What with a huge crashey-style bug that I couldn't fix (and, for the record - that was the fault of one of the libraries I was using - and I still haven't fixed it) I accept that mine was not the most attractive in there-this, however, is not about that- I just wanted to get that lot out of the way, before someone accuses me of "sour grapes", which, for the record, I am not in possession of- congratulations to the actual winners- the users.
But WHAT ungrateful winners they are.
Here's my beef:
I wrote a plugin that was f**king difficult to code, took a few months to do, and took me back to square one with my CFS (look it up)-
to be honest, I wrote this plugin for the developers- because anyone who codes for free (given that programming is hard work) deserves respect, regardless of whether that work is taken seriously or their plugin ends up working correctly for a given platform (and with the absolute proliferation of hosts it is extremely difficult to assure this).
But some of the users - GOD.
"Why doesn't this play AVI's?"
"Because of all the reasons listed in the documentation-"
"Yeah, but I want it to play AVI's"
"Well then you write one that breaks international law, then-"
"Geez man, don't be so stingy, it's not like this isn't CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM! Nobodies going to use it if it doesn't SUPPORT AVI's"
f**k!!!
...
In my opinion, VST users are used to getting high quality work for free - which is okay - but forget that programmers get paid major money in the workplace to do what they do - not because they're special (though they may well be), because it's, as mentioned above, -f**king hard work-. Much harder than writing a song or sitting down at a piano, or even playing violin.
I'm as guilty of this as anyone- have I sent more than ten thank-you notes out for the hundreds of free plugins sitting in my plugins directory? No, not yet. At least the benefit of doing this contest has been that I am now aware of what a minefield developing for VST is.
Quite frankly, even if there was $10000 in the competition prize pool, it wouldn't pay for half the amount of hours that any one of the the developers have put in in real-word terms.
So be grateful- share, proliferate, but come on - be grateful.
Thanks to Tuz for putting together the competition, to all the people who entered, and to all the users who are genuinely grateful.
Peace out-
Cheers,
M@
