MIDIbox on eBay

[TK.]

This even brought me to another thought:

There will propably always be people who want to sell their old boxes to get some money out of it to finance the new parts. There could be a new forum topic, where a seller starts a new posting with a picture of the box, declaring his reason, why he want's to sell the box and how much the parts cost.

Everybody could make comments and Thorsten finally could give either the "GO" or "NO". The seller then posts the link of his E-Bay auction and after he got paied, he's donating (see above) perhaps 50% of his netto win to MIOS.

Funny, I had a similar idea (except for the donation requirements) - a new forum section for sell requests (regardless if somebody wants to sell a box via Ebay, to friends or "customers"), open discussions and an offical "go" from my side, so that it is clear under which conditions I accept this, and under which not.

(Please understand that I don't want to discuss all the details here, a) I've currently other things to do, b) this is low-priority, c) this is something which has to be well thought out - no fast-shots!)

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[moxi]

just to point you another idea :it's a thing i've tried on the french version of the forum ,not with a great success, it' true:

http://69.56.171.55/~midibox/forum/index.php?topic=4081.0

better than another shop , i was thinking some days ago about creating a place for exchange and free parts ,where you can give the part that you will probably never use .

such a thing much be done by country ,cause of the shipping cost ,but it's possible ,and ,as when you look for cheaper parts ,from second hand market(etc...) ,you often find more parts than you needs .

the code are free ,maybe it's possible to make the parts "open source" too ,and the cheaper will be the midiboxes to buid , the harder it will be to make money with them ....

[Martin_Haverland]

>:(

I can't believe what i read after beeing away from the board for a while!

What's going on here? ???

How can you call yourself "DIY"ers if you can't respect anotherones work.

If jamram made a midibox out of nearly nothing, that's really a "handcrafted" piece of DIY.

Do you really want to say 140 Euros is a COMMERCIAL amount for some hours of etching, soldering and construction + parts?

Are you funny out there?  :o

The links in this auction really broke some licenses - there you are right, people!

It's not my intention to say *break the law*, BUT do you really think selling a midibox to a friend is better than selling it over ebay?

What kind of ethics are you looking for?

If i built a midibox and want to get rid of it, i will get much more money for it for sure.

And i would probably ask *nobody* for permission.

IS ANYONE HERE REALLY TRYING TO SAY "SELLING A SINGLE HANDCRAFTED SYNTH IS COMMERCIAL AND UNETHICALLY"???

:o

!!! MIDIbox community, welcome in the real world!!!:

George Massenburg (his GML Studio Compressors sell for 5000 Euros up...) came up to The LAB of the highly rated and mostly famous GroupDIY (ex TechTalk from recording(dot)org) forum and ASKED in a friendly manner for unlinking a (reverse engineered?) schematic for his famous opamp because they are an actual design of his company. 8)

Mr. Forsell welcomes all the work diyers did to make a full featured optocomp out of a sidechain he designed despite the fact he does audio electronics for a living. 8)

And look at the Black Market section of this serious, famous and maybe friendliest forum of diy music electronics, respected by the highest rated diy and commercial audioelectronics designers...you must be funny about this ebay auction, you are joking, aren't you? :-\

So:

Some of the comments made in this threads are RIDICULOUS and SILLY and UNETHICALLY - and i don't mean the ones from jamram. >:(

This is no legal point of view but a personal, i'm no lawyer.

I would feel offended if someone would get LESS than 140 Euro for a handmade MIDIbox SID.

It was a matter of time when the topic "commercial or private use of MIDIboxes" comes into the spec of this community.

I'm really disappointed about how little intuitive feeling some people showed up here, when it gets to such a delicate and difficult topic like this.

I hope there will be more serious discussions about this so i must not feel ashamed for beeing a member of this community.

I hope that you don't wait for an official statement from my side - I won't give it until all consequences are clear.

That's the way to handle things subtle and careful. Thank you, Thorsten.

Respect.

Kind regards

Martin

[Twin-X]

I agree with Martin haverland,

I wander alot on the Lab too. People sell kits etc and sometimes finished d.i.y. projects etc. the same goes for the DIY synth mailing and alot of others.

I have never seen anyone making so much fuss except on this forum about selling a diy project to someone else.

[moebius]

Hi people.

