Quite frankly, @Tarrasque73, not sure if Iām wording things well, even when I agree with you you disagree with me. So it looks like a hopeless business.
(For instance, when I say at home it could as well mean at the rehearsal, because what I meant is NOT LIVE. I too tweaked my tone at rehearsals, with or without a computer. At one point, I was running entirely on Logic Pro, so I was playing live with the laptop and audio interface, but still I would not touch the laptop live, just switch presets with the keys on my guitar.)
I think you are probably very frustrated with not getting your Dwarf and how things unfolded, so I believe it pointless to engage any further.
Maybe I havenāt been clear enough. @Tarrasque73 's input is important.
And so is a more general discussion about the business model of an hypothetical reboot.
As both issues are related, I think itās sound to have both discussion and that they feed each other. However I was simply pointing to the fact that having them both in the same thread is kind of burying one of them under a lot of (legitimate, if you ask me) ranting.
So maybe we should split this discussion (or start a new thread for the original subject, at this point).
Otherwise, Iām afraid the discussion will carry on and on forever around the points @Tarrasque73 raised and a lot of readers are going to drop off (most may have already)
I have to say even though this thread has kinda gone off into the weeds, I feel Tarrasque has been pretty civil through all the discourse. Even though he has some strong suggestions and experienced fair bit of pushback, he hasnāt been getting personal. Thanks @Tarrasque73
And I agree with his frustration that this thread is really ambiguous of what is useful discussion and suggestions versus should haves and finger pointing. Iāve read 224 posts and Iām not sure weāve actually accomplished anything. What is feasible at this point? We need some feedback on what IS a good, useful, helpful suggestion at this point so we can dive deeper or riff on it to get other ideas. Honestly I am trying hard and spending a lot of thought on how we can help mod continue to exist. It feels like weāre all trying the same but our task is very unclear. I know there is enormous uncertainty but I donāt like that weāre all starting to turn on each other when we just donāt even know what future is possible. Perhaps it is time to end this thread until we have more information.
Itās not my style to take things personal. Weāre all trying to contribute, I think, in a way or the other. I concur that all the thread regarding UX issues could well, if possible, moved to a separate thread. Thanks for the compliment.
This is my understanding. Not any kind of official statement
I think the goal was to gauge from the community the general feeling of which direction to go in terms of keeping things open source or going more proprietary. Then what options would there be for operating under a more community-driven approach?
What I would consider as a āRebootā is getting the cloud back online and having some form of income to keep the cloud online and build back towards improving the platform and devices. The topic of what to improve about the devices is less relevant
Outcomes could be for example:
Everybody agrees on going proprietary and that could be pitch again to investors who were previously not interested due to the OSS nature
Everybody agrees on open source, in which case, payment for the cloud needs to come from somewhere else
What ideas do people have for how that could be done?
No worries, I read after and understood (sorry for not correcting in time). Yet, the Guitar Synth (or similar things) have been requested plenty of times as well and at least recently didnāt take that much of work. It was more of polish and prepare pedalboards and release a big feature that could push some sales (and did to some extent), trying to avoid the situation that we are living now. It didnāt, thatās a fact, but it delayed it a bit.
Wellā¦the features and tech specs have been disclosed early enough.
Your second sentence kind of is the answer to the first. Anyway, to add on the first, Iām not sure how much this would avoid some of the certifications and āpaymentsā required to ship a product with Bluetooth capabilities.
We can (I think all) agree that Bluetooth connectivity and interaction with mobile devices are not awesome. Yet, you just can do one thing at a time and (once again) the team is short for so many requests (if you see the list, I think even Facebook, Apple or Amazon team would be)ā¦and thatās not bad. Yet, the priority was to improve the functionality of the devices without even connecting to a third-party device. Thatās why you have snapshots and pedalboards saving functionalities on the Dwarf, among other things. Right or wrong priority, now itās easy to question that. What I can tell you is that it is a way bigger request, especially from people that can make the user basis grow.
Overall, personally, I agree with you. The main issue that I find is how much in fact that costs in development time? Is it really that inexpensive? Does it really require no or little money? Iām not so sure.
Couldnāt agree more. I take this somehow on me because I was mostly managing the effort. Anyway, I donāt feel bad because at some point I was the only one with that and many other things in my hands. I canāt also āblameā anyone else from the team because they were in similar boats.
I admit that sometimes it was a bit frustrating to see the low involvement of the community on that. But also admit that sometimes our push for the community to involve on that was also too little. But looking from the future we always can offer better suggestions to the past.
