makes sense to charge per developer seat rather than per executable that was created with it
- By still offering the edit-while-running workflow, vvvv gamma at the same time stays the same product and needs to keep existing licensing options
- Too often we heard the phrase “I told the client to buy the license” as an excuse and even partly as a complaint that it would be our fault that we don’t have means (dongle, …) for the client to understand they need a license. But this was never our intention. We’re doing business with you, not your clients!
So bottom line up front: vvvv gamma is more and therefore requires a more defined licensing model.
Types of vvvv gamma licenses
Having said all this, we want you to declare your use of vvvv gamma using the following licenses:
In other words: the idea is that every commercial devvvveloper will have an Editor Plus license and that is it. With it you can work on and export as many projects as you please. For cases where you want to run the vvvv development environment also on a device in, say an exhibition, to use the advantage that you can e.g. remotely maintain the program while it is running, you need additional Editor licenses for each device. This is comparable to how you’d buy a full license for each PC running vvvv beta so far. Obviously you can still use your developer seat license also in an installation/show, as long as you’re running only one instance of vvvv and don’t need the license to work on another project at the same time.
If you’re not working on projects that will be deployed as executables, then you can stick to the Editor license also during development.
And finally, the Product license, which is similar to the vvvv beta OEM license. Only now it is in addition to the Editor Plus license every developer needs who is working on a product.
Pricing per size of wallet
Another thing we wanted to improve over the beta licensing model is the fact that we understand that vvvv is used in quite diverse financially potent scenarios. To accommodate for all of those on an individual basis is not really feasible. But at least we thought, we can add an option on either end of the default “professional” user.
Glossary
- SME: Small and medium-sized enterprises
- NPO: Nonprofit Organization
- FOSS: Free and open-source software
Payment options in detail
Different use-cases also demand different payment options. Here is what we have planned:
Perpetual
- Buy once, use forever
- Includes one year of updates
- Can be converted into a subscription within the first year
Subscriptions
- With a subscription you are always eligible for using the latest available version.
- With a yearly subscription your are saving 30% from the second year on.
- Automatic renewal of subscriptions at the end of the period can be canceled at any time.
- When canceling a yearly subscription you can keep using the last version that was available within your subscription period.
- When canceling a monthly subscription and you have had that subscription for at least 12 months, you can keep using the last version that was available within your subscription period.
- A subscription that was canceled cannot be continued/updated at a later point. A new subscription will have to be started instead.
One Off
- These are for using the vvvv development environment in projects temporarily
- Includes updates available within the covered months but must not be used after the covered months have passed.
Conclusion
Accommodating the various requirements of all types of users and use-cases is a tricky task. This paired with trying not to completely disregard the pricing politics of “the competition” but also adding our own ideas and still balancing an economically viable solution didn’t make it any easier. We still hope that we found a way that can be sustainable for all of us.
We are aware that the above may leave some questions open and we are ready to further refine the fine print and add examples to make it easier for everyone to declare their licenses. Please help us do so by asking your questions in the comments below, so we can understand where we need to get more specific.
Comments:
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i wonder, what your thoughts were concerning contributions/contributors.
to me it looks a little (the least) discouraging to contribute stuff, since i read it like: as a freelancer, who is making a living with this stuff, i have to have a pro/editor plus license to be legally generating contribution content, aside from the commercial projects i work on (where the companies provide the license).
if i contribute for free, then one could maybe consider it non-commercial use, though it’s rather not since i am working in a commercial context. as soon as i plan to release it with a pricetag for non-commercial use, i’d have to set it to a sum to possible break even with a yearly pro/editor plus license. (which would drive the prices for contributions up a lot).
and here i’m not yet talking about contributions, which ship with the official release (in case there will be something like addonpack). will gamma come with vs style nuget license popup to distinguish between core and contribution nugets?
