could you please share that information?
I mean: it’s there for us to use, but has to be gathered first. Look at this thread for more information
These are sad news - although not entirely surprising to me. I feel for the hole MOD team and hope they can start fresh.
I’ve backed a few things on Kickstarter across the board in the past. Most of it got released - often not as planned, lacked features. I even have stuff sitting in boxes that the infrastructure for is gone.
I always weight in risk/reward on those things. Like buying stocks. It’s easy to say having received my dwarf in the 2nd tier but it could have been easily just a glorified reverb pedal if everything else was subpar. Which in some aspects it is but in others it brings me so much fun that I can disregard that.
The forum and the team was always helpful and supportive.
And I have no doubt that even when everything shuts down the device will be working for a long time - as long you got your backups and the firmware. I still use my line6 m9 from time to time and that is 12years old.
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Thank you Behnam! I’m in full agreement. Whatever happens with the project - and I’m hoping for the best - the community will live on.
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I realize that there is a price tag attached, that said a Pete Thorn review might have provided a value ROI that would have been justified. It wouldn’t be the first time my pedal purchases were influenced by a demo that he did. His Soundblox Pro Multiwave Distortion demo from a decade ago made me aware of Source Audio, and I have became a fan boy owning six of their pedals -including the original Multiwave.
We should propagate the Discord server, as it is a completely independent channel free of risk of going down.
Join if you have Discord!
Meanwhile, brainstorming about making an alternative source for plugins is being done here:
If we get an independent platform up and running with
- seperate FREE plugins (since there are some things to be figured out what to do with paid plugins)
- firmware updates
- docu on which plugin is what and does what etc
- documentation how to manually install plugins in the most foolproof and noob friendly way possible
Do we need to find a sponsor to set up a CMS or could this be achieved otherwise?
Please look at it from the UX perspective: If we can have the users skip compiling stuff from github that woudl be great. I’m thinking of a way to see info about the plugin, download and a step-by-step manual to install them.
I’d gladly help with creating/beautifying/ foolproofifying content
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Excellent idea!
I’ve saying that a lot - “Excellent idea!” “Great idea!”… And not really offering to contribute. My skills were fairly limited to begin with. I’ve played guitar for +/- 60 years and with bands at the “weekend warrior” level off and on since '71 and I was an IT professional in various capacities from IBM mainframe to PC/unix/linux, LAN/WAN, etc. Never very high level at anything and quite a breadth of knowledge and expertise with not very much depth in anything.
Given all my other obligations I’m only able to offer any kind of direct support on a very limited basis. What limited applicable skills I might have seem to be covered by considerable expertise by forum participants.
I’ve just signed in (already have an account) to the discord page and I see that it’s an “unclaimed account”.
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Guys, it breaks my hear to hear that you are having such trouble. This product is good, the philosophy is sound, and I think you have the attention of any musician in the Open Source community (and then some). Don’t forget us. We won’t be forgetting you. Come back to us when things are a little better. Stay true to the vision.
Best Wishes.
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I do hope you’re able to get the plugin site and even the store back up — I was meaning to drop a little cash on RMPro and a couple of other things, and I’d be quite happy to still do that — it’s not like the hardware is going anywhere. I’m quite hopeful that even if the reboot doesn’t fully work out, we’ll be able to keep the devices patched and sort out some basic bugfixes as an open source project. Best of luck handling what has to have been a massively rough ride.
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Hi folks, I’ve seen a lot of talk on here about a DIY option. This does exist already, it’s called pi-Stomp! and it’s awesome. If you wanna check it out, here’s the link: https://www.treefallsound.com/
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What about GUI? Does it works?
The web interface works, though it’s the open source version, so no plugin store or pedalboard sharing
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Does it really work with 5V ? Because it could mean that you can power it with a USB powerbank if you have a “USB to DC” cable. That would make this pedal usable for busking.
Wait could this work with the dwarf?!?
Yes, it does. I’ve actually powered it with a pd type powerbank.
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Meaning?