(and with this I will move on because the conversation is indeed completely out of topic already )
@james@jon whatās mostly missing from this thread is a discussion to what the new device (or project, software) caters to and is this userbase enough to sustain a company financially.
If the direction is a device that does everything its doomed from the start. If its advertised to guitarist but keeping the core elements its doomed from the start. If its catered towards the technical minded music tinkerer its doomed from the start - there arent as many.
But I always had the impression this is a small but capable community and a more robust core geard towards a broad audiance can make way for the more niche stuff.
I agree with your perspective, but disagree that that is āwhat is missing hereā. Itās actually not here, but maybe in a different thread.
Yet, personally speaking I find it hard that the alternative is to start by building some hardware and from 0.
I think the conversation here is more about what will sustain the company (financially). How it will be sustained and what will do I think itās a bit out of topic - yet important.
Yeah, Id imagine it is expensive. Not sure what setup MOD uses/used, but paying for a centralised service like AWS is an outgoing you donāt really want. There are alternatives such as decentralised/distributed file systems which could work, possibly for either scenario - full business or community.
ā¦also a lot of people in that space who use such approaches that have made a lot of very easy money and invest in projects - unfortunately Iām not one of them. A lot of music related projects as well - could be another area of untapped investor potential that would be more understanding of open source.
Straight to the point ā and rehashing some ideas already published elsewhere:
I am against that idea. It does not guarantee a steady flow of cash that would allow a parent organisation to maintain existing hardware. It is also hard to implement in the short term (though that also apply to any proprietary solutions). This is stated with full understanding of the importance of the community for the development of ModOS and the unique characteristics of OS development.
I favour this route because a steady and well-funded business can undertake hardware and firmware development with more diligence and try to adhere to a development roadmap that can attract more users.
The issue of the operating system being open-source (and at this point impossible to be made closed source due to libraries being used, as explained elsewhere) could be managed by way of creating a parent entity for the hardware business and ModOS, but keeping ModOS open and developing SDKs, GUI sets, so that contributions to the core system and plugins can be used in a more streamlined fashion while also paying for a group of developers and/or paying for individual contributions to ModOS from external programmers ā which, if Iām not mistaken, has happened already.
This business model could thrive by means of a mature set of default and curated plugins to be delivered with all units plus equally polished paid options at an attractive price point that can generate immediate revenue. IMHO, Shiroverb at 13 Euro is a steal.
For this to happen, any cash infusion at this point should be directed to:
a. Fixing and improving known issues and the current GUI;
b. Creating a set of āpresetsā and/or pedalboards that work out of the box, without gain issues (if needed, make changes to ModOS so as to auto regulate input/output levels);
c. If at all possible, adding some much needed features such as copy and paste, grouping, macro view (in the fashion of Max), etc.;
d. Further developing/improving on current plugins with higher demand, such as modelers, cabsims and others;
e. Further developing the plugin store and website so as to make it easier to navigate and employing terminology thatās easier to understand for newcomers.
Whereas I feel bad for the backers still without their units, I would delay shipments by about 6 months of market units until the issues above are at least at an acceptable level. There is no point of flooding the market with units that have known issues and are not user friendly.
An eventual fulfillment of pledged units could then happen gradually after the renewed ModOS system is launched and there are enough steady units available in the market. (Sorry, I think it very hard for an investor to even agree in fulfilling the fundraising campaigns, but since encasings are ready, the new management could seek an agreement such as a certain number of sold units for each pledged unit. That way, the user base would expand both with paid units and those still willing to get their units.)
Lastly, MOD new parent company should not invest in new hardware at all. At best, they could attempt to revive the Duo X which, in spite of possibly a smaller market interest, is still a powerful unit that can generate more revenue.
The new management team should necessarily have a technical board responding to the commercial/business unit or CEO. Technical decisions should be filtered and evaluated against costs and competition.
EDIT: one of the concerns from investors was the Open Source nature of the operating system and of the project as a whole. Sadly, OSS is not exactly seen as a tangible asset because of its property being diffuse and not legally possible in some cases. Moreover, the existence of units that offer MOD-like features in much cheaper hardware.
To address this issue, MOD needs its internal development team, even if the system as a whole is redistributed. However, MOD can and should maintain the āupperā versions of ModOS restricted to MOD units and/or create features that only apply to its proprietary hardware. That way, even if the project remains OSS, there is a tangible asset and a plus on the MOD side of the equation.
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