Seems like our studio will roughly have to triple the money spent to you guys as soon as we start using gamma (actually it is quadrupling as long as we also develop with vvvv). Seems steep, but I guess if you actually invest that gain into more coders, we can all get ahead quicker. So it could be fine, it is more of a gamble for all involved right now.
However, what service or value do you provide in exchange for the 6% product revenue tax that is not already covered in the editor plus pricing already? Or is it either Editor Plus or Product? Charging extra seems a little unreasonable to me, because it is nothing that we’ve seen from .net, c++, or any other language.
If perpetually taxing F5 is already a downer, making products with hardware is even less sexy with this, as it only considers the total sale price and count, not the actual net revenue (with subtracted hardware cost, dev cost, azure/aws cost, etc). Is this intended, do you hate IoT so much?
@woei good point. indeed this wasn’t specifically adressed. and just as we support FOSS development, we gladly include “vvvv pack development” with the free use license. the thinking behind both is the same: by sharing sources or adding value to the eco-system in the form of packs (even if you then charge for them) you already contributed your share and don’t have to pay for using vvvv for those cases. hope this clarifies.
regarding nugets our current thinking is that it will be very close to the visualstudio workflow. contributions to core are another issue, we still have to tackle.
@velcrome regarding products: as the above says: it is Editor Plus for each developer working on the product and then 6% revenue after the first 5000€ per quarter. yes, this is charging twice for successful products. we’d prefer to offer a simpler solution here but since we’re only getting started we think that it is reasonable to not only compare our offer with the biggest players on the market, when it comes to how they generate revenue. it is about diversivying income options for us. we could lose on our EditorPlus flatrate model that now allows a single license owner to create unlimited projects and on the other hand you say you’ll have to pay much more than before. at this point it is hard to tell how things will work out so we try to be careful. wouldn’t it be nice if the next flappy-birds was patched with vvvv and some of that revenue could flow back to the devvvvelopment?! if you have a specific idea for a product where you think our licensing is not competitive, please get in touch.
“If perpetually taxing F5 is already a downer” not exactly sure what you mean, can you rephrase this so we can make sure our intended terms were understood?
@texttext you’re very vlcome but also your thanks go directly to the velcromes who pay for part of your joy.
@beyon
“What about commercial projects with FOSS release of Gamma parts? Above with code only but maybe not assets/data?” can you rephrase that? see “free use” for FOSS development.
“Will VL be embeddable in product as scripting language with the possibility to limit the available nodes?” yes. licensing regarding this will be announced, when we have it available.
@bjoern there will be discounts for owners of existing vvvv licenses, we’re not sure yet about additional early adopter discounts. regarding maturity: in many ways gamma is already much more mature than beta, in other ways not. obviously specifically regarding 3d/audio/video gamma will still be behind on launch. regarding “the competition”, always depends what aspects you compare… in some respects vvvv will never be “fully featured” and we cannot keep raising the price with every feature we add..
@bjoern I concur. While it kinda makes sense to me to present sustainable pricing now, instead of raising that every couple years, I also believe that early-adopter schemes or freebies to people and companies who continually support the open source ecosystem should be considered. While we all hope that gamma will one day be worth every penny, it still isn’t there yet in terms of productivity delivery and awesome versatility. Make incentive licensing a thing!
@u7angel seems a litte assumptious, no? but then, again, I was presumptious here. Now I sat down and did actual calculations and it turns out, cost for our studio will triple, not quadruple.
have some inside numbers, not to make a point about pricing (see my first post), but strictly to illustrate what we are dealing with.
we are running with 4 dev seats as it is, which are renewed every year. they are usually also enough for running quick gigs like trade fairs or events. every year, for the sake of the argument, we deploy 4 to 10 new licenses to long-term installations, that of course have to come out a project budget. I don’t think it would be wise to deploy all those long-term installations in a compiled form, at least not in the first year it is running. remote checking the patch regularily has proven to be a quality idea.
