Matt Tytel makes Vital Open source!!

[zvenx]

Lol. Ouch!!
rsp

[plexuss]

I hate open source. Glad Matt isnt planning to make Vital full bore open source.

That's understandable. Open source has inflicted uncountable evils on the world. If you're up for sharing some cautionary tales, I'd like to hear about the specific ways it has hurt you.

I usually get wind of some open-source product from forums where people will rave about it. I go and work through how to download and install (which is hit and miss) only find whtever it was is incomplete and/or buggy. The last open-source product I looked at is VCV which was being touted as a viable alternative to Voltage Modular.... not for me it isn't. I get the whole open-source thing and what makes it cool etc. Another one that bogged me down was phpBB, an abomination of code and UX. It's just not for me. My enthusiasm and interest doesn't include code.

[Cancel Culture Club]

I hate open source. Glad Matt isnt planning to make Vital full bore open source.

That's understandable. Open source has inflicted uncountable evils on the world. If you're up for sharing some cautionary tales, I'd like to hear about the specific ways it has hurt you.

Don't blame open source, blame the people who abuse the open source.

[billcarroll]

Apache HTTP Server Software is the web server most of the sites on the Internet us, and it is completely free and open source. KVR is probably served up using Apache.

TL;DR ... maybe open source can be good?

[Held]

Linux is also the most used server operating system. Even Microsoft loves it now after calling it "cancer" a while ago.

But there are also a lot of people wildly overselling the capabilities of open source applications compared to commercial alternatives. So I get why some people are annoyed and disappointed.

[mtytel]

I usually get wind of some open-source product from forums where people will rave about it. I go and work through how to download and install (which is hit and miss) only find whtever it was is incomplete and/or buggy.

Yeah I totally get this, but I think there's a bit of a selection bias with open source / free software. There's plenty of lower quality open source software but there's also plenty of lower quality commercial software. People just tend to download and use the lower quality open source software *more* since it's usually free and then there are more experiences with lower quality open source software than lower quality commercial software.

That said, I don't advertise or announce that Vital is open source because I want people to use Vital for its capabilities as a synthesizer and not for any because of open source idealism.

I know some people will recommend Vital because it's free (or open source).
What I'd like is people to recommend Vital because it is good.

[Held]

I know some people will recommend Vital because it's free (or open source).
What I'd like is people to recommend Vital because it is good.

I like that!

[mtytel]

Another one that bogged me down was phpBB, an abomination of code and UX.

Haven't tried phpBB as a developer but I use Discourse for my forum and it's a pretty amazing piece of software. Easy to use, flexible, great design, and good moderation tools. (it's also open source but you should use it because it's good): https://www.discourse.org/

[Super Piano Hater 64]

Linux is also the most used server operating system. Even Microsoft loves it now after calling it "cancer" a while ago.

But there are also a lot of people wildly overselling the capabilities of open source applications compared to commercial alternatives. So I get why some people are annoyed and disappointed.

Every Linux distro I’ve used (and I’ve used a bunch) has been a decent sysadmin toolkit, and a really terrible end user OS, simultaneously. The people who use it in professional settings are primarily sysadmins, so they need it to be a great tool for that job, and in fact a lot of skilled professional programmers are paid vast sums of money to make it that way. The people who use Linux for personal computing are almost all hobbyists, or at least programmers with experience as sysadmins. There’s just not (yet) a lot at stake if Linux fails as an end user OS, so the work necessary to take it there never gets done.

I think the really successful open source projects succeed because their failure is seen as a much worse alternative by lots of people whose careers are on the line, and they’re able to keep throwing money at the problem over the course of many years. Great software requires the continued involvement of professional developers, and in order for them to participate, someone has to pick up the check.

If Vital succeeds, I expect it will be because Matt Tytel is making enough money on it from the people who need it to work. That can happen with or without an open source development model.

[rafa1981]

This is a master move where everyone wins. You GPL after cashing the initial months, skip paying Juce licenses while the community gets the source.

Very well played. I put it on my list of synths to try and maybe buy/contribute to.

[Held]

Every Linux distro I’ve used (and I’ve used a bunch) has been a decent sysadmin toolkit, and a really terrible end user OS, simultaneously. The people who use it in professional settings are primarily sysadmins, so they need it to be a great tool for that job, and in fact a lot of skilled professional programmers are paid vast sums of money to make it that way. The people who use Linux for personal computing are almost all hobbyists, or at least programmers with experience as sysadmins. There’s just not (yet) a lot at stake if Linux fails as an end user OS, so the work necessary to take it there never gets done.

I didn't say anything about Linux on the desktop. I use it and I love it, but for it to become widely adopted by end users, it would have to change almost everything I love about it . So no thank you.

I think the really successful open source projects succeed because their failure is seen as a much worse alternative by lots of people whose careers are on the line, and they’re able to keep throwing money at the problem over the course of many years.

Isn't this even more true for commercial software? Not sure what your argument is.

Great software requires the continued involvement of professional developers, and in order for them to participate, someone has to pick up the check.

Of course, but that doesn't exclude an open source business model. Blender is for me the model open source desktop application, and it's getting a lot of support from commercial studios at the moment. It's much more cost efficient if you bundle your resources with other users and develop a software together instead of paying another company who's only really interested in profit and keeps raising prices every few years.

[lobanov]

I hate open source. Glad Matt isnt planning to make Vital full bore open source.

Yes, understandable.

Sometimes it's a garbage.

But I use Syncthing for synchronisation of my files between desktops, Android devices and NAS. I use CudaText for simple .txt editing. Is Firefox open source? I use it too. I compare files in WinMerge. All works very well. There are many stable, usable and open source plugins. Surge, Dragonfly reverbs, lkjb, now Vital...

[overhishead]

Anybody know offhand what dependencies not inclued in vital-main.zip are required in order to build a windows vst2 64 bit or vst3 .dll of this source code? Also what compilers on windows would be capable of such a build, and which ones would not be capable of it?

[Held]

Is Firefox open source? I use it too.

Firefox is open source, Chrome's core is open source and available as Chromium; Safari's render engine WebKit (which Chrome's render engine Blink is based on) is open source. Microsoft Edge uses open source (Blink) too because they failed to implement a decent proprietary render engine.

phpBB that runs this forum is open source too. Maybe everyone who hates open source should leave

Good luck doing anything on the internet without using a lot of open source software.

[alberto_balsalm]

Amazing. If only more devs did that. Imagine if all those countless 32 bit VSTs with tiny hardcoded UIs that are barely usable now had been open source in the first place.

As far as people who don't understand what's the big deal - for the end user nothing really changes, there's a free version available in any case, so it's not like you have to hunt for the builds. Long term it means that anybody can provide support and maintain the project. I imagine that it would also help a lot for people who want to get into DSP programming and making synths/effects. It's also an amazing contribution towards free and open source music making software. I'd love to ditch Windows for Linux one day. Support for games is no longer a serious obstacle, and Linux support for audio software and hardware has been improving too.