I'm not that familiar with audiophoolisness, yet ;) I know there's lots of good stuff going on in the GroupDIY - I can see Gyraf selling "Boutique Audio" products and still contributing much to the DIY side.

I'm more familiar with SynthDIY and must say I feel it's much more heterogeneous than you people seem to acknowledge. Anything between published schematics and PCB layouts to "Boutique synths", that you can also buy as kits (but you can't distribute any documentation that comes along). Yeah, some people sell kits and still publish schems and building instructions..

What unites these people with fairly different approaches is that there's ALWAYS a significant amount of research and knowledge behind everything... it being "done to death" transistor ladder filter or "integrator with reset" oscillator.

Ok - not always, good examples are some Juergen Haible's designs (he's a german engineer with some resemblance with TK - doing it for fun, not quitting his day job for it :D), that ended up in Doepfers product catalog - can't say it's "fair use" anymore. This has hurt SDIYing, not only because JH doesn't publish all his schematics and documentation anymore, but also because he has done collaborations with M.A.M (Music and More, now subsidiary of Terratec) and Synthtech (MOTM fame) with fair licensing deals, I think.

I don't know If my views are unethical or not - Still I'd like to courage people to pick up that soldering iron and doing some sloppy soldering. And to discourage people from picking up "that box from eBay" or Kiddos thinking "I can solder and do mee boards, I can sell it for profit".

A product - it's not that dirty word, I think?! I have some ideas in my mind.. based on underlaying MIOS.. ;D Nothing "stock" anyway.. probably nothing that ever gets done, anyway. I don't have anything against any "products" coming from the midibox community - as long as it's approved by TK.

But for "a product", please keep in mind that these usually have some sort of warranty, 1-3 years, I think?! The discussion here seem to point out "You can do it, so why don't you do it?" Still I can't see any "MB products" - anything on eBay that says "Yeah, it works. It will work for next 3 years, for sure".

Still open for any discussion, still having my views.. Yet not selling boxes-- M

[Skunk]

Hi all,

I don't understand the endless discussions. If somebody wants to sell selfmade equipment in Ebay or whereever, why not? There is no real damage for anybody, nobody is hurt etc.  And it's clearly in the decision of the person selling the equipment how to setup the price level. The only thing one should pay attention is the story not to violate trademarks. But this is not the case here, so what? BUT: It starts getting interesting if somebody copies 1:1 the MIDIbox boards and sells them professionally as his own work, not mentioning the MIDIbox source respectively the owner ship of TK.  This won't be funny anymore.

I think we have other problems in the world to solve... :)

Cheers,

Skunk

[jdutcher]

Hi all,

I don't understand the endless discussions. If somebody wants to sell selfmade equipment in Ebay or whereever, why not? There is no real damage for anybody, nobody is hurt etc.  And it's clearly in the decision of the person selling the equipment how to setup the price level. The only thing one should pay attention is the story not to violate trademarks. But this is not the case here, so what? BUT: It starts getting interesting if somebody copies 1:1 the MIDIbox boards and sells them professionally as his own work, not mentioning the MIDIbox source respectively the owner ship of TK.  This won't be funny anymore.

I think we have other problems in the world to solve... :)

Cheers,

Skunk

so you have no problem with me building a box and selling it on ebay for 3 times the price?  :o  i'll tell you why that would be wrong:

thorsten is responsible for ALL of this.  without thorsten, there would be no midibox.  he charges nothing for it, so why should we?  frankly, any motion to sell midibox stuff on ebay is downright offensive.  it's a total slap in the face to thorsten and everyone else who chooses NOT to profit off of THORSTEN'S hard work.  do you realize what you're suggesting?  you're condoning stealing thorsten's ideas and profiting off of his hard work.  THINK about what you're saying, man.

i'm sorry to get so heated about this...no hard feelings, but i simply CANNOT believe what i'm hearing!  >:(

[Frank]

Hi, I too like some of the others  do not understand what the fuss is all about.

There is a morals standard side to this which i will not get into. I would like to start a discussion on the legal and not the moral issues of the GNU licensing scheme which the Midi Zen Master T.Klose  ;D has chosen for his MIOS platform.