so each dev seat would go from 300,- to 1024,- (plus the original 300,- for as long as we also use vvvv). each teamviewer-enhanced deployment would also be at least 512,- (or even 1536 if the customer counts as a big fish, hello volkswagen, municipals, senckenbergs?). I estimate that we would at least need 3-5 of those per year (ofc that would be later, when gamma is as capable as vvvv, which might take some patience), kinda split evenly between Editor Pro and Editor BigFish.
so there you go: from roughly 3600 to something more like 7500, or something higher during the transition phase and even higher during the first year of the seat subscriptions. This sounds a lot, and it will hurt too, but it could actually be for the better in the grand scheme of things.
I think the Product column is much more worrysome, as it kinda discards vl for little smart devices and apps, and figuratively speaking puts it more on the shelf of Oracle then on the ground with the likes of phyton, node.js and c#.
@velcrome - for this to make sense you absolutely have to think about how to do executables on installations that are running long term, maybe tools to adjust the installation in some debug mode etc.
Point is, I think this should lower the cost for running installations like when we did frickin 18 computers or something like that and every pc needed its own license, i think the license should be only for dev seats, as is the industry standard.
This is the main thing that I hear whole community cry about for years, and seeing someone so deep into vvvv just turn around and say we actually do not want that is surprising to me honestly.
please listen to what I am saying. I don’t mind the price hike (at least for our studio, freelancers and multi-screen artists might be much better off) for installations it seems to be convoluted, more expensive, but sensible.
anyway, this goes to the devs directly: what I don’t like is this 6% gross revenue for any product. while I get the intent of opening new revenue areas, I fear, this ill-conceived thing will be more of a blocker for such endeavours.
let me ask straight: why would anyone sane pay for vl for solving a specific task, if you could use e.g. kotlin or python, for free?
lets say you buy a panda or alike, attach a touchscreen to it and code a player in any language really: you will see that the act of compiling is free, and the choice of the editor dictates the dev seats price. so as a maker you’d sum the cost for the panda, the touchscreen, the dev cost and some margin into a price, scale assembly and sell the thing. easy (well not easy, but that’s how you would do it if you don’t mind the hardship)
try the same business idea with vl, and suddenly you are forced to not only upfront pay a hefty license, but give 6% of the total price to this niche visual language provider. that’s what gross revenue means: vl want a percentage of the touchscreen and the panda too. not so easy. this is not a way to go from niche to limelight of visual programming for sure. instead of opening up new revenue opportunities you seem to center your licensing too much on those big-ass-cyber-awe-installations that we love(d) so much, and forget those ideas, where vl would just never be competetive at all with your Product licensing in place.
imagine being young and advanturous again and coming up with a dope idea and a will in one of the following areas- would it be likely to pick vl then, when you know that your final price of your crazy idea will be at least 6.4% more expensive for break even?
quote:joreg but can I please has:
￭ vvvv - a tool for machines to learn ￭ vvvv - easy logic for gamers ￭ vvvv - visual scripting done right ￭ vvvv - klickklickklick your mobile app ￭ vvvv - the no-brainer IOT toolbox ￭ vvvv - the final webdev solution ￭ vvvv - an admin’s batching buddy ￭ vvvv - robots dig this ￭ vvvv - no controller too micro ￭ vvvv - from sound to noise in one patch ￭ vvvv - any shaders of gray ￭ vvvv - scratch that: kids taken seriously
@joreg: Yeah, 100%!
