Plug-in to plug-in licensing

[soundmodel]

So we came up with this idea of plug-in to plug-in licensing.

It means that one licenses some part of DSP to one's own plug-in from other developers. E.g. licenses the distortion module to one's synth from another developer. It has been practiced in some extent, but I mainly only see big companies doing it (e.g. you see iZotope RX noise reduction in a lot of audio editors).

However, we think that the markets for plug-in to plug-in licensing could be larger. Particularly because it's sometimes waste of resources having to write one's own, say, distortion algorithm, if someone has already created some very good one (that may also have some very fine tuning). So why not use that instead?

Of course, some developers may not like the idea of sharing their products with others. But we think that plug-in to plug-in licensing offers a win-win situation:

The original developer gets:

1) Extra income from licensing costs

2) More visibility in the market

The license purchaser gets:

1) Less time and effort spent on something that's done well already. More time to devote on other things.
=> Possibly a better product.
=> Possibly more income as well, if a good product also sells more.

Also, if the embedding is done so that the source code is not revealed, then the original developer is not even losing any of his/her IP.

I think plug-in to plug-in licensing should be a more common practice. Plug-ins that can be licensed could add the option already to their product pages or EULAs or whatever.

What do you think?

[frizzbee]

sounds like future devs will be more lazy and non-innovative than today... i don't think there's much need for it. after reading some of your last posts & topics, i too think you'd like to "invent" something at all costs.

of course there are modules that already got licenced to others. but please remember most of them have very high prices, because the devs spent months with conception, developing, testing and optimizing the code. also i think there are only a few one (only can think of izotope and elastic audio). for example blue cat audio aleady shares major parts of their sdk. what we see is, the ones that like to licence parts of their work to others, already do that. so why do think there will be more participating when your idea's ready?

if i was a dev i wouldn't be part of the concept. imagine spending months of work creating my companies signature sound and then seeing other plugins sounding the same is demotivating. on the other hand the modules could be really basic, but then every dev could write them alone.

you should be more precise about: can the module only be used in 1 plugin or does the licence apply to all future products? do i have to pay as long as i'm developing the plugin, or as long as i'm selling it? should there be a common interface for exchanging the code/lib or is it the devs decision? how many devs do you know that would be part of your concept and how many would use it? how should the consumers be informed that module x is from company y*?

*a small sentence in the eula wouldn't help because i can't remember when reading one the last time.
should there be a logo on the plugin ui? then some plugin uis probably would consist only of these logos
should there be a note on the systems page? some plugins don't have it.

[Miles1981]

Exactly, all these libraries, open or closed, are basically doing that at a lower level, because developers still want to be able to sell that IP.

[soundmodel]

Well of course such license agreements can be tailored in any way the participants see reasonable?

E.g. if you write a very good distortion plug-in that you ship as a distortion plug-in, then you could disallow licensing into plug-ins that allow input audio (as is) to be routed through the distortion unit.

So you would allow licensing only to plug-ins that use your distortion as part of a larger chain or e.g. with fixed set of samples (no audio input), so you're not really giving away your sound. If the users want the distortion only, then they would purchase your plug-in.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Everything is a matter of price
In this exact period we refused to license a single plugin at 40k. I think we would do a for not less then 100k. The number is not unrealistic cause a couple of considerations (I think it could be way higher for companies with higher development costs, ie years of development). Would you pay that amount of money?

[FabienTDR]

Out there, who asks for unusable, probably undocumented, impossible to maintain and debug frankenstein products? Not to mention performance optimization.

IMHO you are radically misinterpreting the development process (also software dev in general). Try at least to bring one plugin to full release, just to get a feel. 98% of the work in not about algorithms! Competitive algorithms are not built out of standard bricks.

[Rockatansky]

Hm. If I had something I'd want to share with others, I'd put it on GitHub for free.
If it's something I didn't want to share with others, I wouldn't put it on GitHub.

If someone wanted to have something that I initially didn't want to share with others, they would approach me and ask.
I'd either change my mind if the agreement was interesting (or the price was right), or not.

Isn't that the way it should be?

I wouldn't know the things I know today without anyone out there sharing their code for free, enabling me to read through it and understand some basic principles. If all I had done was "license a .DLL" from someone for money, include it in my project and put a GUI on it, then maybe I would have been able to more easily put together a plugin, yes. But it wouldn't be "mine", would it. And I would have been able to learn exactly this from it: zero, zilch, nada, goose egg, naught.

And in return, if I learned something and thereafter created an algorithm of my own, made it a .DLL (or .dylib or whatever) and licensed it as a closed-source processor to others, they wouldn't be able to learn from it as well.

Then, say there was a platform that made it possible to license closed-source libraries, and developers would actually be sharing their code through it. That would lead to a scenario where every other synth out there would suddenly have Diva filters and every other console emulation would have an in-built Glue.