I put to you this scenerio, lets say a person has taken MIOS and coded his own simple application around it (none of the available apps  on UCapps.de is used). This person offers his code and schematics to this community freely and also decides to  market and sell it on ebay for whatever price he wants. Together with his product he also distributes his schematic, his application code and source files together with the MIOS files and the GNU Licensing legalese stuff. He also states that any support for this product of his should be sought directly from him and nowhere else.

So what i would like to know is , is he legally wrong? Would some of  you here stone him to death?, or find out which country and whereabouts he stays and send the goon squad after him (if i remember correctly someone once threatened to do this exact thing in one incident of profiteering from midibox).

My take on this, i wish the guy goodluck on his commercial venture and thank him for contributing  his application on this forum. If i find his application useful to me, i would diy build my own version of it or modify it to better suit my purposes. Isnt this what the GNU is all about?

MIOS is not the only game in town if you want a controller. But it sure is the ultimate DIY custom midi controller . I've heard that Allen & Heath and some other companies are coming out with controllers for Ableton Live  and other DJ software based on Sascha's rig.

So I hope the above will put things in a better perspective for some of the guys here. The big companies will not swipe MIOS for many reasons which i will not get into here, and the small time guys who use MIOS for commercial reasons will not survive for long and even if they do, they're not gonna make tons of money. As for us here in Midibox world, we have the most awesome midi controller platform available for free. So everybody just relax and enjoy.

Peace

Frank

[jdutcher]

How can you call yourself "DIY"ers if you can't respect anotherones work.

you're missing the point completely.  how is anyone disrespecting his work?  he's making money off of thorsten's designs...isn't that disrespecting thorsten's work?

If jamram made a midibox out of nearly nothing, that's really a "handcrafted" piece of DIY.

Do you really want to say 140 Euros is a COMMERCIAL amount for some hours of etching, soldering and construction + parts?

Are you funny out there?  :o

again, you're missing the point...

do you really think selling a midibox to a friend is better than selling it over ebay?

What kind of ethics are you looking for?

only in the sense that the seller would be able to offer personal support as opposed to the buyer coming here for support.  other than that, there's not much difference, really.

IS ANYONE HERE REALLY TRYING TO SAY "SELLING A SINGLE HANDCRAFTED SYNTH IS COMMERCIAL AND UNETHICALLY"???

:o

of course not, but selling thorsten's designs IS.

So:

Some of the comments made in this threads are RIDICULOUS and SILLY and UNETHICALLY - and i don't mean the ones from jamram. >:(

...

I'm really disappointed about how little intuitive feeling some people showed up here, when it gets to such a delicate and difficult topic like this.

I hope there will be more serious discussions about this so i must not feel ashamed for beeing a member of this community.

what an obnoxious thing to say.  as far as i can see, people have responded in a VERY thoughtful way on this matter.  instead, YOU are the one making broad insults against anyone who doesn't share your view.  thanks, martin.

[Martin_Haverland]

I was very upset when i read the thread for the first time. Sorry.

A similar type of discussionstyle broke down on GroupDIY TechTalk last year and it happend to be that the provider (a canadian musician...lost his name...forever...) recording(dot)org came to the conclusion to ban all members and put the information of years and years of hard work off the net without any respect to the intellectual property owners. GroupDIY is still alive at another place, more than ever...but some information will never come back.

I will not say about  licensing issues  before an official statement is done.

[Steven_C]

Have you seen this MB sid yet? It looks so cool!  8)  ;D http://69.56.171.55/~midibox/forum/index.php?topic=4424.0;topicseen

[Twin-X]

Have you seen this MB sid yet? It looks so cool!  8)  ;D http://69.56.171.55/~midibox/forum/index.php?topic=4424.0;topicseen

Yeah ain't it a beauty ! I wonder how much it will do on Ebay  ;D ;D ;D

[smashtv]

Comparing the MIDIbox to the stuff on The Lab is like apples and oranges.....

-Most- of the designs found @ The Lab (I love that place BTW) have no clear and defined "father".  Here we do. 

Most are obvious extensions of existing technology (has anyone really done anything truly original with any analog audio path since the 50's? show me something good and I'll show you prior art, they figured out what makes good sound a long time before most of us were born) 

We are talking about designs that are copies of many companies implementation of other existing concepts, that most of those people got from modding existing equipment.....few of these designs could be pantented or protected due to the existence of massive amounts of prior art.....and all of the companies who manufacture these boxes know they are selling borrowed designs, else The Lab would be full of lawyers already.