Thanks to all commercial users! <3
i never thought about the comparison to visual studio, but its true. vvvv gamma is rather a graphical visual studio thing than a competitor to unity. the last one is just wishful thinking in terms of features.
the proposed pricing only makes sense if the promises are kept i.e. advanced rendering engine, compile to exe, multiplattform.. including some vvvv core features like boygrouping
but its obviously a hen egg problem. an unfinished product will not attract customers hence generate little funding resulting in a slow development and an unfinished product tbc.
maybe not the best comparison but i wonder how sublime text did it. they startet with a free beta and later charge 80,-€. which is very attractive and therefore sublime spreaded like crazy around the globe.
i bet a visual .net editor can be attractive too to the world but the pricing might be a killer.
maybe its unclear what vvvv gamma wants to be and realistically can be in the short term. a unity competitor ? a replacement for vvvv beta ? or more of a .net editor ?
this rant is btw. not about us (wirmachenbunt) not willing to support. just some thoughts about the pricing implications. totally going in the same direction as velcromes post.
@u7angel: I think the developer of Sublime text might have a different full-time job somewhere else. also people might pay the €80 because it’s the best ever seen text editor out there if you don’t want to use vim. It was so great that it sprouted a new wave of pretty decent text editors (especially atom.io and VS Code) which were free aand now all incentive to pay for sublime text is gone. sad story.
on the graphical .NET language thing: I don’t see at its current state vl or vvvv gamma would gain any traction in .NET world. 4 reasons out of top of my head: namings are consistent with vvvv and not consistent with .NET that much; it’s not being in Visual Studio, although that might be possible through embedding; no DLL compilation although it was never an expectation afaik; and the GUI is faar faaar beyond industry standards. I mean patchable Skia tooltips, node states when hovered and timings are awesome but everything else with it is too experimental for the sake of being experimental for industry not even mentioning what’s grinding my gears so much: lack of multiple windows.
for the pricing: I think it was a mistake to come out with these numbers at this early without anything really to show for them. tbh currently VL in vvvv not even closely justify these prices, but if vvvv gamma will be so much better than that then show us that first with a feature trailer and other fanfares, bells and whistles. personally I have currently 0 faith in this but that should surprise nobody as my tone of voice recently was not the nicest to say the least. as a last thought to quote vux: if you guys will use Xenko for rendering and scene management and you will charge 6% on gross revenue is like if Bolt for Unity which costs flat €80 for everyone afaik would do the same (while Unity is doing 90% of the work in case the point didn’t go accross).
that’s my 2 cents of this
Actually, Skinner quit Google to do that. Decide yourself if he would have chosen Phyton as the tool, if they would have wanted to keep 6% as soon as he made 1333 euro a month with it (just barely minimum wage really), forever.
yes, velcrome is right. sublime is a company with two devs for quite a while. anyway. i re-read all the posts and i strongly support the executable workflow for standalone products like exhibits. we hardly need teamviewer sessions since we test a lot, do mockups and deliver personally on-site. 99% of teamviewer stuff is windows, hardware, network, not patch. hence executable should work fine. for shows, you have your dev seat. therefore this should work out quite nicely.
aaannd, one way is to diversify the income, sure. the other way is to increase numbers of licenses. i think devs should have more faith in conquering new markets with vvvv gamma. i don‘t think it is a good idea to stick to the small community. out of fear a single dev license can now replace a number of on-site licenses, you have this 6% thing. shouldnt be the goal to sell as many dev seats as possible? this works better with a lower and simpler license model. and what about a unity integration or cinema4d ? selling vvvv gamma there and having some form of advertising for the standalone thing. i‘m sure you had similar thoughts.
its totally a business thing, numbers vs. expensive niche thing.
@velcrome, why quadruple ?
we buy about 10 new beta licenses a year, that’s similar to having 4 editor plus licenses.
either you have many more developers in your office or buy only a few beta licenses a year ?
I re-read the discussion and changed my mind about not to tell about vvvv business model.
During last 10 years I made a path from vj and interactive developer (both employed and freelance) to a small business owner and I’m still involved in every project Ivan Raster software lab do. All that time I used vvvv for commerical projects. First, it was piracy, now I’m a legal user.
