Seems like our studio will roughly have to triple the money spent to you guys as soon as we start using gamma (actually it is quadrupling as long as we also develop with vvvv).
Seems steep, but I guess if you actually invest that gain into more coders, we can all get ahead quicker. So it could be fine, it is more of a gamble for all involved right now.

However, what service or value do you provide in exchange for the 6% product revenue tax that is not already covered in the editor plus pricing already? Or is it either Editor Plus or Product?
Charging extra seems a little unreasonable to me, because it is nothing that we've seen from .net, c++, or any other language.

If perpetually taxing F5 is already a downer, making products with hardware is even less sexy with this, as it only considers the total sale price and count, not the actual net revenue (with subtracted hardware cost, dev cost, azure/aws cost, etc). Is this intended, do you hate IoT so much?

hey I see what you did there! €32, €64, €128, €256, €512, €1024, €2048 or €384, €640, €768, €1280, €1536, €2560.

@u7angel thank you for telling us the licensing amount per year! I did draft calculations in mind and it matches! And it's sad. I like announced resolutions (oh, sorry, I mean prices), but I bet, things won't change much for vvvvgroup with the gamma licenses.

@u7angel Based on my licenses, I could count the estimate total and count how many licensed other companies bought in average. And your numbers confirmed my accounting. And the numbers are sad (at least for me).
Unfortunately, this discussion is about vvvvgroup's money, so it would be wrong to tell my counting in details here. I would like to avoid affecting their business.

Will these prices be valid from the first release on and/or have you considered some kind of early access pricing as known from games development? In other words do you consider gamma a mature (fully featured) product yet?

I know a lot can be done in vl already but when comparing gamma to the competition it seems to be somewhat short on features you'll get out of the box. Same goes for the features included / announced for the first release vs. what's planned for the future – future has the edge.

@bjoern
I concur. While it kinda makes sense to me to present sustainable pricing now, instead of raising that every couple years, I also believe that early-adopter schemes or freebies to people and companies who continually support the open source ecosystem should be considered.
While we all hope that gamma will one day be worth every penny, it still isn't there yet in terms of productivity delivery and awesome versatility. Make incentive licensing a thing!

@u7angel
seems a litte assumptious, no?
but then, again, I was presumptious here. Now I sat down and did actual calculations and it turns out, cost for our studio will triple, not quadruple.

have some inside numbers, not to make a point about pricing (see my first post), but strictly to illustrate what we are dealing with.

we are running with 4 dev seats as it is, which are renewed every year. they are usually also enough for running quick gigs like trade fairs or events. every year, for the sake of the argument, we deploy 4 to 10 new licenses to long-term installations, that of course have to come out a project budget. I don't think it would be wise to deploy all those long-term installations in a compiled form, at least not in the first year it is running. remote checking the patch regularily has proven to be a quality idea.

so each dev seat would go from 300,- to 1024,- (plus the original 300,- for as long as we also use vvvv).
each teamviewer-enhanced deployment would also be at least 512,- (or even 1536 if the customer counts as a big fish, hello volkswagen, municipals, senckenbergs?). I estimate that we would at least need 3-5 of those per year (ofc that would be later, when gamma is as capable as vvvv, which might take some patience), kinda split evenly between Editor Pro and Editor BigFish.

so there you go: from roughly 3600 to something more like 7500, or something higher during the transition phase and even higher during the first year of the seat subscriptions. This sounds a lot, and it will hurt too, but it could actually be for the better in the grand scheme of things.

I think the Product column is much more worrysome, as it kinda discards vl for little smart devices and apps, and figuratively speaking puts it more on the shelf of Oracle then on the ground with the likes of phyton, node.js and c#.

please listen to what I am saying. I don't mind the price hike (at least for our studio, freelancers and multi-screen artists might be much better off) for installations it seems to be convoluted, more expensive, but sensible.

anyway, this goes to the devs directly:
what I don't like is this 6% gross revenue for any product. while I get the intent of opening new revenue areas, I fear, this ill-conceived thing will be more of a blocker for such endeavours.

let me ask straight: why would anyone sane pay for vl for solving a specific task, if you could use e.g. kotlin or python, for free?

lets say you buy a panda or alike, attach a touchscreen to it and code a player in any language really: you will see that the act of compiling is free, and the choice of the editor dictates the dev seats price. so as a maker you'd sum the cost for the panda, the touchscreen, the dev cost and some margin into a price, scale assembly and sell the thing. easy (well not easy, but that's how you would do it if you don't mind the hardship)

try the same business idea with vl, and suddenly you are forced to not only upfront pay a hefty license, but give 6% of the total price to this niche visual language provider. that's what gross revenue means: vl want a percentage of the touchscreen and the panda too. not so easy.
this is not a way to go from niche to limelight of visual programming for sure. instead of opening up new revenue opportunities you seem to center your licensing too much on those big-ass-cyber-awe-installations that we love(d) so much, and forget those ideas, where vl would just never be competetive at all with your Product licensing in place.

imagine being young and advanturous again and coming up with a dope idea and a will in one of the following areas- would it be likely to pick vl then, when you know that your final price of your crazy idea will be at least 6.4% more expensive for break even?

