somehow its quite sad how superficial poeple are. they turn crazy mad about crack.exe but click on something like setup.exe without even thinking about it. both can be be illegal both can do the same harm. well actually not true, something like setup.exe is way more dangerous, because potential damage stays undiscovered. and its worrying how poeple dont use theyre brains anymore and simply rely on superficial thoughts…
a virus scanner that gives you an alarm just because of a filename i would not trust for a second…
We could turn this into a debate of whether people should investigate first before they accuse, or whether a filename under any other name would still smell as sweet… but the matter of fact is this: Certain organisations, which unfortunately some of us belong in, have a checklist and if a product does something wrong according to their checklist, they will deem it bad. This is not debatable. In most cases, like I imagine happened in Synth’s case, the best case scenario would be to force you to remove the software after they make your life a living hell. In my case I had to spent a considerable amount of time and energy to convince them to even consider getting the software installed for next year (as well as re-make lessons plans after they said no the first time – not fun.)
So the way I see it, we have three options.
Find a way to change the bureaucracy in organisations (yeah right).
Keep crack.exe and accept some users will inevitably face difficult situations
Rename the file (or use two releases or any other solution the devvvvs can think of)
thanks everyone for your input. sorry for the delay but we had to discuss this with our marketing department. it is certainly not in vvvvs interest to cause any troubles. quite to the contrary, from the very beginning we decided that we’d not give you the copy-protection treatment and make access to vvvv as easy as possible. just imagine we did use copy-protection: synth would probably have installed an actual crack of vvvv to run it just for playing around with it. installing vvvv on a larger scale in institutions would be much more complicated no matter how much time we invested in implementing a copy-protection mechanism.
but not giving you the copy-protection treatment does not mean that you get no treatment at all. vvvv is not a charity. if you haven’t already realized, vvvv besides being an amazing-piece-of-software™, also has an educational mission. we need you to have those discussions even if they may be annoying at times. vvvv is as simple to use as a crack, which we think is important. but seeing a crack also makes people aware that there is a commercial version available as well. and if they are good people they will go check the license agreement to see wether they can crack vvvv for free or they have to pay for a license and then still use the convenience of the crack rather than dealing with serialnumbers or dongles. of course alternatively we could make you click “i agree to the licensing terms” but c’mon… yes we want people to use vvvv consciously and not install it like just another fun desktop background. consider this narcissistic and we might even agree…
so please instead of waiting for troubles concerning the crack actively talk about it and explain the reasoning behind it to whomever needs to know. vvvv is a tool by professionals for everyone who can handle it and we are glad to read that most of you seem to actually totally understand. thankyouverymuch.
well maybe you should sell that commercial version in a nice shiny box with cd-rom. this would be also the ultimate proof that this is original software, who would be that shameless to fake the box too!
And doing so, you should also sell three different boxes labeled „starter -edition“ „professional“ and „enterprise“ with different prices. „enterprise“ should be the biggest and most impressive, this would make the management very very happy. Maybe fill it up with concrete quads, so the police eventually come to check for original software would be immediately convinced by just taking the box from the shelf…
from the street directly on CEO’s desktop. Lotta tries allowed.
The finest thing, in my opinion, would that they receive only vvvv concrete quads, impressed with link to licensing and download pages.
I already see CEO tapping on concrete waiting for link to open on his device, complaining brick is broken, and ending with the all time classics “Thank you, Bill Gates!”
@joreg and all the honorable members of the marketing departement
The way you provide access to the toolkit is truely progressive, and you have all reason to be proud of that. I don’t think anyone in this discussion wanted to challenge that.
This call is to a great part about the annoying way some institutions (as in research facilities, universities and corporations) restrict their access which makes introducing new software like vvvv already hard enough.
And you are right that this needs to be addressed in a professional manner. By anyone who faces these problems. I always did so, but I remember situations this was rather awkward.
Please consider the future daring individuals who try to bring vvvv into aformentioned institutions, the individuals that are not (yet) on a professional eye-to-eye level with their admins. They might be students, fresh starters in a company, new uni staff or have any other “underling’s” role in their hierarchy. I’d argue most of these occurances will be covered by the educational side of the license.