You can see amount of my licenses in the annual ‘vvvv in numbers’ charts from 2012 to 2018. vvvv-in-numbers-2018 Just replace Russia to bo27 or Ivan Raster. Of course I’m not the only one buyer from Russia, but I’m sure I have more than 90% of licenses here. How do you like it, Elon Musk?!
We are 4 people team and according to 2018 vvvv numbers, we buy&sell more than entire U.S. and China markets combined. That’s noncence from economic point of view! That numbers shows something very wrong with current vvvv economic model.
I believe the major issue is the T.R.U.S.T model. It’s unclear, messed and uncomfortable for commercial clients and it gives them nothing. All of you well know the “free version only for non-commercial use” notification and a way to remove it. The funny fact is you must stop using vvvv next second you remove the notification, no matter if you had pay for the license or not. When I told that to a friend of mine, who also run his own business, he asked me: “Had anyone buy a license?” “Yes, some companies did” I answered “You guys not a business, you guys a sekt.”
While the T.R.U.S.T model is the key option for gamma (as well as for any other product), I bet it will work the same poor way it works for vvvv now, no matter 128 or 2560 euros per workplace, no matter 0 or 6% of product revenue.
I believe license model per PC and per workplace both possible at the same time and could be applied for the current vvvv version right now. Choosing the license should be about type of usage/final produсt, not about what is vvvv/gamma are. 99,9% of clients do not care if they run “APP.exe” or “APP.bat vvvv.exe /o “root_APP.v4p”/shutup”
Per PC license is great for:
Per workplace license is great for:
Any product revenue will work only if you are the Google or Apple Store. Only when you sell software, you can count how many copies sold. In all other cases any revenue is fake. Announced 6% is fake.
I do care about the stuff above because I’m building a production envoriement, which requres stable standards for:
As someone who doesn’t have / work at a studio currently using vvvv, I’ll add my two cents. I would never choose a software that takes 6% of my gross revenue.
What’s more, here’s why I think for you it’s a bad idea:
If the product is really large, what the client needs is support (and maybe customisation). Just sell that! That binds what you bill your client directly to their needs. As it is right now, support in the forum is great but you don’t give companies the feeling that there’s a guarantee for support.
If the product is not really large, don’t try to get the 6% revenue - there won’t be any. It’s quite easy to tamper with numbers until there’s ’no more revenue’. People will do that, TRUST hin oder her.
joreg wrote me an email, trying to clarify some things.
this is what I responded with in German.
Took me 4h to hack it down, and maybe some more people should see it, even if it restricts the readers to German speaking ones and the ones brave enough to read through a deepl or google translate.
@velcrome - That reads as super sensible to me and is so much more clear than the pricing at the top of this page.
A store / monetised nugets sound like a win to me, combined with low fee subscriptions for the masses. Is that not how people make money online these days? It’s about customisation / personalisation / clarity I think?
I’m not suggesting the only $ stream to the devvvvs should be a low fee subscription with independent developers taking the rest.
High quality ‘add ons’ / libraries written by the devvvv team, including core parts of the VL experience (eg the difference between Beginner, Indie, and Pro) would / could be a significant part
Hi devvvs, first, its important that you get some money form this hudge developpement.
BUT, i m sorry, whats the hell is that thing of a yearly or monthly subscription, and updates accesible thruth money ??? we are going weird away from any idea of ethical prices… and a certain spirit…
an example: do i use Adobe ? No. And i will never use their products. Monthly subscriptions are just making people dependant and clearly forcing them to pay all the time, all the life… its not a fair way at all. i assmilate this type of model to ransom
for me, if subscriptions are obligated to have a software up to date and un-buggued (joreg … ;) ) , it will make me considering strongly not to put any time nor effort in VVVV gamma. I will simply run away from it.
a subscription could feet a studio with some big regular cash, not at all freelancers doing projects 1, 2 or 3 times maximum a year with little amounts from “clients”.
the avaiblity to compile an exe shouldnt be understood as a weird and massiv distribution system, but the hability to construct software unbreakable (its the patch weakness) by user.
