With the good news of compiled patches @ NODE13 i was thinking about some stuff that may change the way VVVV and the community works.
Is the sharing of code is going to be affected with this new feature?
Executable files don’t reveal their source code in this case the patches. In my experience using a decompiler for Flash hardly gets a usable source code. It would be nice if the compiler doesn’t obfuscate the code so it can be reversed engineered with a decompiler to get the patch as it was made.
How are licenses going to be affected by the distributions of compiled patches?
This because the computer running the compiled patch doesn’t need a licensed VVVV installed to run the program.
Maybe this was already discussed at Node. For all of us that are following Node on-line.
¿Your thoughts?
Today’s CAN Panel Discussion was about the opensource meaning and future. Joreg and Kyle McDonald of OpenFramworks were completely for the idea of opensource and sharing codes, but also Joreg said there has to be some benefit for the developers if the application is being used for making money… which I totally agree.
Also the concept of .exe export is for near future and I think it will take a bit of time (maybe a year?) before they do that, and it is only an export feature for artist to be able to create self-contained application and the clients don’t ripoff their work, or to share to others without vvvv on their machines. It is not a big deal, contributors still share openly and I’m sure it won’t be through complied versions of patches.
Joreg said there has been many requests for some type of protection for artist’s that are worried their client ripoff their work after one time use, so what is coming sooner than .exe exporting is an encryption system using USB dongle, only for encrypting your patches. They will have that for sale soon.
But you have to wait for vvvv team to confirm all these, as they are early news and no date are attached to these new developments.
I think these are all sounds exciting and good news, it will only strengthen vvvv and makes users really put effort for keeping the vvvv community going with quality contributions.
About clients ripping-off artist’s work there’s is a very interesting presentation by Golan Levin about that: How to Get More & Better from your Agency’s Informatics Research Division
i’m not scared customers will rip off my work, i won’t use any encryption or use the *.exe feature to secure my work.
in the end, customers pay for your design skills, for your taste, for solving a certain problem. and if they like how you work, they will come back, let you make the changes or let you make new things.
if a customer doesnt act fair, well …he can go to hell.
i see the *.exe feature could be convient in terms of deploying and/or preview of a software. surely, the licensing might be mixed up by this, but we will continue to buy a license for each exhibit in order to support develoments like this feature. doesnt matter if deployed as exe or full vvvv installation.
There may be many reasons to make a patch into an .exe. The most obvious being portability and the benefits from this. Patchers also have a legitimate right to use this feature as a protection method. I prefer the free software approach: .exes with source code available.
Well you don’t have to really be concern about this right now as the exporting to .exe and many new features won’t be implemented for few years! maybe in time for the next Node festival. That was part of the last words by vvvv team in the Node13 closing talks.