Besides Rupert Neve, nobody can claim true ownership of most the designs @ the lab.

MIOS is Thorsten's work, there is no question of the lineage of the design, or who wrote the firmware, etc.

Which brings another point, none of the projects at the lab have xx thousand lines of code that were written by one man. 

One man who has specified that it's free for everyone, just don't use it to make money.

Why is this requirement so hard to comprehend?  Thorsten just wants you to get up off your ass and learn something new, so he shared his work to inspire. 

The fact remains that this project is open source, and it is free, as long as the use is non-commercial. 

Most people define commercial as anything that makes a profit...... all these arguments have already been hashed.

Why are we still discussing this?  Because people can't seem to realize that no matter how many hours you spend with building your box, using your craftsmanship and originality, etc TK himself has more time invested in your box than you do. 

Let's say you decide to build a custom car.  It's an expensive adventure, and you have never built an engine, so you share the effort with a friend.

You both have equal work, You do the body, etc. while your friend does the engine and drivetrain.

Now when the car is done and ready to show, you realize you spent too much this month, short on cash, so you decide to paint it another color, and put some speedholes in it (cause they are cool), and offer it up on eBay without talking to your buddy or even simply asking if it's alright with him first.  And on top of that, you offer to sell your friends tools with the car just in case the buyer needs some extensions for the car in the future.  Oh yeah don't forget that your friend told you not to sell it before you started.....

How long you think your friendship will last?

I know it's not the best analogy, but I grow weary of all this thought that it's alright to sell anything anyone was cool enough to share with you for free, just because you have it in hand or because you find yourself in money trouble.

Thanks so much to the guys who pointed out that I don't have a the store for an income. 

I'm a fan of the builder, the guy who's cutting fader slots in his garage.

I just happen to be in an easy position to keep people from having to deal with PCB etchant in thier homes -and- stabilize prices for MIDIbox parts at an artificially low level, so it's reasonable for people without a commercial agenda (building for fun!)

I invite anyone to do the math before accusing me of protecting interests in my store. 

The truth is each of these little scrapes kills parts sales at my store for at least a few days (quite understandably so!)

Best

Smash

[smashtv]

A similar type of discussionstyle broke down on GroupDIY TechTalk last year and it happend to be that the provider (a canadian musician...lost his name...forever...) recording(dot)org came to the conclusion to ban all members and put the information of years and years of hard work off the net without any respect to the intellectual property owners. GroupDIY is still alive at another place, more than ever...but some information will never come back.

It's important to note that he (who's name -should- be lost forever) did not pull the plug until he realized that he could not publish the information on his forum for his great book of audio secrets.  Profiteers act like this when you yank thier stolen retirement out from under them.....

I was there, watched that battle, and The Lab is now a much stronger community for having fought it.

Best!

Smash

[jdutcher]

cheers to smash!!!  ;D

generally, i try not to get too heated about issues on this board, but i feel very strongly about this issue.  i think smash's thoughts sum up what i've been trying to say perfectly (and i think your analogy works well, smash).  therefore, i'll try to refrain from writing any more rampant posts in this thread.  sorry if i've made anyone angry.

@martin:  thanks for your reply, martin.  no hard feelings....i'm happy to lay that one to rest.  :)

thanks,

james

[Skunk]

Think about the Linux story and how the Linux community grew up. And what's about Linux today? A lot of people make a lot of money around Linux. RedHat, Suse, Debian etc.  Nevertheless, Linux is an open source project. It's under the terms of the GNU General Public License. What did Thorsten do? He took a great decision: he did it exactly the same way as Linus Thorwalds. He has put MIOS under the same GNU license -- to be found in every MIOS source code header. 

Consider to have a situation that is not so far away from the Linux story. How might MIOS look like in ten years? And who might earn money with systems around MIOS in ten years? Linux is getting a real competitor to Windows today since it was driven by a huge and growing community -- also with commercial aspects. May be MIOS derivates could become a big competitor in the next ten years to the Mackie, Digicontrol and other well known audio equipment operating systems -- also considering commercial aspects.  Just as a thought...

I think Thorsten has the right to close this discussion with a clear final statement. He's the "father" of MIOS and the MIDIbox HW around the CORE and the 16F452 & Co..