6%
Beside this, the 6% is a real good idea, if VVVV Gamma can compile exe. Its really ok, but I m not understanding of you can anticipate the 5000€ fee. It will lead to the same points with classical VVVVV beta licenses: not so much people giving money, and frustration for you also
Coming back to this license, maybe you could consider an other way to do it:
final compilation of the application could come with a registering key, delivered by VVVV group on internet.
Means thats VVVV is hosting somehow the compilated project ? this key could be around 100 to 200€, and could authorize 3 or 4 computers max to use this compilated software, based on MAC adress approach. The independant developper, when compiling it, could enter number of MAC adress maximum to register. The price of a license for the end user could change with amount of Mac adresses.
OR… continuing on the idea, VVVV site could provide a shop, hosting final developpements of its community. The 6 or 10 or 15% percents of the software could be taken directly, amount depending of the range of money the developper has given to his exe ( 20€, 100€, 600€, 1000€). The final exe, build for external computers ( MAC based system), would be transmitted by the compilator process to the shop, once validated by the user-developper. But this means a lot of work for VVVV group, to develop such a commercial plateform… dont know what it means in terms of law and rules neither…
About “complain & client”, a full license at 600€ is buyed by big clients, here in France in Theatre, its quite some money for little theatre troups. 100 or 200€ product licenses will certainly make a big difference and enables our little clients to pay the license. Wich is not actually the case.
Perpetual licenses updates
Considering the case of a perpetual license, to avoid rental/ransom, an update at a reasonnable price would be better.
Linux
In this post, i didnt read anything about linux. wich is really something i m waiting for, to get out from this business model called windows. VVVV beta is the last tool that obliged to me to stay on windows.
Yours, sincerely
christoph
(btw impossible to change my old e-mail, wich is now dead. where can i do it in the edit profile ?)
sorry for the delay. from some of the answers we got here, we had the feeling our proposal had been in parts quite missunderstood. to figure out where things went wrong i took to direct talks with some of the above. i’ll get back with trying to resolve the missunderstandings for all. meanwhile please keep your questions coming if you’re not sure about certain things.
but quickly @karistouf: “whats the hell is that thing of a yearly or monthly subscription” it is one of the payment options people want. if you don’t want it, you can stick to the perpetual option (see proposal), where you pay once and own forever (including one year of updates), just like it was before. does this make sense?
and if you read in the fine-print of the yearly subscription you see that our model is much fairer than other softwares subscription model as we let you keep using the last version when you cancel the subscription!
“Beside this, the 6% is a real good idea, if VVVV Gamma can compile exe. Its really ok, but I m not understanding of you can anticipate the 5000€ fee.” to rephrase this because i’m not sure you understood this correctly: if you make a product and earn <5000€ per quarter it means you owe us nothing! if you make more than 5000€ per quarter, say 6000€, it means you owe us 6% of 6000-5000€. ie. 6% of 1000€ = 60€. did you understand it that way?
“… But this means a lot of work for VVVV group, to develop such a commercial plateform…” exactly, this is why we haven’t embarked on this journey yet. but we’re not ruling it out as a future option.
" a full license at 600€ is buyed by big clients, here in France in Theatre, its quite some money for little theatre troups. 100 or 200€ product licenses will certainly make a big difference and enables our little clients to pay the license." this is what we have added the indie and monthly-one-off options for, which allow you to get cheaper options for more fine grained periods than always a whole year.
ps: please send me a mail so i can change your email.
Thanks @joreg for time, patience and great discussion. After we cleared all misunderstandings, we found ourselves on opposite sides of ideological border. Here my thoughts about vvvv beta and vvvv gamma licensing as I understand them from my side of the border.
issue
vvvv beta and vvvv gamma are not multipurpose toolkits for wide-market, but very special professional tools for very specific market with few types of customers and business models and licensing should follow that.
