LFO Everything used non-commercial licensed m4l patch code

[julienb]

Dear community,

I waited for almost one week in order to make some feelings more quiet, more zen before to answer.

I know you can imagine I didn't need too much help to build a patch. I’m not the best, far from that, but I’m quiet ok with all of these technologies.
I know you can imagine too what a huge number of things/patches/codes/abstractions in Max5 I have on my system.
The core of this post is here: I had the edward part in my system as an example and I didn't do it intentionnally.

It could sound strange but this is it.
And attacked diretly, I didnt tell it, because it was too late in my head. I know it isn’t nice but really, we know all that discussing through posts/forums isn’t as easy as in the real life.
I really had bad days because I love communities, and I believe in them as I tell everytime in each workshops I provide.
I really love to help people and this was one of the reason why I built and drive Design the Media (designthemedia.com)
By day & night now, I’m helping people through courses, online sessions, workshops here or there. I’m working as a consultant for several projects using Max5 and especially one for a museum in Marseille/France.
If I decided to do that because I LOVE technology, the main reason was especially the fact there was an human behind the machine.
I was a network security architect and I decided to make the big jump and change my life to only do things in which I believed the most. The public/student/collaborator contact & relationships was one of the reason I decided to do that, too.


So, 1.6 is totally safe.
I implement and give the code and the patch architecture on my blog.
It took me..... 40min to rewrite the famous part because it was only a very little part in the huge architecture I built for the LFO. I know even a little part was too much, but I really did not do it intentionally... I rewrite it here.

I have been stupid to forget some pieces in my patch... but really, it was not malicious/intentional etc. believe me. I don’t need help about this kind of job. (but a lot of help in any other field!)
I have been stupid to not have told that before for sure.
But it seemed too late. Really I didn’t have to much space to justify something.

LFO worked & works fine.
Users are happy about it, especially about the 1.61 version and many features are in progress.
I wanted to tell you all, that I’m currently developping other patches and an open-source hardware synthbox too.

So, I want to make peace here.
I officially propose to edward some collaborations on my next devices, if he is interested.

I wanted to write something too: I’m sure I can continue to give things to this community as the others communities I’m involved in. I’ll be happy to do that again asap and as soon as my time will be free for that!

I hope you’ll understand.
If it wasn’t the case, I’ll understand too.
My real friends here, there (inside Ableton too) understood my words when we discussed about them
Those who won't trust me forever are invited to follow me however, I'm sure they'll change their mind, because ONE mistake on a whole life can't eradicate everything

all the best,

[zeepster]

hi julienb,

just want to say that i appreciate your post and if there still were any doubts in my mind, you have taken them away. you have given good support on the patch so far and taken from your post i expect to see many more nice patches in the future.

have a great weekend!

[Syncretia]

I would like to give a philosophical outlook on this. Please ignore my comments if you think they are not relevent to the facts.But, if you start to read this, please read to the end without getting upset.

I am a programmer. Programming involves a lot of borrowing ideas, techniques and quite frankly lifting code. I'm sure that if you looked under the hood of many commercial Max For Live patches, you would find lots of bits and pieces that have been lifted from non-commercial patches. I can completely understand julien's words when he claims to have only used a small portion of someone else's build. As a programmer, if I had taken the time to rewrite every piece of code that I had downloaded from websites, my software would not be finished now, and I would have wasted loads of time rewriting code simply to disguise the fact that I used someone else's work. As a general rule, this is never for a specific reason. The reason being that the original code was given out freely over the internet and the original coders knew that they were not going to profit from the snippets of code themselves. They knew that the code needed to be a part of a wider architecture to be of any use to anyone.

Emajcher, When you give your work away for free over the internet, it would have been naive to think that nobody would ever take your work and use it for their own profit. That's how technology works. One person builds something, another person takes the idea, and builds on it. Technology evolves over time in this way. Sometimes it happens through open free communities, and sometimes the idea heads down the commercial stream. But, ask yourself this question: would you feel better if Julien had taken your code, changed the fonts, re-arranged things, renamed the variables and so on? That really wouldn't have changed the fact that Julien used your work. The fact that it was a cut and paste job really is irrelevent.

So, I personally don't feel that taking a small part of someones work and making it a part of a larger project is problematic. However, I know nothing of the facts in this case. I don't know how much of portion of Emajcher's work was used to create this patch. If it was a very large portion of the patch, then Julien is actually directly profiting from something that Emajcher gave away. If it is the case that had Emajcher decided to distribute his patch commercially before Julien took the initiative, he would have profited, the Julien has clearly stolen intellectual property. In other words would Emajcher's original patch have been commerically viable? If not, exactly how much does Julien's patch rely on Emajcher's work?

This is what would need to be cleared up before it's clear whether or not what Julien has done is within the realm of fairness.

If it turns out however, that Julien's patch relies very heavily on the original patch, then Julien should pay Emajcher a cut of the profits.

[3dot...]

let this die please...

[zlatko]

sorry for not letting it die, but I am curious if you can actually make money from m4l devices, Julien? Wanna tell us how much you made sofar? I have a repository of around 50 devices all free on maxforlive.com... some are surely novel ideas (unlike an LFO)... only I don't really need small money for a huge maintenance job, I would be happy with a 30% from the sales as the inventor not having to do more...

[stringtapper]

let this die please...

Agreed.

But… ( )

The moral of this story really has nothing to do with coding practices at all (although the issue is an important one to discuss). Rather this was about professionalism. Julien's eventual backpedal is something we've seen happen to political and public figures countless times. They are accused, they deny, the truth comes out, they keep denying, the truth becomes widely disseminated, the public figure finally gives in, admits to the wrong and issues an apology. I believe Julien when he said it was inadvertent, but his behavior *before* that admission was completely unprofessional. The right thing to do when confronted with an accusation is to look into it, discern whether it's true, and if it is then you take steps to correct the mistake. Hopefully it was a learning experience for everyone of how we need to take care with the code we use, especially if we want to sell code, and also what *not* to do from a PR standpoint.

And let's leave it at that shall we? (famous last words )

[friend_kami]

now, i don't now whether this piece of code was a rewrite, a complete rip or whatever (and i have yet to figure out why someone would pay for an LFO device when there are tons of them available for free O.o), but if it was this is a complete disregard to the license attached to it, and as by extensions a complete disregard to the GPL in general, and if so should be nothing but ashamed.

i too am an avid supporter of the opensource community and feel offended by this, if this were to be the case.
my two cents.