This is the scenario that is being addressed in this thread: some individual wants to see or show what’s possible with vvvv. However, internal rules and the stubborn admin simply refuse to execute something like crack.exe with with Administrator rights and, boom, there goes the chance of education on vvvv as well as a potential commercial licensing alongside that institution.
Its weird that it needs to be spelled out, but one quirky file like that does make the whole product suspicious. It makes admins worry at vvvvirst contact. Of course it also shows your sense of humor, and makes for excellent small talk with more open minded admins. But you should consider a more subtle approach if you want your product to be recognized professionally on a broader scale.
Crack.exe seems to do none of this right? I don’t quite get the joke. But then it’s only half a joke right cos it has an underlying meaning. hmmmm. confused.
at our university, where i’m running a vvvv course, we cannot even download the original zip because the web-proxy prevents files containing a crack.exe.
also can be quite a hassle to get the admins to accept installation on a lab computer with adding an exception to the virus scanner, which also scans for files called that way.
i’d prefer not having to walk these extra miles and instead use my energy on spreading the vvvvord.
I’m a teenager living at home and using my family’s computer. My Mum won’t let me use vvvv because of crack.exe. She says once I buy my own computer then I can do what I like on that, but until then I’m not allowed.
Another licenced user here, I would love crack.exe to be changed. I’ve had a fair few “humour/horror” stories. But would rather make a point…
Joreg - we as users need to understand your message, and a wonderful message it is too. But does our client who is paying £500+ on licences need to understand the message?
If you are really keen on advertising your message as part of the software bundle, can it not be in a readme.txt file that ships with vvvv? You could then do some funky ASCII art and make everyone happy.
@joreg and the marketing department, eg: @joreg ;)
it is certainly not in vvvvs interest to cause any troubles
Well calling you installer crack.exe and quoting the above is like contradiction at it’s best.
just imagine we did use copy-protection: synth would probably have installed an actual crack of vvvv to run it just for playing around with it.
Very kind of you to synth to decide that he would have pirated your software instead of either buy it of dump it to the recycle bin.
also has an educational mission.
What educational mission? That software needs to be paid? Thanks we are all so dumb. we need to see a crack.exe to think that maybe there’s a license involved?
so please instead of waiting for troubles concerning the crack actively talk about it and explain the reasoning behind it to whomever needs to know.
Really clients don’t care at all about that. Welcome to the real world. And personally I don’t either.
vvvv is a tool by professionals:
That would deserve a forum topic on it’s own,but just as examples,instead of this crack nonsense, I (and I bet many users would) have gladly preferred more time spent on:
-testing (boygroup)
-crappy user interface
-better video player
-better communication with your users (many ui suggestion and other posts about improvements going more or less to the trash bin…).
I’ll stop here to avoid a 20 pages list, but you get the point ;)
And since it’s a wiki, and considering the amount of people telling that this is a real issue for them, took the freedom of removing the “resolved” flag. This is not resolved at all.
I have to admit that i found the resolution of this thread rather astounding too. I plead guilty to joking about the name of the executable as many others did and it was all fun, but i totally expected this valid request by synth to be taken care of in the end. (as in changing the name of the executable) The vvvv marketing department (imho) really missed the point here as various others already stated in earlier replies to this thread.
To me it’s the equivalent of giving away a cake for free which comes in a box with the statement “poisonous” printed on the inside. When you open the box to have a go at that nice cake the joy is instantly spoiled if you’re not into the bakeries inside joke and cake licensing policy.
Also i totally have to agree with vux that there are quite some serious issues which would need some attention at the moment. I guess many longtime users also would really love some sort of roadmap for vvvv as we know it opposed to the next gen stuff shown at last node. I know i sure would… :) Hopefully that would also address stuff like the answer to the question if the current ui sluggishness will ever be fixed by moving to another component or in any other way or what we have to expect from nodes like timeliner in the future and many others… :)
