Fathom Synth Development Thread

[fmr]

Machine locked internet activations are not going to go over well. If the problem really is that too many people are just using the mono version, why go to all these lengths to prevent piracy (which is not the problem!) and why not instead just stop adding new features to the mono version (or have a 30 minute timeout or something), and for copy protection use something simple like personalized license txt files, where leaked licenses are disabled in future versions of the plugin?

Fabfilter, u-he, and many others manage to survive with such copy protection schemes. U-he does quite a bit more to juice sales to people using leaked license files or cracked versions (google it if you’re interested-there are many forum posts about it) but the basic idea is simple and unobtrusive.

^^^ THIS ^^^

I don't have a problem of having a product locked to a machine, as long as it works the way Arturia or Native Instruments or Plugin Alliance work. The management is transparent, and what we have to do is just run the installer management, and we can authorize and deauthorize effortlessly.

Your system seems like those old Pace systems with authorization residing the hard-drive, and software may appear deauthorized if we change a component (like for example changing the CPU). And we will have to go through the process again, with e-mails back and forth, etc. a real PITA.

And frankly, for an instrument that costs $45, do you really think it's worth the effort? For me, I will probably give up, and stay forever at the current version.

[FathomSynth]

Sorry, I'll go back and read through the thread tomorrow.

[fmr]

What?

?

[ReverendLove]

OK, I'm sorry I was defensive.

I'm just surprised at the strong reaction against it.

I honestly thought the idea of locking each purchase to a user and a machine just made logical sense.

But clearly that is not the case. I'll go back and read the thread to try and understand this better.

To be really serious: I feel your urge to protect your work and see the necessity of barriers like CF driven exits in shops. But they are invisible and without reaction or impact for honest customers. That is an important difference. It gives the customer the feeling being responsible himself.

So I think if you consider this there are some points to be aware of.
The most important in my view is keeping the customer accountable.

That works for some companies for example PA. The customer has an account (sic!). In this account you can manage the authorization by yourself. You can withdraw it from the linked machine so it is free for another one. So you can use your software on another machine if the previous one went FUBAR. That even won't interfere possibly with your idea for calling home only once or very rarely. If the customer doesn't withdraw the software from existing machine(s) there's no new authorizsation.

Next question (You answered it partly) is security of using the software. Audio Vitamin's owner lost his web hoster and some people (as me) cannot use the software. He now tries to sort it out and shows a very serious and polite behaviour but shit like that just happens. It's like you can't drive your shiny new car cause petrol is out. And this developer's dependency leads to a customer dependency without any posibility to change this. I feel really helpless in this situations.

So there are reasons for my strong reactions and I hope I explained it sensible enough. I know I am being a loudmouth and impulsive sometimes,

Love from river Rhine
RL

[willsavino]

Here's my 2 cents (that no one asked for)

This is still the best value plugin I have ever purchased. All this extra protection is an additional "cost," but it doesn't come CLOSE to invalidating the fact that Fathom is 1) a crazy high powered synth and 2) a wild value. Sure, I'd rather keep it the way it is, but I'd much prefer that Everett can continue to support the project and not give up and go work for Cisco or some shit.

I understand people's desire for freedom / privacy / etc, but at least Everett is being upfront with us about his plans, and is trying to figure out the least offensive way to keep his synth in the game. TBH, I agree that Fathom Mono is way too generous. I debated buying Fathom Pro because Mono was so good, and I only pulled the trigger AFTER reading this thread because he's been so cool about responding to feedback and whatnot.

Yeah, we shouldn't support business practices we don't like, but I feel like it's more important to support creators who are doing their best, communicating with the community, and (most importantly) making dope products.

[Teksonik]

I don't have a problem of having a product locked to a machine, as long as it works the way....Native Instruments....

Are you sure ?

NI 052119.png

[fmr]

NIHardwareAccessibilityHelper and NTKDaemon are not running over here (probably needed for some hardware you are using?), and those are the ones using more RAM. Anyway, they are using 0.3 and 0.5 MB. Hardly noticeable

[martinjuenke]

Just go the soft iLok way. Works fine and is an established technology.
.
.
.
and don‘t take care of people who haven‘t bought your synth but talking pages long their important opinions in this thread...

[dandezebra]

I bought Fathom without knowing your business model. This is just one more reason to not give you anymore of my $$. Go f**k yourself.

Is this sarcastic or did you just win D-bag of the thread award?

It's the frustration of a customer who has been ripped off. Maybe you're OK with getting money stolen from you but I'm not. Congratulations tho on winning the T-Bag of the Year award. Enjoy gargling Fathom's nutsack.

Wow. Usually it takes more than two posts for one to destroy their forum reputation.

Everett, I would certainly suggest a reread of some of the previous posts as their are some good questions and good points in between the crap.

