What ideas do you have regarding the funding of open sourceish, non-salaried audio plug-in development. I.e. a small development house that does not pay regular salaries, but rather divides the profits that are occasionally generated.
The general problem is that one would need to probe the markets before one can know whether the development time for some plug-in is worth taking. Since of course no-one would like to spend time on something that will not eventually sell.
So what alternatives do exist (or could be created) for small, independent plug-in development teams?
In order to get paid while coding.
Open sourceish plug-in development funding: Crowd funding?
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 1096 posts since 28 May, 2010 from Finland
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- KVRian
- 1379 posts since 26 Apr, 2004 from UK
There are a few people here that provide free plugins. Not all of them are open source.
AFAIK, none earn money from them, it's more a resume and some work for other companies on a per contract basis.
Don't expect to earn money from free plugins...
AFAIK, none earn money from them, it's more a resume and some work for other companies on a per contract basis.
Don't expect to earn money from free plugins...
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 1096 posts since 28 May, 2010 from Finland
The reason for using the wording "open sourceish" is because I'm currently developing commercial plug-ins, but the development style is more similar to an open source development environment, rather than commercial corporate. E.g. because I'm not salaried, but rather coding because of some expectations of future sales (which I haven't seen yet).
If it would occur that a plug-in does not sell very well, then one would have lost development time that could've been spent for more serious projects.
If it would occur that a plug-in does not sell very well, then one would have lost development time that could've been spent for more serious projects.
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 1096 posts since 28 May, 2010 from Finland
Also, when it comes to open source code. The code could be free, but the problem is that the coder has costs that need to be covered, while he's/she's choding. This is the whole point, one is losing money during open sourceish development, without any guarantee of future income.
Last edited by soundmodel on Wed Sep 02, 2015 3:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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- KVRian
- 1379 posts since 26 Apr, 2004 from UK
I can see your point. I think all our personal and professional development should aim at acquiring exprience and code that can be reused for other projects. This way, even if you worked on something that you didn't manage to sell to someone, you learnt something, gave you new ideas, and also gave you reusable code for a different/future idea.
Yeah, not perfect...
Yeah, not perfect...
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- KVRian
- 1379 posts since 26 Apr, 2004 from UK
Well, Open Source for plugins means accessibility to the source code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source) for free...Fluky wrote:Also, when it comes to open source code. The code could be free, but the problem is that the coder has costs that need to be covered, while he's/she's choding. This is the whole point, one's is losing money during open sourceish development, without any guarantee of future income.
Yes, you lose money when you are doing any free plugin actually. I couldn't live of free plugins!
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 1096 posts since 28 May, 2010 from Finland
Well in that case it would make sense, if most used some very generic frameworks for probing the markets. E.g. something that only needs the DSP algos put in and some GUI layout and then it would be already usable. Then make the users pay for e.g. extended GUI development or otherwise continued development, after they've seen the "alpha" version.Miles1981 wrote:I can see your point. I think all our personal and professional development should aim at acquiring exprience and code that can be reused for other projects. This way, even if you worked on something that you didn't manage to sell to someone, you learnt something, gave you new ideas, and also gave you reusable code for a different/future idea.
Yeah, not perfect...
This way one would use minimal time to get something up and running and the users would be encouraged to spend money on something that's already working, but which they would like to be better (e.g. have a customized GUI). This way the developer does not lose time and can probe the markets "half-way" to the development.
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- KVRian
- 1153 posts since 11 Aug, 2004 from Breuillet, France
You can release some open source code and ask money for a commercial licence to the developers who want to use it in a commercial product
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 1096 posts since 28 May, 2010 from Finland
Anyone think it would make sense to have a "kickstarter" for plug-ins?
Perhaps even linked to KVR or hosted at KVR?
It would be beneficial and interesting to all those independent plug-in developers that are pushing plug-ins to KVR, but may not know whether their plug-in has markets?
Perhaps even linked to KVR or hosted at KVR?
It would be beneficial and interesting to all those independent plug-in developers that are pushing plug-ins to KVR, but may not know whether their plug-in has markets?
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- KVRAF
- 3080 posts since 17 Apr, 2005 from S.E. TN
I'm retired, but when working with a profitable company (closed source), we only had a few programmers and not near enough time. Some problems we needed to solve would have taken too long to solve in house so several times we hired expert nerds to write us some code, with the agreement that the fella who wrote our little needed utility, was welcome to open source or otherwise recycle the stuff we paid for.
IOW, if we had paid for instance a consultant to solve an OS-specific audio conversion problem or whatever, it did us no harm if the contractor would also give away or resell that utility code. We needed the code for our program, but giving other folks access to that little piece of utility code wouldn't make it any easier for other people to compete against our product. Absolutely no reason to be a dog in the manger.
Another example-- In some open source compilers and such, people who need a new feature or bug fix will post a bounty for what they need. "I'll pay $500 for someone to fix annoying bug #100123."
And then if the bug gets fixed, at least one guy is happy about the fixed bug, another guy gets some spending money and applause from many people for fixing the bug, and the fix gets added to the source codebase if appropriate, to potentially help many people.
Some of the smartest low level code nerds can be very dedicated to open source and like the "fame" of being able to post code. So if they can get some money and also give away the work and get admiration from their nerd frends, it is a good thing all around.
IOW, if we had paid for instance a consultant to solve an OS-specific audio conversion problem or whatever, it did us no harm if the contractor would also give away or resell that utility code. We needed the code for our program, but giving other folks access to that little piece of utility code wouldn't make it any easier for other people to compete against our product. Absolutely no reason to be a dog in the manger.
Another example-- In some open source compilers and such, people who need a new feature or bug fix will post a bounty for what they need. "I'll pay $500 for someone to fix annoying bug #100123."
And then if the bug gets fixed, at least one guy is happy about the fixed bug, another guy gets some spending money and applause from many people for fixing the bug, and the fix gets added to the source codebase if appropriate, to potentially help many people.
Some of the smartest low level code nerds can be very dedicated to open source and like the "fame" of being able to post code. So if they can get some money and also give away the work and get admiration from their nerd frends, it is a good thing all around.