Cheers,

Skunk

[smashtv]

I'm not attacking open source here....Just people who use open source stuff without following any terms of the license it's presented under.....That's called infringement and its against the law in all the countries involved in these little tests of my patience so far.

Jamram did not follow any of the steps laid out by the GPL for legal or proper use of anything MIDIbox related.

 

Nor have any of the others who have stepped up......well, except maven.

It's important to note that the current GPL does not trigger the license for companies who make changes but do not re-distribute on floppy or CD, so the Maven does not even trigger the GPL (as a single box not for sale).  But it does directly go against the clear statements made by TK about non-commercial use since it was built and sold to Sasha.

This is purely a symptom of the age of the license, written in 1991 there are minor changes needed to keep things right today.

Any open source preachers here watched thier code get sold or claimed by others as thier own?

I would think the OSS fans around here would be pissed about the blatant disregard for the GPL rather than wonder why I'm causing such a stir about "free" stuff......You can't side with the open source concept and with the ones who ignore and violate it.

Best

Smash

[Sephult]

Hello All!!!!

I am finally back, it's been a long time since I have been to the site....been busy with my career, my studio and such...

but I will be around more often....

I have to agree with Smash......fully

I remember the first thing that I saw and the first rule I followed was to not profit from the midi-box.

I still am using a Midibox Plus.....which I probably could have sold many times, but I have sentimental attachments, not just because I had built it, but sentimental attachments of what I went through, and the help thorsten gave me.

I definitely had been tossing around building a monster....which I spoke with TK for along time about, but my money situation didn't allow it, and was a lot of designing work that I didn't have time for. I could have definitely started it if I sold my MB PLUS, but "NEVER" did I once think about doing it.

I also had tons of help from TK on my senior final project, which I built a nice forklift controller....I could have had the option of selling it....but never did I once think about it......Instead I tore it apart, and kept the really nice PCB's that Smash had prepared for me, and will recycle them for debugging.

I am a little worried about how things have evolved with members of this community....I don't remember any issues like this coming up before as we all had the same goal.......to learn.....

If you justify your Midibox sale as money to build a bigger better box, I believe you are substituting competition for education......

Have some sentimental value for all the hard work that has been put into these projects.....I doubt even 3/4 of the people who run around through this site daily  have intellect and patience to do even 1/4 of the work TK, and alot of  other long time members have provided to the public.

If you can't wait for something good or work hard for it, you probably will never have the appreciation for it anyways.....

The only solution to this matter I can also find is to get an approval for sale, would be nice to offer it in a forum to the community first, then if no go, an approval for ebay........this issue is definitely a big circle otherwise  ;)

[msi]

I'm going to chime in really quick and then be quiet.  I don't think this has been laid out clearly.  When you sell a Midibox, or Mios device and make a profit on it, your not making money on your DIY design.  Your making money off TK's work.  You may have assembled the parts, and built the case and so on, but how much time did you spend programming the PIC, or designing the schematics.  That is the core of the problem.  The only way to sell a midibox on ebay would be to not use the schematics for your pcb's, not use any of TK's code or firmware, and not mention this site or forum.  But then it's not a midibox.  It's your own design, to do with as you desire.  I've had a couple of people come up to me and offer to sell boxes that I have made.  Then get upset when I mention that it violates the privlige TK has allowed us.  It's the nature of the beast.  Either you follow it, or you go somewhere else.

[Jorge]

Hi ,

thought I'd add some comments on this topic.

I totally agree with the last post, It's all TKs work ,the concept, the coding, the design etc.

To sell a midibox on ebay or any where else is to rip off TK.

I'm in the process of building a midibox sid, I would never have managed this without TKs work, Smash's boards and the occasional help from this forum. My input? The layout of the control surface (based on TKs design) , choice of componants.

Apart from all this no way would I ever contemplate selling such a unique Instrument. Why bother making one only to sell it?

I'm no stranger to using a soldering iron and have built some modules from the various analogue synth diy forums etc and as has already been noted these designs are all 30 years or more old and have undergone subtle design changes and so are now in the public domain. That is why some people sell kits, publish schematics etc.

Maybe it would be a good idea to have a dedicated "for sale" section in the forum where with TKs permission we could sell unwanted

midiboxes (why one would be unwanted is beyond me).        Jorge..

