I think that Matt should consider abandoning the idea that Vital can be a free synth and should consider marketing it as a superior competitor to Serum but for close to half of Serum’s price. The added revenue could result in the employment of some business, marketing and programming experts who could build the project into a truly magnificent and dominant powerhouse.
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If Tytel would be in it for the money he’d have done some things differently already. You gotta understand that Vital is and will be a hobby project for the dev.
I think it’s more than hobby for Matt, but not structured and rigorously managed enough to be a proper full-time income.
There is a business model (selling access to presets, support and early access), this has brought him at least $60,000 over 3 years plus about $700 monthly, which is more at the part-time work level than hobby.
However Matt is clearly more at ease coding great software than handling day-to-day business chores, leading to all the questions here these past few months.
As for @The_Value_of_n thought experiment, I think it would be a bad PR move. Adding restrictions, “taking back” something that was previously more open is liable to forever tarnish the reputation of a product. I think it can acceptably be done with a new version that brings significant new features and maybe a new name or suffix (such as “Vital NG” for example), or with a new product. Otherwise, this is a bullet in the foot for sure.
How did you estimate the income (revenue?)?
It’s not like a side hustle can’t bring in money. It’s about how much resources he’s investing in it. Vital is clearly not a priority for the dev, he must have a professional life elsewhere.
Based on the groups size in this forum, presuming the Subscribers group is automatically kept up-to-date.
Gotcha. The numbers ofc have fluctuated over the years, but it’s in tens of kilodollars anyway then I guess. Apparently that doesn’t provide lucrative enough forecast for him to try to develop Vital into s full fledged business.
Anyway, this is just a speculative thread. It is what it is and there’s no signs that the model would change in the future, so I’m kinda disinterested in this brainstorming already.
We’ll just see what happens. Godspeed for Tytel.
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I’d be satisfied by a yearly tweet or a blog post from Matt, for his biggest fans.
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Some, perhaps more younger people need to understand that the crony-capitalist plutarchy system is a dead man walking. In other words, it doesn’t work and in fact may already be beginning to collapse as we speak.
So pushing a software more under that model seems, fundamentally, pointless, even unethical, such as if we ask, Richard Stallman about that, and maybe even Linus Torvalds, etc…
There are enough closed-source proprietary for-money-profit sound software already anyway. We need more FLOSS, not less.
Capitalism in a nutshell (From a You Tube video of a panel discussion.):
Derrick Jensen: “What is capitalism? And what’s wrong with capitalism?”
Stephanie McMillan: “Capitalism is a form of class society which has come to dominate the entire world in one global system, where the whole of social production is done for the benefit of only a few… what makes capitalism different from previous forms is the way that wealth is accumulated, which is through the exploitation of labour and the process of the production of commodities: Workers are not payed the full value of their labour; they produce more value than they receive as wages, and that extra labour power, which is stolen by the capitalist and is called ‘surplus value’, is embodied in the commodities, and realized as profit when those are sold and reinvested as new capital…”
Jensen: “…Give an example?”
McMillan: "You’re working for $10 an hour and you’re making boxes of frozen waffles. You’re working at a factory. The amount that you’re payed is a wage that corresponds to the working day. So you’re paid… $80 a day, and you produce $80 worth of waffles in an hour, let’s say. So the whole rest of the day, you’re producing waffles for free. The value of those waffles belongs to the capitalist,it doesn’t belong to you who made them… You’ve produced that much surplus value for the capitalist.
Jensen: “And the argument is that the capitalists deserve that because they’re taking a risk with their money, right?”
McMillan: “Yeah and because they own the factory. But the factory, itself, was made through the same process, and so it’s congealed[/embedded] stolen labour from workers as well… Capitalists do have the most weapons usually, and they take that stuff at the beginning [historically]. So that’s why they claim to own it-- they conquer it. The… first part of capitalism is called primary[/primitive] accumulation, and that’s basically going out somewhere and stealing money and resources and enslaving people… So basically, it begins as conquering and then once it’s owned, they claim to have a right to it. Capitalism involves the domination of this class over the working class and it also involves the resistance of workers to that domination in the matrix of social relations that are manifested in political and idealogical fields. So that’s class struggle, and it shapes our everyday lives, everything we do. It shapes our taste in music, what we care about, what we wear… It’s ideological domination… The whole society, the way that it exists has been shaped by the economic system that we live under… and in the interests of that class that dominates that system.”
a lot of the biggest names in capitalism have been plugged into position by agencies and institutions that shall not be named because it’s a quick way to get the thread locked. The mechanics of full spectrum dominance are one story, and people being able to own the product of their own labor as a basic natural right is another. not that governments don’t trample on that right every day, especially where small fries are concerned, but if you think it’s better in soviet russia, cuba, venezuela, china or north korea then we’ll just have to agree to disagree. there’s room enough for everyone to work at something they enjoy and it’s not a zero sum game unless a government steps in and uses force against the very civilians they are ostensibly chartered to protect the rights of, in the name of some imaginary greater good that is defined by whoever owns the “reputable sources” in the wikipedia citation footer. you could say “communism hasn’t really been tried” but i could say the same about free market capitalism and non-aggression. what we had is going away because of the desire of some powerful people to micromanage the world according to their own idealism, not in a persuasive way but at the end of a gun.
anyway, I hope one of the big name audio software companies buys Vital or hires Matt to make more masterpieces and wonders, if he would accept such things.
reklamchef, correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems we’ve been over this ‘Should Vital be commercialized/etc.?’ subject before and that its thread may have also been locked. So, if so, it’s a bit of a rehash.
Those interested can look it up and, for example, read my opinion that in part suggests going with Serum.
Vital arrived in its current context. It did not arrive in a Serum context, such that you appear to be wishing, perhaps in a bit of an eat-cake-and-have-it-too perspective.
Changing contexts changes the thing.
As for the rest of your points, like about those States you mentioned, while we seem to be veering off topic, I’ll just say that I’m an anarchist and leave it at that and maybe suggest that we, if we want, take this in an entirely new subject area, if this forum allows it.
If it was just a hobby I would think it would be more likely to be open sourced at this point considering all the bugs.
This is why I believe this is not simply a hobby project.
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