Meaning the products that are today considered unique, and that create a kind of friendly competition between developers to one-up or out-do each other, are no longer that. Everyone would be using the same couple of "best rated" compressor, EQ, oscillator libraries, so nothing -neither the original products nor the ones using their licensed algorithms- would be unique anymore. Everything would be the same, potentially. You think developers would want that? I wouldn't.

Just needs some kid with JUCE to license some of the best rated libraries and make an "oscillators only" plugin, a "filters only" plugin, an "fx only" plugin, or maybe a framework a la VMR that lets people stitch those modules together. You think anyone would by synthesizer X for $199 if they could get the oscillator, filter and fx modules from "that kid" for $29 each and make their own synthesizer X like that? You think developers would want that? I wouldn't.

I sense this is not so much about "connecting others" or "raising the product quality on the market" or "making it easier to use good code" or anything altruistic like that. Seems more like someone wants to create a platform that pockets a percentage of those licensing costs for "making the connections", is all.

Sorry, I'm not convinced.

[soundmodel]

Meaning the products that are today considered unique, and that create a kind of friendly competition between developers to one-up or out-do each other, are no longer that. Everyone would be using the same couple of "best rated" compressor, EQ, oscillator libraries, so nothing -neither the original products nor the ones using their licensed algorithms- would be unique anymore. Everything would be the same, potentially. You think developers would want that? I wouldn't.

That's a theory, but I don't believe it would go that way in practice. Reasons:

1) It hasn't gone that way in cases where plug-in licensing has already been done.

2) If a developer does something stupid like that, then I assume that it would affect their reputation. In a small market like this I think it's important for developers to maintain their credibility.

Just needs some kid with JUCE to license some of the best rated libraries and make an "oscillators only" plugin, a "filters only" plugin, an "fx only" plugin, or maybe a framework a la VMR that lets people stitch those modules together. You think anyone would by synthesizer X for $199 if they could get the oscillator, filter and fx modules from "that kid" for $29 each and make their own synthesizer X like that? You think developers would want that? I wouldn't.

Again, even that's theoretically possible the kid would be losing his/her reputation and become recognized as a "plug-in patcher", rather than a serious developer. Surely he/she may have markets for even such plug-in, but if the licenses haven't allowed such development in the first place (see I recommended in the 4th post that the licensing could be tailored to be limited in a way that it allows some use, but disallows e.g. using the DSP "as is").

[JCJR]

Tech to be licensed IMO would be stuff you need to include in a product but do not have time or ability to code.

Many modules of all kinds available. For hypothetical example, if it happens to be important for an app to "visually look like" Win 10 but you would have to pay yer inhouse programmers $10000 to take the time to learn how and implement, and also lose that same amount of programmer time taken away from core software features which you are in biz trying to sell-- Then if you can buy an easy and high quality dll for $2500 it is probably a no-brainer. Also if the inhouse programmers are highly involved and motivated on the "main features" of yer product-- And the desired feature todo list on the main features alone looks like its gonna stretch into the next decade-- It might vastly help staff morale if you could buy yer way out of making a dsp nerd or database whiz or whatever take time away from his main focus for boring and unpleasant monkey work.

Even in an extreme hypothetical case of a developer doing nothing but buying a bunch of libs and gluing them togetber, then if the developer manages to build a real slick, more-usable than the competition product, I don't see it as "cheating". If the user considers the product worth the money and the dll makers get paid, then what's the problem? Sounds like win-win to me. Its purt hard to make money selling software, so if a developer spends a bunch of money licensing and re-packaging then he better be damn good at marketing/sales or he's gonna spend lots more money than his sales revenue.

Zplane licenses some good tech. Well made. If you have the money and don't have a year or more available programming time to ATTEMPT to make something better, then well worth the money. Great folks. http://licensing.zplane.berlin

Check out their list of licensing customers. The customer list does not look like lazy uncreative slackers to me. Just buying expertise at "bargain basement prices" compared to reinventing the wheel for themselves.

The good stuff tends to be more expensive than a part-time or hobbyist programmer could afford, unless such small-time programmer is already wealthy and he's just doing it for fun or "fame" or whatever. I mean, some hobbyists will spend tens of thousands of bucks on the very best tools just to make an occasional chair or turn an occasional bowl, so maybe it is also common among some well-heeled hobby programmers. Dunno.

Tis hard to say. Some years ago was browsing an international "code wanted" site where some posters were offering like $100 for tasks that would take months to program unless the programmer has already done the work and already has the code on-hand to re-sell. It looked like some of those low-ball propositions were actually satisfactory for both parties, marked as completed. In such cases I guess the seller was either working at a dollar an hour, or already had the requested code on-hand..

[Richard_Synapse]

Licensing is not uncommon. Sometimes the licensees prefer to sell the work as their own, however, so the public does not know about it.

Richard