So, here we have philosophical thing … With IP, we have a concept of possession. Yet, with open source, how is it that anyone can have (possess) the code, but not own it? In every real sense, if it’s in their possession, they own it. Right?
Only in civil law do things like copyright, patents, title, holdership, etc. have any meaning. Otherwise, it’s a legalistic fiction, which we can choose to believe in, or not.
Then comes along Copyleft, in the spirit of RMS and GNU. Here, in essence, we have a legal mechanism which uses copyright to ensure, effectively, that NOBODY owns a piece of software … This is perhaps another farce, but it makes a lot more practical sense if you ask me.
Nonetheless, we have the term Intellectual Property and try to apply it to open source. Of course, I should hope most people realize that if the idea isn’t a secret, at least in part, ones claim to it is just that, a legalistic claim–which you might have to fight for in court should it ever be challenged.
Therefore, if we’re worried about protecting our “IP”, we’d be wise to avoid open source and instead keep “trade secrets”. Propriety software makes all the sense in the world if this is your concern.
Which brings us to MOD … Either you’re open source or you’re not.
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It would be nice if there is there a way for MOD to offer a “survivor’s software bundle” with all the plugins, documentation, and user software possible as either a download or on a thumbdrive or DVD for purchase, to help fund the last units and/or next phase.
I and others would gladly contribute for this and it might help everyone. Win-win!
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to clarify a few things…
the entire MOD stack (that goes into making the OS images) is opensource in the truest sense (as declared by OSI) with the exception of:
- OS build system (what puts everything together, but mod-plugin-builder is based on it so anyone with enough time and patience could figure that out, there is a live-usb ISO image that uses the same too)
- device “controller” firmware, what we internally refer to as HMI
there are of course some device/cloud keys, but those are not source code.
and a few plugins, but those are not the part of the OS image.
and on the other topic, IP and opensource can surely go together.
there was the somewhat recent case of muse group buying audacity, which is an opensource audio editor, they essentially bought the IP. It involved contacting every developer that contributed to the source code and having their permission for a license and ownership change, but they were able to.
muse group now owns the audacity IP, and they can do with it whatever they want (independent of we liking it or not too).
the idea of GPL is not so much that no one owns it, but more that everyone owns it.
software that is released as GPL (and other similar licenses) can be used, modified, sold and all sorts of things, by everyone. the condition is that you share back the same way.
there are cases of software that has source code public and available to see, but with restrictive license on what you can do with it. I tend to call that “source available” instead of “open source”.
and anyhow this is not a black and white matter.
similar to this but on desktop, you can have opensource DAWs loading proprietary plugins, or proprietary DAWs loading opensource plugins.
Mixbus for example is a commercial fork of Ardour (an opensource DAW) with its own proprietary plugins thrown in. Is Mixbus opensource? mostly yes… you can build the whole DAW and place the proprietary bits inside.
There is also the case of “opencore” business models, where a core of a product is open but extensions to it are not.
And lets not forget that even with all software opensource, there are always parts that are not. the bootloader cpu init for rk3399 and imx8mq used in Duo X, for example, these are binary blobs for which we do not have the code for.
for the case at hand, the important parts that can be reused outside of MOD are fully open - the audio server, the host, the web interface, the big majority of plugins… these are the things non-MOD products would typically reuse. plugins originally made for MOD that are opensource can be (and are) used on other products or general purpose desktops.
the minor details that are not open are for a potential protection against easy fakes/copies (though I dont deal with that part of the business, there might be more involved).
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Right, these thing surely go on. However, it’s adventures in legal-land. It’s fiction … My main point is chiefly this, and not only that, it countervails reality in so many ways.
For instance, here in the west, patents and copyright are generally enforceable. Yet, try to go to China and have them observe the same laws and claims thereof. It’s very hard.
Even still, whether in the west or east, these protections only have jurisdiction over events which take place in commerce. What if we simply want to rip something off for non-commercial purposes? It becomes very hard to enforce.
I personally think we can do something better with ourselves than stake our value/worth on IP.
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