In my opinion, the T.R.U.S.T. model doesn’t work well for vvvv beta and I still believe that all the upcoming improvements and advantages of vvvv gamma will be vanished by weaknesses of the T.R.U.S.T. model in its current state.
I will use vvvv below meaning both vvvv beta&alpha and vvvv gamma. I believe the suggested model could be applied now for all versions.
model
Instead of the T.R.U.S.T model I suggest to protect vvvv with Teamviewer alike model. Just after the splashscreen there must be a pop-up: “Thank you for using vvvv. This is free version only for non-commercial use. To continue press OK to remove notification press REGISTER”.
Register will remove the pop-up and replace “free version only for non-commercial use” splash-screen with “commercial use. License No….”. Also there should be a dialog menu to replace vvvv splash-screen with a custom design.
licenses
For registered users I suggest 4 license options:
(*) I suggest to keep volume discounts for PC licenses but simplify them to amount in a bulk instead of current progressive discounts
usage
In my opinion, this simple system will work for everyone:
result
I believe this could do licensing much clear than current and much easier than suggested to gamma and will at least quadruple vvvvgroup revenue.
Hi joreg,
well after reading your reply, i have the feeling its more a question of ideas, or ideological way to think things.
I follow the simplicity expressed by bo27.
and i confirm you:
I hope I answered well to your question. It would really be better to have a fluent exchange on Skype or something like that, i have the feeling writting is putting some difficulties in understanding
sincerely yours
( and thank you for this great work you are doing since a so long time)
One more thing that just came to mind because I was reading this and the topic comes up so frequently. Not to forget the never ending posts about missing dependencies.
To quote u7angel
quote:who: imagine what a beginner has to do and to know of, just to get vvvv up and running.
it is actually surprising people start learning vvvv after this.
Is gamma going to be susceptible to the same errors? Are you considering an installer?
@devvvvs
Just saying hi to keep hope alive for a licensing structure more embracing curious makers without a dime all over the world.
I am impressed how much of the side notes of this thread are actually starting to take shape out of the fog (exe, .net core, xenko, contribs).
F9 for the win. One can only fathom the possibilities of the generated c# projects yet, tooling for cloud and transcoding ahoi.
Surely, gpu accelerated 3d graphics are the missing keystone for vvvv gamma at this point and it fills me with optimism that Virgile and the two bosses of vvvv GbR stepped up their optimism, aligning more with their staff, and joined forces in Berlin…
I just wanted to write a pun about even enduring Berlin in the winter, with its lead grey skies, but that is actually not giving justice to what you devvvvs embarked on:
The perilous quest of giving rise to the next generation of visual programming: by being close to .net and knowing a thing or two about high-level abstractions in data flow and records, you could empower many thousands of coders who never considered themselves coders by pairing them up with coders, who never considered themselves multipurpose, but know how to make a nuget. While currently facing a dwindling vvvv beta user base, it is easy to fail at this junction, if you don’t manage to match talented patchers with talented nuget devs in win-win situations in vl as a symbiotic progression (maybe with a patch shop).
However, your Moscow performance fills me with hope.
Being a non-commercial user, I really appreciate that I can use vvvv Gamma without limitations and that you do not have a “lite” version (with all the interesting features only in the commercial version :-) ).
Thanks a lot, I’m really looking forward to the executables-feature (and later xenko integration of course)!
What about commercial projects with FOSS release of Gamma parts? Above with code only but maybe not assets/data?
Will VL be embeddable in product as scripting language with the possibility to limit the available nodes?
Will these prices be valid from the first release on and/or have you considered some kind of early access pricing as known from games development? In other words do you consider gamma a mature (fully featured) product yet?
I know a lot can be done in vl already but when comparing gamma to the competition it seems to be somewhat short on features you’ll get out of the box. Same goes for the features included / announced for the first release vs. what’s planned for the future – future has the edge.