@joreg: Yeah, 100%!

Thanks to all commercial users! <3

@u7angel: I think the developer of Sublime text might have a different full-time job somewhere else. also people might pay the €80 because it's the best ever seen text editor out there if you don't want to use vim. It was so great that it sprouted a new wave of pretty decent text editors (especially atom.io and VS Code) which were free aand now all incentive to pay for sublime text is gone. sad story.

on the graphical .NET language thing: I don't see at its current state vl or vvvv gamma would gain any traction in .NET world. 4 reasons out of top of my head: namings are consistent with vvvv and not consistent with .NET that much; it's not being in Visual Studio, although that might be possible through embedding; no DLL compilation although it was never an expectation afaik; and the GUI is faar faaar beyond industry standards. I mean patchable Skia tooltips, node states when hovered and timings are awesome but everything else with it is too experimental for the sake of being experimental for industry not even mentioning what's grinding my gears so much: lack of multiple windows.

for the pricing: I think it was a mistake to come out with these numbers at this early without anything really to show for them. tbh currently VL in vvvv not even closely justify these prices, but if vvvv gamma will be so much better than that then show us that first with a feature trailer and other fanfares, bells and whistles. personally I have currently 0 faith in this but that should surprise nobody as my tone of voice recently was not the nicest to say the least. as a last thought to quote vux: if you guys will use Xenko for rendering and scene management and you will charge 6% on gross revenue is like if Bolt for Unity which costs flat €80 for everyone afaik would do the same (while Unity is doing 90% of the work in case the point didn't go accross).

that's my 2 cents of this

yes, velcrome is right. sublime is a company with two devs for quite a while. anyway. i re-read all the posts and i strongly support the executable workflow for standalone products like exhibits. we hardly need teamviewer sessions since we test a lot, do mockups and deliver personally on-site. 99% of teamviewer stuff is windows, hardware, network, not patch. hence executable should work fine.
for shows, you have your dev seat.
therefore this should work out quite nicely.

aaannd, one way is to diversify the income, sure. the other way is to increase numbers of licenses. i think devs should have more faith in conquering new markets with vvvv gamma. i don‘t think it is a good idea to stick to the small community. out of fear a single dev license can now replace a number of on-site licenses, you have this 6% thing. shouldnt be the goal to sell as many dev seats as possible? this works better with a lower and simpler license model. and what about a unity integration or cinema4d ? selling vvvv gamma there and having some form of advertising for the standalone thing. i‘m sure you had similar thoughts.

its totally a business thing, numbers vs. expensive niche thing.

As someone who doesn't have / work at a studio currently using vvvv, I'll add my two cents. I would never choose a software that takes 6% of my gross revenue.

What's more, here's why I think for you it's a bad idea:

1) If the product is really large, what the client needs is support (and maybe customisation). Just sell that! That binds what you bill your client directly to their needs. As it is right now, support in the forum is great but you don't give companies the feeling that there's a guarantee for support.

2) If the product is not really large, don't try to get the 6% revenue - there won't be any. It's quite easy to tamper with numbers until there's 'no more revenue'. People will do that, TRUST hin oder her.

@velcrome - That reads as super sensible to me and is so much more clear than the pricing at the top of this page.

A store / monetised nugets sound like a win to me, combined with low fee subscriptions for the masses. Is that not how people make money online these days? It's about customisation / personalisation / clarity I think?

Hi devvvs,
first, its important that you get some money form this hudge developpement.

BUT, i m sorry, whats the hell is that thing of a yearly or monthly subscription, and updates accesible thruth money ???
we are going weird away from any idea of ethical prices... and a certain spirit...

an example:
do i use Adobe ? No. And i will never use their products. Monthly subscriptions are just making people dependant and clearly forcing them to pay all the time, all the life... its not a fair way at all. i assmilate this type of model to ransom

for me, if subscriptions are obligated to have a software up to date and un-buggued (joreg ... ;) ) , it will make me considering strongly not to put any time nor effort in VVVV gamma. I will simply run away from it.

a subscription could feet a studio with some big regular cash, not at all freelancers doing projects 1, 2 or 3 times maximum a year with little amounts from "clients".

the avaiblity to compile an exe shouldnt be understood as a weird and massiv distribution system, but the hability to construct software unbreakable (its the patch weakness) by user.

6%

Beside this, the 6% is a real good idea, if VVVV Gamma can compile exe. Its really ok, but I m not understanding of you can anticipate the 5000€ fee. It will lead to the same points with classical VVVVV beta licenses: not so much people giving money, and frustration for you also

Coming back to this license, maybe you could consider an other way to do it:

final compilation of the application could come with a registering key, delivered by VVVV group on internet.