[Twin-X]

I'm going to chime in really quick and then be quiet.  I don't think this has been laid out clearly.  When you sell a Midibox, or Mios device and make a profit on it, your not making money on your DIY design.  Your making money off TK's work.  You may have assembled the parts, and built the case and so on, but how much time did you spend programming the PIC, or designing the schematics.  That is the core of the problem.  The only way to sell a midibox on ebay would be to not use the schematics for your pcb's, not use any of TK's code or firmware, and not mention this site or forum.  But then it's not a midibox.  It's your own design, to do with as you desire.  I've had a couple of people come up to me and offer to sell boxes that I have made.  Then get upset when I mention that it violates the privlige TK has allowed us.  It's the nature of the beast.  Either you follow it, or you go somewhere else.

So basically you are saying it's allowed to sell midiboxes but without a burned pic?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do not get me wrong i definatly worship Thorstens work but if he feel it is his property than he should not publish it. Since these things happen and there is nothing you actually can do about it.

I find it sad that i read alot of lines where people seem to do the thinking for Thorsten. I do believe he is old enough to do this by himself.

If i see a product line of midiboxes i would be happy to donate loads of money to a lawyer for suing the bastards. But for a lost midibox on ebay to fund yourself a new project i would say who cares.

My opinion.

[msi]

No, I was saying that unless the schematic, pcb, and firmware are all your own designs you shouldn't sell it.  There are some things that can't be changed, because the pic, and midi standard require this.  But large portions of what the midibox can do, and how components are connected are his design.  He's kindly let us see and use them, but they are still his. 

I don't cater to the notion that information wants to be free.  People want free stuff.  Just because you share an idea doesn't mean you can tell everyone.  Some things such as decentcy and respect seem to be easily forgotten.

[shed]

The point is that if people buy a midibox knowing zilch about how it works or how a soldering iron works, etc. then a year down the line when it breaks down cos it was made by someone with less than brillant soldering skills comes back (here) and wants support for something someone else made money on. And thats just not quite fair.

If people want to make money out of midi boxes, they could (i think), sell components and kits like smash and mike, do soldering classes etc, or offer support for people who have problems,  for example i have no problems with someone coming on the forum,and after lots of advice and trying someone saying put it in a jiffy bag and il fix it for a couple of quid or something

but selling boxes kills the whole diy thing off and doesnt encorrage people to do stuff  for themselves. kits & support  etc make it more likely that people will give the diy thing a go.

[Jurbo]

@ Steven C and Twin-X - Thanks for your kind comments on my MBSID. You know, I too played with the thought  how much should my Midibox cost to be able to get real profit from it and thus call the transaction commercial. Well, I spent 400 euros for parts and roughly 100 hours building the machine, so I think that the bidding should start at 400 + 100 x 10 =1400 euros to actually get any kind of decent pay for the building work. Ok, now that I have built one, the next could be built faster, maybe even in 60-70 hours. So the price could come down to about 1000-1100 euros. Selling at this kind of prices I would call commercial, but in my opinion no-one is getting any real profit from selling an (although simple) MBSID for 140 euros, really. But to clear any possible misunderstandings, I do think that the Midibox (as well as other similar projects) should be enjoyed as it reads on the label: DIY. Thorsten has given us rights to do that but nothing else with his intellectual property.

By the way, I think Thorsten gets paid for Midibox just the way he wants, it's just not in money: he gets huge respect and admiration for his skills, he is actually kind of a superstar to the people that know his work. Everyone here looks up to him, he is considered a genius and a guru. And that kind of position in life is more difficult to get than lots of money, I'd say.  ;)

[Martin_Haverland]

@Jurbo:

;D

you are very good at estimating a realistic commercial break even!

small chances anyone would profit from the MB's without a serious redesign or better a new design from the scratch...

In my opinion selling one could only be a matter of emergency or a big commercial failure...

I would seriously take a look at the music electronics industry on a regular basis if someone round here is in fear of MB's diy attitude...

The B-Ringer#s are not the only Borgs ("assimilate!")  in licensing matters... ;D

Again: i will not say anything against the actual licensing of MB...i'm just talking about hardware and marketing aspects generally - got it?

;D

Kind regards, relax, and peace,

Martin