OK this "dodgy people making midiboxes for profit" subthread is making me publicly ask something that has been keeping me busy for a while. I made a software for VJ's and musicians wanting to do some audio/MIDI responsive visuals to their live shows. It is not open source, I sell it at 85 euro, which I think is a steal because I spent over 3 years making it, it is more powerful than a lot of apps going for 4x the price, and I really hope it is affordable for everyone at this price. I'm currently starting building some MIDIboxes, with special configuration towards my VJ software, but also useful with other apps. Now this is great that I can make one for myself, but I have no way of sharing this joy with the users of my program. I can put online a tutorial how to make their own controller, but I cannot honestly ask from my customers to make their own Midibox, I mean not many people out of a random selection would have the skills/knowledge to do this. I'm also way to small a company (1 man) to start any production line to make these things cost effective. But it would be immensely useful to me if there was some way for me to license the MIOS design, make a small run of controllers, and sell them at slightly over cost price. Not because I want to make profit on selling MIDI boxes, because I think that its going to be next to impossible to cheaply produce small runs of these things, but having a dedicated hardware controller available would add value to my software (ease of use). Now if there would be a way for me to pay for each sold controller, even if I would only make $10 per controller to cover the overhead, that would be great for me. I think a lot of other software producers would feel similarly. I can see why a goodwill based open source project has a lot of bias against commercial approaches, but 'commercial' means anything from making $1 to making $1 billion doesnt it really. I think this question is relevant not only in the great MIDIBOX projects but to any open source project in general, and I really think allowing 'commercial' use of open source projects could benefit the development of these open source projects. I would be glad to discuss this matter with all of you, perhaps in another thread if required (this has gone way offtopic already)