Means thats VVVV is hosting somehow the compilated project ? this key could be around 100 to 200€, and could authorize 3 or 4 computers max to use this compilated software, based on MAC adress approach. The independant developper, when compiling it, could enter number of MAC adress maximum to register. The price of a license for the end user could change with amount of Mac adresses.

OR... continuing on the idea, VVVV site could provide a shop, hosting final developpements of its community. The 6 or 10 or 15% percents of the software could be taken directly, amount depending of the range of money the developper has given to his exe ( 20€, 100€, 600€, 1000€). The final exe, build for external computers ( MAC based system), would be transmitted by the compilator process to the shop, once validated by the user-developper.
But this means a lot of work for VVVV group, to develop such a commercial plateform... dont know what it means in terms of law and rules neither...

About "complain & client", a full license at 600€ is buyed by big clients, here in France in Theatre, its quite some money for little theatre troups. 100 or 200€ product licenses will certainly make a big difference and enables our little clients to pay the license. Wich is not actually the case.

Perpetual licenses updates

Considering the case of a perpetual license, to avoid rental/ransom, an update at a reasonnable price would be better.

Linux

In this post, i didnt read anything about linux. wich is really something i m waiting for, to get out from this business model called windows. VVVV beta is the last tool that obliged to me to stay on windows.

Yours, sincerely

christoph

(btw impossible to change my old e-mail, wich is now dead. where can i do it in the edit profile ?)

Thanks @joreg for time, patience and great discussion. After we cleared all misunderstandings, we found ourselves on opposite sides of ideological border. Here my thoughts about vvvv beta and vvvv gamma licensing as I understand them from my side of the border.

issue

vvvv beta and vvvv gamma are not multipurpose toolkits for wide-market, but very special professional tools for very specific market with few types of customers and business models and licensing should follow that.

In my opinion, the T.R.U.S.T. model doesn’t work well for vvvv beta and I still believe that all the upcoming improvements and advantages of vvvv gamma will be vanished by weaknesses of the T.R.U.S.T. model in its current state.
I will use vvvv below meaning both vvvv beta&alpha and vvvv gamma. I believe the suggested model could be applied now for all versions.

model

Instead of the T.R.U.S.T model I suggest to protect vvvv with Teamviewer alike model.
Just after the splashscreen there must be a pop-up: "Thank you for using vvvv. This is free version only for non-commercial use. To continue press OK to remove notification press REGISTER".

• OK will launch vvvv with no feature limits, same as now.
• REGISTER will open a dialog to enter a license number and a license key. This dialog could be also accessible via main menu. License number & key provided by vvvv group by email after a license payment (almost same as now). License number is the same as now and key is a code to crypt a license number.

Register will remove the pop-up and replace “free version only for non-commercial use” splash-screen with “commercial use. License No….”. Also there should be a dialog menu to replace vvvv splash-screen with a custom design.

licenses

For registered users I suggest 4 license options:

1. A PC license without protection = 500 euro* /forever
2. A PC license with a dongle protection = 650 euro* /forever
3. Workplace subscription = 2 000 euro/yearly
4. Enterprise subscription = 15 000 euro/yearly

(*) I suggest to keep volume discounts for PC licenses but simplify them to amount in a bulk instead of current progressive discounts

usage

In my opinion, this simple system will work for everyone:

• Educational and free/low-budget users will just need to click OK on startup or ask their assistants to click OK. That’s great for study, performances, individual artists/vjs, indie developers, few-days installations, art festivals etc. You have to click OK, but nobody see you clicking, no need to hack anything.
• PC license is great for professional artists who do performances in person, for rental equipment like media servers and for commercial custom & complex multimedia installations that exist in one or few copies. Artist will confirm professional status. Rental equipment will work many times for many users and many clients. Production studio will sell PC licenses to their customers and it will be clear both for the production studio and for customer.
• Workplace subscription is for professional developers and small studios which projects don’t match the PC license. The subscription will allow you to use custom splash-screen and to use the same license number at any copies of your own software with no further questions from vvvvgroup. That’s why you have to pay annually while you're using vvvv at your projects.
• Enterprise subscription is for big companies, who do a lot of stuff. The enterprise subscription will include all from Workplace, but for any amount of workplaces in a studio, plus custom supports terms from vvvvgroup.

result

I believe this could do licensing much clear than current and much easier than suggested to gamma and will at least quadruple vvvvgroup revenue.

One more thing that just came to mind because I was reading this and the topic comes up so frequently. Not to forget the never ending posts about missing dependencies.

To quote u7angel

source

Is gamma going to be susceptible to the same errors?
Are you considering an installer?

is Linux a possible thing from beigining or will you rely definitively on Dx and .NET ?

hum... isnt it possible to consider to develop Gamma as a truely crossplatform language ?

thank you for the answer Woei