This might be *slightly* off topic, but recent events made me think about business ethics among audio soft developers.
I would like to work out a manifest with some "codex of behaviour" or whatever it's gonna be called under which I would try to put my own business, and under which I would invite any company to join. This forum is well frequented by devs, so it's possibly the best place to start developing such.
So I put up some points and see what you guys think. Feel free to contribute more points and join the discussion (if any takes off).
1. legal note / contact information
For one thing, I noticed that some companies don't have a legal note on their website, that means a proper contact info. In the European Union of course every company has to add such to its website, as implemented in each EU country upon a directive (see link, Article 5).
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/Lex ... 031:EN:NOT
That means each company must post its name, postal address, phone number, email address and tax identification number basically "one click away" on its website.
I think as much transparency is owed to our customers, and websites where you can't even make out the country of origin are less than nice.
I'm not sure if there is a similar law in other parts of the world, maybe someone in the know could chime in.
2. fair trade
2.1. pricing info
I think it's important that product prices plus taxes are visible on the website even *before* clicking on a buy now button or checking out a shopping cart. Also hidden costs such as shipping costs and taxes should be visible immediately (I failed to do this myself, but have fixed it since).
2.2. license transfers
I also think that licenses should be generally transferable, maybe for a little fee to prevent abuse. I think Audiodamage are the most user friendly company in this respect (you can even give a license back and get reimbursed within some time IIRC), but I think it's understandably that not every company will want to go that far.
3. fair marketing
That's probably the biggest and most controversial point.
3.1. user testimonials
If I could, I would stop fake user testimonials. Quoting people who have been paid an NFR for a couple of nice words is IMHO a deception. By paying them for their statement they are *not* giving an honest testimonial. In fact, there's a whole crowd of people who you can see again and again on every other website. Some of these guys seem to have bartered their whole studio together by selling their opinion. Posting these testimonials as "real user opinion" is just wrong.
Instead I plead for a codex that user testimonials of people who have received an NFR have to be marked as "endorsed artist". The same goes for affiliates and beta testers. Feedback of paying customers that was sent *after* purchase may well be used as a real, honest testimonial.
3.2. demo songs
I think that demo songs should generally be absolutely dry output of the plugin in question. However, sometimes a limiter, samples, a drumloop etc. are necessary to round up the experience. If anything else than the plugin and the dry host is used, then it should be named in the context.
3.3. phantasy buzzwords, abbreviations and trademarks
A visit at the patent and trademark offices sometimes is enlightening. I've seen dozens and dozens of buzzwords and abbreviations marked as TM or (R) over the years, none of which could ever be found in any of the common trademark databases.
Of course one can give any unique feature a new name. It's good to have that, so one can talk about it and everyone knows which part of the thing is meant.
However I think that putting a trademark sign on each little abbreviation is childish - and even misleading. Why pretend to have anything trademarked? Who's gonna steal it, really...?
Instead I would suggest to make it "a grown up thing" to try to name things with as common words as possible. What I mean is, in Zebra I called the synthesis methods that mangle a wavetable spectrum OscFX or "Oscillator Effects". That sure is less buzzy than "Advanced Wavetable Mogrification Synthesis" or whatever one would call it, but it's good enough and it doesn't pretend to be an invention that changes the world.
That said, I find many inventions entertaining, and sometimes someone has to come up with a different word for something that's coined by someone else but is too trivial not do. But please be reasonable. Overdoing it might be a laugh for some, but it might also be an unfairly lost sale for someone else.
3.4. marking someone elses terrain
I think we need to revaluate the unspoken rules that say that no dev must pee inside another one's forum thread (no, I don't mean the thread that led me to this). When is it okay to post in a thread and when is it not?
I think that e.g. a thread in Instruments where someone asks about specific products of specific companies is *not* open for other companies to market their stuff in. One can always react if a user innocently drops a product name. But jumping in just out of the blue without *any* invitation by the OP or anything is *not* *cool*.
As a common rule one should say: Don't do to your competitor's thread what you don't want done to yours. The milages seem to vary though
A thread invasion is IMHO a often direct statement against a competitor.
Of course soemone will always post "try this or that" instead. Sure. But competitors have to be treated like raw eggs (I promise to increase my efforts in this respect). I go as far as putting xxx instead of a competitors name in a quote if otherwise the impression could occurr that I'm criticising the product.
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That's what I have for the moment.
Anything else? Or isn't it worth thinking about this at all?
Urs