[RPH]

I already reported both posts from him this morning.

[fmr]

Just go the soft iLok way. Works fine and is an established technology.

And how much would he have to pay Pace for that? I bet that would cause the price of the plug-in to jump to the double

And you would have just ONE installation, and in case of a hard-drive failure, you are doomed.

[dandezebra]

Just go the soft iLok way. Works fine and is an established technology.

And how much would he have to pay Pace for that? I bet that would cause the price of the plug-in to jump to the double

And you would have just ONE installation, and in case of a hard-drive failure, you are doomed.

Not doomed, but a pain in the butt.

[Tj Shredder]

I was always wondering about the existing non-protection. That is certainly too easy, a friend of mine asked me for Fathom and not everybody can resist that easily. It should be serial protected at least combined with the danger to be excluded in the future. I like the way Madrona Labs is doing it, and others which have been mentioned here...
Of course this would not prevent piracy. Some of the pirates still would not buy it, those pirates are not a financial loss...
I would only like to deal with people who are respectful, and those do pay to have a legal license. To convince those who do not have a legal license to finally be respectful might be easier than keeping those who oppose the risk of server based copy protection...
I always wanted to ask you for your Patreon page. I most likely would have subscribed to it which could have created a low, but still a stream from my side, though currently I am not using Fathom the way it would deserve it. Actually I have to use the Mono version as I need MPE and I can create a polyphonic MPE version out of a bunch of Mono instances...
I would ask Urs and Randy about their experiences with their system, I bet there is some discussion in the dev forum about this topic as well...

[FathomSynth]

I have some important stuff I need to do this afternoon for a small audio job, so I will read back in the posts tonight to really get the information I was missing.

I've had a night to sleep on this, and I'm thinking at this point that a licensing system might do more harm than good, so I'm leaning toward not doing it at all, at least not on the Fathom Pro product line.

I may need to do the licensing on a more advanced version of the product in the future, for instance the one which will have both the sampler and arpeggiator, and insane GPU processing, but the critical difference there will be that users will understand the contract before they buy the product and it will not be something that is changed under their feet after they bought the product.

I think part of the problem in this case, in addition to the points made above, is that I would be changing something which people already purchased and that is the critical point that would cause many customers to question the integrity of the policy.

So bottom line is this.

1. No licensing of any kind on Fathom Pro going into the future except the unzip code.
2. This will make it necessary to change the unzip code more frequently.
3. Possible machine lock license on a different product, which users will know up front.

Thanks everyone for your input.

Again, as soon as I get time today I will read through all the posts.

[_al_]

Everett, you really do seem like a nice honest guy, and I hope you settle on something that works for you. (Even if it's something that doesn't work for me).

But I'm sure you're aware you're not going to stop crackers just by going the C/R route? These people create keygens for products they're not even interested in, just to sharpen their skills. And sometimes, just for fun.

Take Sylenth, for instance. Great sound, low cpu, quite user friendly, and online activation. A winning combo. And one of the most heavily pirated VSTi of all time. The online activation didn't deter the crackers, it was just an extra step.

And yet, Sylenth is still one of the most well known synths on the market. Do you think it would be so popular if he had gone the dongle route? IMO no way.

And this is what a lot of developers don't seem to understand. 99% of the people who use cracks have no interest whatsoever in spending money on software.
I have friends who look at me like I'm mentally ill when i tell them I buy my software. These people are not potential customers. There is far too much readily available.
The only way you would get their money, is by offering them something indispensable to their genre, with no other way of getting it.

And now look at the other, smaller group of people. the ones you are interested in.
When I started converting all my software from cracks to paid, the only things that interested me were "how much do I use this?" "can I live without this?" "is this a stable plugin that i can see myself using for years?"
And you know what the first synth I bought was? Vember Audio Surge. Surge didn't even have a keyfile, he just gave you a link on purchase for the full version.
When I bought it, I knew it was pretty much a finished product and wouldn't get much in the way of updates, and I also had the exact thing I was purchasing already on my hard drive, downloaded from a shady site.
But I bought it anyway!

So you see, it's like the crack users in reverse. I bought the synth because i wanted to, not because I had to. It's a mindset.
When I was using this shady russian site, there is literally nothing you could have said to me to make me spend money on a piece of audio software. It just didn't seem logical to me.
I had to wait for my mindset to change, and when that happened, ALL the cracks went. And I'll say this: if Vember Audio was C/R, they wouldn't have got my money. I would have been forced to phase them out, like I did with Wave Arts, and Izotope etc.

As a side note, one thing I noticed, when I went legit, my music quality increased dramatically.
Sounds ridiculous, but I guess when you put financial input into something, your subconcious realises this is actually an important thing, and suddenly all my techniques and ideas started coming together.